Luke 7:33-35: “For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine; and you say, He hath a devil.  The Son of man is come eating and drinking; and you say, Behold a gluttonous man, and a winebidder, a friend of publicans and sinners.  But wisdom is justified of all her children.”

John the Baptist was an ascetic who practiced strict denial as a means of physical and spiritual discipline.  So why would John the Baptist’s refusal to eat bread or drink wine lead the Pharisees to believe that he was demon possessed?   If a monk lived such a life style we would say he was a very Godly person to live a life of denial.

Actually, not eating bread and drinking wine in the Aramaic is la ekal la khma shetha khamea and is literally rendered as neither consuming food and drinking the juice of fruits.  This phrase is an old ancient Aramaic idiomatic expression. To say that one  consumes food and drinks the juice of fruits is like saying in English I had lunch with old Bunkie today. This idiom is an expression of hospitality or social interaction.  John the Baptist just came out of the wilderness and preached and went back into the wilderness.  He did not dine or have lunch with people.  Where Jesus, on the other hand, came and lived among the people, ministered to them, interacted with them.  Thus, he came eating and drinking. 

Many have supposed that this was to express the idea that Jesus actually drank alcoholic beverages and even got drunk. To assume this from this expression eating and drinking  is clearly inserting our own Western thought into an old Aramaic idiom. I have read in some commentaries and even heard some people say,  “See there, it says right in the Bible that Jesus drank alcoholic beverages and even got drunk.”  But this is far from the intent of this passage. In the Greek the word for wine that is used here is oinon which could mean both fermented and unfermented wine.  The Greek word does not differentiate. However, Jesus spoke in Aramaic and the Aramaic language does have different words for fermented and unfermented wine.  In this case the word that is used is khamea which is a reference to unfermented juice from some fruit.  It does not have to necessarily be grapes although this was the common source. It could be orange juice, grapefruit juice etc. The key is that it is unfermented or non-alcoholic.  Thus Jesus is mocking his accusers by saying, “Behold the Son of man comes drinking non-alcoholic beverages with publican and sinners and you accuse Him of being drunk.” Sort of like saying in English, you sit down with Republicans and other sinners drinking a glass of Pepsi and people think you’re getting drunk just because you’re associating with them.

In fact what John the Baptist taught and what Jesus taught was so outlandish for the time, it was considered to be crazy man talk.  I mean it is as if some dirty, homeless bum comes up to you on the street and said: “God told me that the Messiah is coming and is in fact walking the streets of Chicago right now.”   You would sort of roll your eyes and look for the turnip truck that he just fell off of.  Or if someone dressed in clerical robes, a fully credentialed, ordained trained minister steps out of St. Francis’s church, puts his hand on your shoulder and says: “My child, I am the light of the world, if anyone believes in me he shall have eternal life”  you would probably think he had just conducted one too many communion services and  sneaked an extra sip of the wine on the side.

The point is, eating and drinking is an old Aramaic idiom expressing how one interacts with people, not a commentary on one’s diet.  John most likely ate bread at some point in his life and Jesus did not have had to drink fermented wine.  Both men were teaching something so radical that the Pharisees just assumed John the Baptist was a crazy man and Jesus had just had one too many and got carried away with His Messianic teachings. Yet what Jesus was trying to show was the inconsistency of the Pharisees argument for rejecting the message that He and John the Baptist were bringing.  Now if you were to ignore the fact that this is an Aramaic idiomatic expression and read it in the Greek,  then I suppose you could reach the conclusion that Jesus drank fermented wine and was even prone to get intoxicated at times, which has been tragically suggested by some teachers and commentators. However, I believe the use of the Aramaic word khamea (non-alcoholic beverage) could lay that accusation to rest.

Check out the phrase “But wisdom is justified of all her children.”   Now what the duce does  that  mean?  The answer is simple if you stop thinking with a Western English mindset and consider an Eastern oriental concept of wisdom.   In English the word wisdom is always positive.  Hence you have to do a lot of spinning and twisting to make this square peg fit a round hole.  However, in the Semitic mind, wisdom can have either a positive or negative connotation.  Sometimes the word wisdom in Aramaic which is khekmtha, can idiomatically mean stupidity, just the opposite.  Now I know what you are thinking, why that is stupid to say wisdom could be an expression of stupidity. Yet, years ago and sometimes even today if someone saw say, a movie that he thought was really good, he would say, “Man, that movie was bad.”  You would really have to know the person who said that, hear him say it and know the context that it was said in to really understand that he was saying the movie was great.  Someone just off the plane from China would have a difficult time understanding what this person was saying and his English to Chinese dictionary would be of little help.

In this passage Jesus is using a similar idiom in the Aramaic and saying: “You can tell whether wisdom is real wisdom or stupidity by the consistency or inconsistency of its arguments.  Since your arguments are so inconsistent, it is a clear indication of your stupidity.”   Or to put his in less formal English, Jesus would have said, “You guys are so off the wall. Like that has got to be the most stupid argument I have ever heard yet.”