PedanticDan  Dansplaining The Bible

December 29, 2006

Not Given To Wine

Filed under: Booze In The Bible — Tags: , , , , , — PedanticDan @ 10:51 am

1 Timothy 3:3 and Titus 1:7 both include “not given to wine” (KJV) in the qualifications for a bishop. Some prohibitionists interpret these verses to say that church leaders must abstain from alcoholic beverages. Some even say that the Greek word translated as “given to wine”, πάροινος, comes from πάρα οινος, meaning “next to wine”, and therefore prohibits a church leader from even being near wine. The problem with this is that looking at etymology alone can lead to inaccurate conclusions about a word’s meaning.

Take the word pedophile, for example. If we examine the derivation of that word, we would conclude that the word refers to someone who likes children, which obviously does not capture the true meaning of the word. We must also look at the usage of pedophile to understand it’s meaning. The same is true for πάροινος.

Fortunately, Greek scholars have already done that work for us, and we can look at various published works on the meaning of Greek words instead of trying to figure it out ourselves. For example, according to Warren C. Trenchard’s Complete Vocabulary Guide To The Greek New Testament, p. 192, πάροινος is an adjective which means drunken, addicted to wine, or when used substantively (as if it were a noun), as it is in Timothy and Titus, a drunkard.

The prohibitionist interpretation of 1 Timothy 3:3 and Titus 1:7 falls apart when we look at what πάροινος actually means. As it it used in the New Testament, πάροινος means a drunkard.

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