An Atheistic Bible Study Of The Gospels Parable Of Old Wine In New Bottles.

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Three of the Gospels address this parable, and for once the three versions don’t contradict one another. Though Matthew (9:14-17) and (Mark 2:18-22) touch on it Luke (5:33-39) goes into more detail than the other two. Jesus has just converted the tax-collector Levi (Matthew), and a party is thrown for Jesus with several tax-collectors attending (either as friends of Matthew’s or Christian converts in their own right. Critics observing the celebrations tell Jesus that the party comes at a traditional time of fasting, a practice kept and respected by Pharisees and the followers of John The Baptist alike. Jesus points out that mourning should be saved for when the bridegroom dies, not when he is celebrating his wedding. Jesus sees the conversion to belief in him as comparable to a wedding feast. Jesus adds two parables to illustrate his point. He tells his critics that you never patch over a hole in old clothes with new cloth material and that you never put new wine in old wineskins. Taken literally, the examples make sense for their time. New, unwashed wool or other clothing material won’t have been washed or shrunk yet so using it to patch together old material will cause the new cloth to shrink and tear a fresh hole in the material. Similarly, old wine bottles were made of skins and they would stretch with the old wine still fermenting in them, so new wine could break old bottles. Of course, clothing and bottling material have improved to make recycling better and easier, showing how out of date the parables are. The Bible is dated. The real purpose of the parables is to say Christianity is a new religion, not restrained to old Jewish traditions. It is a clear break from Mosaic Law by Jesus, a clear statement that his is a new religion, disregarding old fashioned fasting laws. It is his way of telling his followers ‘party on dudes’. Arthur Chappell