Question 107 – from ER and BR, United Kingdom

ER: Is there wine in heaven?
BR: If so, is it alcoholic, as some people say that ‘wine’ in the Bible was merely grape juice?

While the Bible is never fully clear on the subject of what ‘heaven’ is like, there are references to eating and drinking. In Luke chapter 22, verse 18, Jesus is reported as saying of a cup of wine that “I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” Whether this is a reference to his appearances after the resurrection, or in heaven is hard to know. However as he was (more…)

Question from AW, United Kingdom

Why is Canaan cursed after Noah gets drunk in Genesis chapter 9?

The simplest answer to this question is because this story explains why the Israelites would invade the Promised Land and rule over the Canaanites. Whether Noah made an actual prophetic statement when he ’said’: “May Canaan be the slave of Shem” (chapter 9, verse 26), or this was a later explanation for subsequent events is pretty much irrelevant. Even the Rabbinic tradition, that Moses wrote the book of Genesis while the people of Israel were on their convoluted way to the land promised them by God, implies that this statement was included to justify the pending Israelite conquest of Canaan. The Israelites were ‘descendents of Shem’ in the genealogies and they would rule over the Canaanites.

Genesis is a complex book. It has a large number of features in the early chapters that link it to other literature in the surrounding area, particularly Babylonian ideas. If, as some scholars maintain, it was a fairly late compilation of stories, or underwent an editing process, this comment can be seen as a retrospective justification for the subjugation of another people group, something that the Israelites experienced themselves as the empires of Assyria and Babylon conquered the Middle East.