I get asked this question from time to time since I'm a preacher and a home brewer. I certainly don't claim to be much of a bible scholar though.
I have always loved that the first miracle recorded in the Book of John is Jesus making wine. Lots of it. At least 120 gallons of it. And it was awesome. And it was after people had been drinking.
While the English translation doesn't mention beer specifically in the Bible, it is hard to ignore historical fact that beer was around during that time and in that region. Also, since Jesus spent a lot of time in places that most "religious" people wouldn't go, chances are there was beer around. Either way, beer or wine, it's obvious that Jesus was ok with alcohol. Alcohol in and of itself is amoral.
I've actually done a lot of research over the years on organized Religion's, especially Christianity's views on alcohol....I've also done a lot of research on the history of many religious taboos, especially as they relate to Christianity.
I came upon something recently...might have been in the book "The Search for God and Gunness" that at that time the term "wine" may have been the cultural catch all phrase for any fermented beverage; that there wasn't really a sophisticated distinction between that which was made with grain, or fruit or honey, like there is today. In fact if you look at some of Caligione's research for some of the beers he's made based on historical/archeoloigal research many of the beverage contained multiple fermentables. Look at the the residue from the burial urn of King Midas, from which his Midas Touch was made, it contain the fermented residue of grapes, barley, and honey.
The beer based on ancient Egypt, Ta Henket was made with Bappir (bread) and doum-palm fruit, again a hybrid beer and wine concoction.
I don't know 2,000 years ago necessarily if there were any pure distinction between "beer" or "wine," but I'm pretty sure Jesus, and everyone else for that matter, drank fermented beverages...even if they were only lightly fermented.
We know fermented beverages were consumed in most of the ancient world, for the same reason they were drank into the 1800's in Western Society- Because water was too dangerous to drink...AND it was a caloric intake - "Liguid Bread."
So yeah it was highly unlikely that Jesus DIDN'T consume alcohol....because everyone did as a matter of survival.
In fact it wasn't until the mid part of the Temperance movement, around the start of WWI, that Beer, and wine actually came in conflict with Christianity.
According to Maureen Ogle in Ambitious Brew, that in the early pre-prohibition period at the beginning of the Temperance movement, beer was actually considered the "good" alcohol. Compared to rum and other spirits. There were all these things, even put out by the temperance movement saying beer was benign.
Beer was healthy, it was "liquid bread" they even believed that you couldn't get drunk on beer.
But when anti-German sentiments aroused by World War I fed the flames of the temperance movement (one activist even declared that the worst of all our German enemies are Pabst, Schlitz, Blatz, and Miller), that beer was lumped along with all the other alcoholic beverages.
Over the years I've posted a lot of stuff about Christianity and other religion's views on Alcohol.
In the history of Christianity, alcoholic prohibition is a relatively new idea. In fact, alcohol was a normal part of life. In Colonial America, the Puritans expected Christians to drink (Hearn, 1943). In the 1700s, a Baptist minister created the formula for bourbon whiskey (Hailey, 1992). During the 1800s, many Southern ministers operated stills, and sold alcohol (Hearn, 1943). Parishioners who owned stills would tithe their alcohol; and preachers' salaries often included whiskey. All this began to change, however, as the Temperance movement took shape (Hailey, 1992).
The idea that alcohol was dangerous was not new, though. In 600 B.C. Pathagoras noted, "drunkenness is an expression identical with ruin." In 44 B.C., Cicero wrote, "a sensual and intemperate youth hands over a worn-out body to old age," when he drinks to excess. Centuries later, Muhammed declared, "there is a devil in every berry of the grape" (Hearn, 1943). In fact, Islam has a total prohibition of alcohol, proclaiming drinking a sin (Parshall, 1989). Chaucer wrote in A.D. 1380, "character and shame depart when wine comes in." Clearly, for thousands of years, men have known of the dangers of alcohol. Knowledge about the dangers of alcohol stopped few from drinking, however. Jesus not only drank, his first miracle was turning water to wine; and he used wine as a symbol of the salvation through his blood (Hearn, 1943; Jn 2; Lk 22:20).
For Southern Baptists, too, alcohol was a part of life. That is until the Temperance movement began to infiltrate the religious denominations in America. Finally, in 1896, the Southern Baptist Convention officially denounced alcohol and asked that churches excommunicate anyone who sold or drank alcohol. For the first time in Southern Baptist history, drinking was considered immoral. The success of this measure is debatable. A Southern Baptist study has shown that in the 1990s, 46 percent of members drink alcohol (Hailey, 1992).
Investigation shows that although people knew of the danger in alcohol, throughout history, Christian prohibition is a new, and rather American, phenomenon. The decisions of churches to abstain came out of the American Temperance movement. David Hailey, though supporting the SBC's resolution, admits that biblical support for abstinence was an after-thought. Christians had decided, for social reasons, that alcohol was wrong. Only then, did they turn to the Bible to find support (Hailey, 1992).
(I kinda like that first paragrah....paid in hooch, eh?
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From
ALCOHOLIC PROHIBITION IN SOUTHERN BAPTIST CHURCHES AND ITS IMPLICATION ON THE PRIESTHOOD OF BELIEVERS
I've never done an in-depth study yet, of the history of Islam's (Mohammed's) prohibition against alcohol....because it seems to me that drinking water in the Levant would be just as risky as anywhere else. I would not be surprised to find that they consumed something that actually WAS alcoholic as well (at least enough to prevent people from getting sick- Like a table/kid's beer, something low gravity) But like I mentioned above they didn't consider it as a means of "drunken-ness." People drank it to survive.
Unless the specific region where Mohammed lived and taught had a hugely available source of fresh water, that in his mind there was truly no survival need to drink alcohol...But I don't know specifically where he did his thing...and find it unlikely any body of water was totally safe to drink.
