not enjoined by the law, but had become an established custom, at all events in the post-Babylonian
period. The wine was mixed with warm water on these occasions. Hence in the early Christian
Church it was usual to mix the sacramental wine with water. (The simple wines of antiquity were
incomparably less deadly than the stupefying and ardent beverages of our western nations. The
wines of antiquity were more like sirups; many of them were not intoxicant; many more intoxicant
in a small degree; and all of them, as a rule, taken only when largely diluted with water. They
contained, even undiluted, but 4 or 5 percent of alcohol.—Cannon Farrar.)
Winepress
From the scanty notices contained in the Bible we gather that, the wine-presses of the Jews
consisted of two receptacles of vats placed at different elevations, in the upper one of which the
grapes were trodden, while the lower one received the expressed juice. The two vats are mentioned
together only in (Joel 3:13) “The press is full: the fats overflow”—the upper vat being full of fruit,
the lower one overflowing with the must. [Wine] The two vats were usually hewn out of the solid
rock. (Isaiah 5:2) margin; (Matthew 21:33) Ancient winepresses, so constructed, are still to he seen
in Palestine.
Winnowing
[Agriculture]
Wisdom Of Jesus, Son Of Sirach
[Ecclesiasticus]
Wisdom, The, Of Solomon
a, book of the Apocrypha, may be divided into two parts, the first, chs. 1-9, containing the
doctrine of wisdom in its moral and intellectual aspects: the second, the doctrine of wisdom as
shown in history. chs. 10-19. The first part contains the praise of wisdom as the source of
immortality, in contrast with the teaching of sensualists; and next the praise of wisdom as the guide
of practical and intellectual life, the stay of princes, and the interpreter of the universe. The second
part, again, follows the action of wisdom summarily, as preserving God’s servants, from Adam to
Moses, and more particularly in the punishment of the Egyptians and Canaanites. Style and language
.—The literary character of the book is most remarkable and interesting. In the richness and freedom
of its vocabulary it most closely resembles the Fourth Book of Maccabees, but it is superior to that
fine declamation in both power and variety of diction. The magnificent description of wisdom ch.
7:22-8:1, must rank among the noblest passages of human eloquence, and it would be perhaps
impossible to point out any piece of equal length in the remains of classical antiquity more pregnant
with noble thought or more rich in expressive phraseology. Doctrinal character.—The theological
teaching of the book offers, in many respects, the nearest approach to the language and doctrines
of Greek philosophy that is found in any Jewish writing up to the time of Philo. There is much in
the views which it gives of the world of man and of the divine nature which springs rather from
the combination or conflict of Hebrew and Greek thought than from the independent development
of Hebrew thought alone. The conception is presented of the body as a mere weight and clog to
the soul. ch, 9:15; contrast (2 Corinthians 5:1-4) There is, on the other hand no trace of the
characteristic Christian doctrine of a resurrection of the body. The identification of the tempter,
(Genesis 3:1) ... directly or indirectly with the devil, as the bringer “of death into the world” ch.
2:23, 24, is the most remarkable development of biblical doctrine which the book contains. Generally,
too, it may be observed that, as in the cognate books, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, there are few traces
of the recognition of the sinfulness even of the wise man in his wisdom, which forms in the Psalms
frankie
(Frankie)
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