134 



Lutz, Viticulture and Brewing. 



life of the nomadic patriarchs was the ideal life to which 

 Israel's religious leaders looked back. Each step of an ad- 

 vance to a more refined mode of living is a step farther away 

 from Yahweh. To warn against viticulture and wine-drinking is 

 narrated an occurrence in the family of Noah i, and another 

 in the house of Lot, in which the use of wine led to shame- 

 ful intercourse with his two daughters 2. The lawgiver permits 

 parents, whose son is living in debauchery and is a drunkard 

 to accuse him to death before the judges 3. This is an extra- 

 ordinary ordinance, which stands without parallel. \ Drunken- 

 ness, for instance, is never mentioned in the Code of Ham- 

 murabi, or any other legal regulations of Babylonia and 

 Assyria. This fact is significant and tends to show that 

 drunkenness was not considered a crime by the Babylonians 

 and Assyrians. On the other hand, Deut. 21, 20 permits the 

 most severe punishment to be imposed upon the drunkard. 

 The Ancient Orient otherwise knows no punishment for into- 

 xication. A change was wrought in this respect by the intro- 

 duction of Islam. The Muhammadan law provides for forty 

 beatings in case of drunkenness. They could be augmented 

 up to eighty strokes in case of habitual drunkenness *. The 

 Hebrew lawgiver forbids the priests to partake of intoxicating 

 drinks during their services^. The assumption of the pre- 

 exilic Hebrew leaders is that he who drinks wine necessarily 

 becomes inebriated. This is still evident in a later period of 

 Hebrew history. There is preserved a pleasant song, in which 

 the mother warns the royal prince of wine-drinking S; 



"It is not for kings to drink wine, 

 Nor for rulers to mix strong drink; 

 Lest, drinking, they forget the law, 



i) Gen. 9, 21 ff. 2) Gen. 19, 32 ff. 3) Deut. 21, 20. 



4) Mdwerdi, 388. Cf. also Lane, y4n Account of the Manners and Cttstoms 

 of the Modern Egyptians, 5 th ed., London, 187 1, p. 137: "Drunkenness was 

 punished, by the Prophet, by flogging; and is still in Cairo, though not often : 

 the ^kadd', or number of stripes, for this offence, is eighty in the case of 

 a free man, and f6rty in that of a slave." 



5) Levit. 10, 9. 



6) Proverbs, 31, 4 7, given according to Toy, Critical and Evangelical 

 Commentary on the Bool; of Proverbs, p. 539. 



