Wine, Soil, and Salvation in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament

Biblical authors used wine as a potent symbol and metaphor of material blessing and salvation, as well as a sign of judgement. In this volume, Mark Scarlata provides a biblical theology of wine through exploration of texts in the Hebrew Bible, later Jewish writings, and the New Testament. He shows how, from the beginnings of creation and the story of Noah, wine is intimately connected to soil, humanity, and harmony between humans and the natural world. In the Prophets, wine functions both as a symbol of blessing and judgement through the metaphor of the cup of salvation and the cup of wrath. In other scriptures, wine is associated with wisdom, joy, love, celebration, and the expectations of the coming Messiah. In the New Testament wine becomes a critical sign for the presence of God's kingdom on earth and a symbol of Christian unity and life through the eucharistic cup. Scarlata's study also explores the connections between the biblical and modern worlds regarding ecology and technology, and why wine remains an important sign of salvation for humanity today.

• Organizes the biblical data on wine into logical categories that provide an overarching framework for how wine connects as a sign of salvation and/or judgment in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament
• Addresses environmental, technological and agricultural questions that emerge from the biblical text and offers modern parallels that relate to how we might address the challenges facing humanity today
• Makes a biblical theology of wine accessible to readers without specialised training in biblical studies or languages while still offering a critical and scholarly treatment of the subject