New Wine and Old Wineskins

The Chemistry of Fermenting Wine

Wine storage in clay jars was common for large-scale and long-term storage in the ancient world, but for transport and everyday household use, animal-skin bags (Hebrew: nod; Greek: askos) were the primary portable container. A goat or sheep skin was cleaned, treated with resin or salt to prevent leakage and off-flavors, and sewn shut at all openings except the neck, which was left as the filling and pouring spout.

The critical feature of skin containers was elasticity. Fresh, newly treated skins retained the flexibility of living hide - they could stretch outward as internal pressure increased. Old, used skins had dried out and lost their elastic properties. The skin fibers had stiffened and become brittle. When skin containers were refilled, they were pushed to their mechanical limits if the liquid inside continued generating pressure.

New (freshly pressed) wine was not yet wine - it was must, the fermented juice still actively converting sugars to alcohol and carbon dioxide gas. During active fermentation, carbon dioxide is generated continuously. In a flexible container, this gas pressure caused the skin to bulge outward as the gas accumulated, then gradually escape as the skin flexed. In a rigid, dried-out skin, the pressure built with nowhere to go until the weakest seam or oldest repair patch split open, losing both the skin and its contents.

Archaeological Evidence

Wine storage jar assemblages from Palestinian sites confirm that large-scale wine storage used ceramic vessels (pithoi and amphorae) while smaller-scale transport and household use relied on skin containers. Wine jar storage rooms at Gibeon (with 63 rock-cut storage chambers), Lachish, and Hazor document the scale of ancient wine cellaring. The skin containers that accompanied this wine trade rarely survive, being organic material, but their use is confirmed by multiple ancient visual representations.

Egyptian New Kingdom tomb paintings show wine transport in both skin bags and ceramic jars - the skins used for shorter-distance, flexible carrying while the jars served for larger quantities and longer storage. Linear B tablets from Bronze Age Mycenae document wine distributions in skin containers (aletria) alongside jar storage, confirming the parallel-use pattern documented in the biblical world.

Biblical Passages

Matthew 9:17 records the parable: 'Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.' The parable appears in a specific context: Jesus has just called Levi the tax collector and is eating with 'tax collectors and sinners,' and John's disciples ask why Jesus's disciples do not fast as they do. The wineskins parable (following the new-cloth-on-old-garment parable) addresses why Jesus's practice cannot simply be inserted into existing religious structures.

Luke 5:37-39 adds an important observation absent from Matthew and Mark: 'And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, The old is good.' This Lukan addition deepens the parable by acknowledging human resistance to the new: people prefer the familiar. The issue is not only structural incompatibility (old skins can't hold new wine) but psychological preference (people choose old wine because they prefer it). The kingdom's arrival must contend with both the rigidity of old forms and the preference for familiar tastes.

The 'new wine' (Hebrew: tirosh) language also carries prophetic and eschatological weight. Joel 3:18 promises that 'the mountains will drip with new wine' as a sign of restored abundance. Amos 9:13 describes a future abundance so great that 'the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it.' This prophetic background lends Jesus's wine imagery a second dimension: he is not merely making a practical point about containers but invoking the eschatological abundance the prophets had promised.

Dead Sea Scrolls Evidence

The Damascus Document (CD 12:1-2) and the Community Rule address the purity requirements for wine used in communal meals and religious contexts. The Qumran community's strict approach to food purity meant that wine handling was carefully regulated - new wine in its fermentation stage might have had specific purity implications for the community's use. The 4QMMT halakhic letter includes wine purity among the disputed questions between the community and the Jerusalem establishment.

Parallel Cultures

The wineskin container technology was universal in the ancient Mediterranean world. The Greek askos (small skin bag) appears in Homer and throughout classical literature. Pliny (Natural History 14.25-27) discusses wine storage methods including skin bags, noting that properly treated skins preserve wine well for short-term use. Columella (De Re Rustica 12.17) describes wineskin preparation including the treatment of new skins to prevent leakage and off-flavors.

The Homeric epics use wine in skin bags as standard provisioning for sea voyages and military campaigns. Odysseus receives a great skin of wine from Maron (Odyssey 9.196-215) as a precious gift, suggesting that even at the heroic level, wine in skin containers was the expected form for portable wine.

Scholarly Sources

The ISBE article on 'Wine and Wine-making' covers container technology. Philip King and Lawrence Stager's Life in Biblical Israel (2001, pp. 94-100) covers winemaking from harvest through storage. For the parable's exegesis, Ben Witherington's The Gospel of Mark (2001, p. 128) provides the most detailed analysis of the wineskins metaphor in its controversy-dialogue context.

Modern Misconceptions

The wineskins parable is sometimes read as Jesus's wholesale rejection of Judaism in favor of Christianity - old skins equal Judaism, new wine equals Christianity. This reading is too broad: Matthew's version explicitly says that 'new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved' - the point is compatibility, not disposal. The new wine (the kingdom of God arriving) needs new forms capable of expanding with it. Jesus is not discarding the old but insisting that some structures are too rigid to hold what is now being poured. Luke's observation that people prefer old wine adds the psychological dimension: the problem is not only structural but human - resistance to the new that must also be addressed.

• Freeman p.76
• Witherington, The Gospel of Mark p.128
• ISBE: Wine and Wine-making
• King & Stager, Life in Biblical Israel p.97