'Jesus says in Luke he will not drink wine UNTIL "the Kingdom of God comes", and then in John drinks wine saying "It is finished". What about the falling of stars and angels coming down blaring trumpets?' (citing Luke 22:17-18, John 19:28-30, Matt 24:27-30/37-39).
Refutation
This trades on treating two different substances, named with two different Greek terms, as the same 'wine' -- a textbook equivocation. Luke 22:18 concerns oinos, 'the fruit of the vine' (genn?matos t?s ampelou) -- the festive, fermented drink of the Passover cup, over which Jesus pronounces a vow of abstention tied to table-fellowship at the future eschatological banquet (paired with an identical vow about the meal itself in the preceding verse, Luke 22:16: 'I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God'). John 19:29-30 describes oxos -- sour wine or wine vinegar (Latin posca), the cheap acidic drink Roman soldiers carried for their own use, offered on a hyssop branch to a dying man to relieve thirst. It is a medicinal battlefield drink, not a festive shared cup; John narrates that Jesus 'received' it, not that he presided over or shared a table-fellowship cup. Raymond E. Brown's Anchor Bible commentary on John notes precisely this distinction between the crucifixion oxos and festive oinos. There is no genuine contradiction here to harmonize away -- the two texts describe different referents in different genres (a table vow at a Passover meal; a battlefield drink offered to a dying man), and equivocating between them manufactures a conflict that isn't in the text. On the cosmic-signs question: as argued in record 001, the 'stars falling, angels with trumpets' language of Matt 24:29-31 is apocalyptic-idiom judgment language most plausibly describing the Jerusalem-judgment horizon of vv.4-34 (per France and Wright), not a claim that the crucifixion itself needed to be accompanied by literal astronomical collapse -- so there is no expectation, on that reading, that these particular signs belong at the cross at all. Separately, Luke's own narrative already marks the crucifixion with real, though smaller-scale, theophanic/judgment signs of its own -- darkness over the land and the Temple curtain torn in two (Luke 23:44-45) -- showing Luke is fully capable of narrating sign-language at the cross when he intends it. His not narrating 'stars falling' there is consistent with those particular signs belonging, in his own literary scheme, to a different referent (Jerusalem's future judgment) than the crucifixion moment.
Positive case
The precision with which Luke distinguishes the festive cup-vow (22:15-18, at a specific meal, using oinos/potērion language) from John's independently worded crucifixion detail (oxos, offered by soldiers, in a different narrative setting) reflects two carefully preserved, independently transmitted traditions rather than a single confused source describing the same event twice -- the kind of incidental, non-contradictory detail-consistency across independent Gospel accounts that scholarship on 'undesigned coincidences' (e.g. Lydia McGrew, building on the classical work of J.J. Blunt) takes as evidence of authentic, separately-derived eyewitness material rather than late legendary smoothing from one core story.
Steelmanned objection
At the Last Supper Jesus vows, 'I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes' (Luke 22:18), making the kingdom's arrival a stated precondition for his drinking wine again. Yet hours later in John's crucifixion account, Jesus receives wine and declares 'It is finished' (John 19:28-30) -- seemingly drinking before any of the dramatic cosmic signs elsewhere promised to accompany the kingdom's coming (stars falling, angels with trumpets, Matt 24:27-31, 37-39) have occurred. Either Jesus broke his own vow immediately, or 'the kingdom of God' supposedly arrived unnoticed at the crucifixion without any of the signs promised elsewhere -- which looks like the Gospels contradicting each other about what 'the kingdom coming' requires.
Fallacy tags
equivocation
Sources cited
- Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John (Anchor Bible) — on distinguishing the crucifixion oxos from festive oinos in John 19:28-30
- Joseph Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke (Anchor Bible) — on the Passover-cup vow and its eschatological-banquet background in Luke 22:15-18
- Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses — on independently preserved incidental detail as a mark of eyewitness-derived Gospel tradition
Scripture referenced
Luke 22:15-18, John 19:28-30, Matthew 24:27-31, Matthew 24:37-39, Luke 23:44-45
Confidence
strong
Review status
no content-completeness issues flagged
Source locator
Jesus is late → row 8
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