Food and drink prohibitions Bahá'í Faith, and various branches of Christianity such as the Baptists, the Church of God In Christ, Methodists, the Latter-day Saints, Seventh-day Adventists and the Iglesia ni Cristo – forbid or discourage the consumption of alcoholic beverages. The Hebrew Bible describes a Nazirite vow (Numbers 6:1-21) that includes abstinence from alcohol, specifically wine and probably barley beer (according to the Septuagint translation and the Bauer lexicon: "σικερα", from the Akkadian shikaru, for "barley beer)". The New JPS translation is: "wine and any other intoxicant". Other versions such as the NIV prohibit both alcohol and all alcohol derived products such as
History of alcoholic drinks "Gandhara stills" were only capable of producing very weak liquor, as there was no efficient means of collecting the vapors at low heat. While the art of wine making reached the Hellenic peninsula by about 2000 BC, the first alcoholic beverage to obtain widespread popularity in what is now Greece was mead, a fermented beverage made from honey and water. However, by 1700 BC, wine making was commonplace. During the next thousand years wine drinking assumed the same function so commonly found around the world: It was incorporated into religious rituals. It became important in hospitality, used for medicinal purposes,