Swing and a miss, Sorry Randall - You got to add some better overtones to this tome. I dove into the book with enthusiasm and quickly bogged down chapter by chapter. Yet I struggle to the end... I requested the book out of pure personal interest. What a topic. Your scholarly senses are numbed by the factoids and style. I can say that the writing is accurate as I did check facts.Get a good editor and crank this book up in a second edition. Tell the story better. You have a great story. It captures the reader, It's your job to hold them. If you had troubles holding me - then you're going to loose those in your potential market. ( )

A wine expert and a Biblical scholar who is a wine aficionado team up to discuss the role of wine in the Bible as well as a description of a wine tour of Bible lands.

The first section of the book analyzes wine and its place in the Bible and ancient Near Eastern and Classical culture. The second section of the book discusses modern wineries in Turkey, Greece, and the Levant, and provides a guide to wines in those regions. The book also features two sections of photos.

The authors manifestly know much about wine and bring an undeniable enthusiasm for wine and particularly for the heritage of wine and wineries in Biblical lands. Anyone who wishes to learn more about wine and wine making in the ancient world and in Biblical lands today will not be disappointed in this book.

In terms of the Biblical interpretation, however, the book leaves much to be desired. The one strength of the work is to point out the prominent place of wine in ancient culture. The fact that Noah is the first to plant a vineyard after leaving the Ark near Ararat and the fact that it seems that the first cultivation of wine happened near Ararat is interesting. The authors interpret the Biblical texts through the prism of wine and wine cultivation: on the one hand, it shows certain emphases and aspects of the texts which could otherwise be missed or ignored, but on the other hand, one could walk away from this book with serious misunderstandings about how wine and wine cultivation are used as source domains for many metaphors and believing that the whole Bible can be explained in terms of wine.

The book does well, perhaps too well, at emphasizing the role of wine in the Bible; it would have been better to have a more sober analysis. Nevertheless, there is value in this work in its specialty niche.

**--book received as part of early review program ( )

This book was largely not what I expected. Though marketed as general-interest non-fiction which might easily be enjoyed by the general reader with some interest in biblical scholarship or wine history it really is not. It reads more like academic writing (in other words, the style is overly dry) and is really only likely to be enjoyed by someone with a strong, specialized interest in biblical scholarship. While I am somewhat interested in that topic, I lack much specialized knowledge and thus found this book pretty slow going. The sections that focused more strictly on viticulture through history were more interesting to me, and of course I now know what to say when my Southern Baptist grandma contends that Jesus just had non-alcoholic "new wine" and that was kind of worth it. ( )

This was a tough read. Maybe the styles of the two writers didn’t mesh that well ? The first six chapters (roughly half the book) read like a collaborative academic paper. In an effort to be all-inclusive and politically correct the dates were jarring, references skipped from one religious text to another and I felt badgered by seeing "YHWH" repeatedly. For me, it was a big muddle. The material was interesting and I wish it were presented differently.
Most interesting fact: some ancient wines were mixed with seawater!
Best sub-chapter title: “You bet shir-az the Persians gave them wine"
The latter half or the book described various contemporary wineries in lands that were producing in ancient times. This section was very readable. I particularly enjoyed the few lines in each detailing the history and the current owners.
I was tempted to put down the book for good several times but am glad I read through to the end. The difficulty I had with the writing makes it hard to recommend it to others. ( )

Although certain religious groups insist on temperance and consider alcoholic drinks as sinful, wine is present throughout the Bible. From the intoxication of Lot by his incestuous daughters to the Last Supper, wine plays an important, generally positive, role. But what wine would Jesus drink? The authors of "Divine Vintage" have set out to answer that question, by exploring biblical quotations and reviewing the history of wine (and beer) in and around Palestine.

Sadly, what sounds like an interesting topic is watered down, so to speak, by a tiresome rambling style. The first chapters of the book are even less structured than the rest, thick with Biblical quotes and a jagged logical progression. The historical aspects of winemaking are more interesting, but are frustratingly short and imprecise, while the tasting notes that conclude the book will provide little information to readers that will unlikely get the opportunity to encounter wine coming from obscure israeli wineries.

This book has potential, with an interesting subject and written by two authors with an undisputed knowledge in theology and wine tasting. Unfortunately, one feels that the publisher utterly failed in his editorial duties: not only is the book written in an awkward and unequal style, but gross typos and inexactitudes have been left over: "vine" and "wine" are often mixed up, units jump from imperial to metric when they have not been entirely forgotten, even God's name is not consistently spelled YHWH, even though the authors lengthily insist on this at the beginning of the book. Coming from a renowned publisher like Palgrave, such amateurism is shocking. ( )