The fact is that very few people in the real world are accustomed to reading Scripture with more than a wooden literal reading, and so while what you originally wrote is immanently valuable, it’s still somewhat unintelligible to those not used to reading the text the way you do.

To my knowledge, I never said that wine was part of the original institution of the Passover. If I did, I was wrong. As he addresses this point at considerable length in his response, I think that this needs to be made clear. Nevertheless, before moving on from this point, it is worth making clear that wine was in fact part of later Passover liturgies.

The use of the language of ‘fruit of the vine’ and ‘cup’ is not artful ambiguity. It is not meant to be vague. Unlike those who read such expressions woodenly, everyone who heard Jesus would know that ‘fruit of the vine’ and ‘cup’ were simply ways of speaking about wine. These were established ways of speaking about the wine in the Passover celebration (this can be demonstrated from a study of early Jewish sources). They also serve to highlight certain symbolic connections in a way that the word ‘wine’ itself would not do.

He never really engages with the broader biblical symbolism that the Supper draws upon and the significance of alcohol in this context. I contend that his argument ultimately rests upon a wooden and minimalistic reading of the biblical text, missing the forest for the trees. If one chooses to read the Scriptures in such a manner there is no ‘proof’ that can really convince you otherwise. Such an inattentive reading is quite hard to argue against as there is no scientific and purely logical demonstration of my case to be given. Our differences are at the level of hermeneutics, not at the level of the application of these hermeneutics to the text.