There are a number of problems with this way of understanding the parable. It has been used more recently to justify the establishment of new ‘churches’, since the new thing God is doing cannot be contained within the structures of the existing churches, which are not flexible enough to contain this new wine. This was the use made of the parable by Marcion to establish a complete separation between ‘the religion of Jesus and Paul’ and the belief taught in the Hebrew Scriptures, which Marcion himself rejected along with most of the New Testament except Luke’s gospel. This, then, is the meaning of Jesus’ parables of the patched garment and the wineskins: the gospel of the Kingdom which Jesus brings cannot be fitted into the the Pharisees’ paradigm or way of living, for “by a mongrel mixture of the ascetic ritualism of the old with the spiritual freedom of the new economy, both are disfigured and destroyed”. Here is a typical expression of such a view: The most common interpretation of this is the Jesus is showing the superiority of his teaching, and rejecting the Pharisees’ approach to religion-and more broadly, establishing the grounds for the rejection of Jewish belief and practice and the establishment of a new religion of Christianity. But what is its significance? What is Jesus referring to? As with most of Jesus’ parables, the information that it drew on was relatively mundane. An old skin which was no longer elastic could not stretch for this new wine, so you needed to use new skins for the current years’ wine production. Partially fermented wine (the ‘must’) was stored in wineskins, but as the fermentation process continued, it produced more gases and so stretched the wineskin which was made from the hide of a goat. In most cultures, cloth shrinks when it is washed, and it you put an unprewashed piece of material onto cloth that has already shrunk, when it is washed it will itself shrink and tear a hole. The reference of the two parables is fairly straightforward. And none of you, after drinking old wine, wants the new, for you say, ‘The old is better.’ (Luke 5.36–39) No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. If they do, the new wine will burst the skins the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. And people do not pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins. If they do, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. If they do, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved. If they do, the skins will burst the wine will run out, and the wineskins will be ruined. No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins.

In all three Synoptic gospels, Jesus concludes a conversation about the contrast between his teaching and practice and that of the Pharisees (and John the Baptist) by means of a parable about wine and wineskins.

Old wineskin