John from Louisville, Kentucky, is curious about a line on a track by Jay-Z and Timbaland where Jay-Z says wants not a magnum, but a Methuselah. The reference is to wine bottles, not weapons. A standard bottle holds about 750 milliliters, while a magnum contains two bottles of wine, and a Methuselah is eight bottles. The name comes from the biblical Methuselah, who lived 969 years, and is one of several biblical names for increasingly oversized bottles. They include jeroboam, rehoboam, salmanazar, balthazar, and nebuchadnezzar, the last of which holds a whopping 20 bottles’ worth. This joking tradition apparently began as a play on the biblical description of King Jeroboam who in the First Book of Kings is said to be a mighty man of valor “who made Israel sin.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “A “Methuselah” of Wine Holds Eight Standard Bottles”
Hello.
You have A Way with Words.
Hey.
How are you?
This is John from Louisville, Kentucky.
Thank you for having me.
Hi, John.
Welcome to the show.
What’s up?
So I heard in a song in the maybe 2009.
It was a JZ song, and at the end of the song, he was making a reference to a alcohol bottle.
And he said he didn’t want a magnum.
He wanted a medusulin.
And I had never heard that before.
To this day, I’ve never heard that referenced in any way.
And I did some research on it, and, this didn’t come up with anything referring to a medusulin, if it’s a particular bottle shape or I know it’s a certain size, but Mhmm.
I was wondering if you guys could help me out with that.
Yeah.
What what album and song was that from Jay Z?
Do you remember?
So for all of the people who gave their computers viruses with ROM Wire, one upon a time Back in the day.
There was a little gem I got called ghetto techno.
I believe it was something that, didn’t make the blueprint three album, but I just got it offline.
Okay.
And it’s Jay Z and Timberland.
At the end of the song, he references a medusula.
Yeah, John, that’s definitely ringing some bells.
And it’s all about size.
I don’t know the, what the exact lyric is, but usually when you’re talking about the size of bottles of wine or champagne, The term is either methusela or methuselum, it’s a big, big bottle of wine.
A standard bottle holds about seven fifty milliliters.
A magnum holds two times that much, you know, two bottles of wine.
A methuselah holds eight bottles of wine.
So it’s a bottle of wine.
What’s really interesting about this is you may have heard the word methuselah before referring to the guy in the Bible who lived for nine sixty nine years.
He was really, really old when he died.
Okay.
Is that the reference to the volume just being an extraordinary high number more than usual?
Exactly, exactly.
And what’s super interesting about this is that Methuselah or Methusalem is one of a whole list of, biblical terms, mostly kings in the Bible who are associated with these increasingly oversized wine bottles.
So you have Jeroboam, Rehoboam, Methuselah, Salimenazer, Balsasar.
And the really big one is Nebuchadnezzar, which is 20 bottles worth of That’s a tub of wine.
Yeah, that’s a tub of wine.
Yeah, there are lots of other ones as well.
But apparently, this tradition started as something of a joke because the first one, Jeroboam, which denotes a bottle, that’s the equivalent of four bottles of wine or champagne.
It’s a play on the name of the biblical king Jeroboam, who is described in the book of kings as a mighty man of valor who made Israel to sin.
How about that?
Oh, wow.
Wow.
Interesting.
Yeah.
That’s very interesting.
Yeah.
Well, you guys were awesome.
That’s a I appreciate you answering my question.
Like I said, I and I figured maybe I was spelling it wrong or something of that nature, but I believe it was a methuselom, and it it wasn’t really in a lyric.
It was just more of a bit of a, you know, swag talk at the end of the song.
Gotcha.
Sure.
And you just let the song ride out with that in, like, everybody else eats up if you care, you know.
And it worked.
Yeah.
Alright.
Thanks for your call.
We really appreciate it.
Keep on joining us.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for having me.
Take care.
Bye bye.
I will.
Take care, John.
Bye bye.
All right.
Well, whether the size of your question is piccolo sized or whether it’s Nebuchadnezzar’s size, which is much bigger, give us a call or text toll free.
