BibleGuy and I were PM-img about the possibility of cannabis use in the Bible. He referred me to a wikipedia reference that was pretty interesting and opened up a good area of discussion that I wanted to invite you all in on. The link to the reference is
Religious and spiritual use of cannabis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia scroll down to the Ancient Hebraic use
Generally, I have done to much serious Biblical research to take Wiki as a serious source. Sorry to all of you Wiki lovers out there. It's great for a quick-and-dirty info check. And don't get me wrong, it does have some interesting material, like the stuff I mention here, but much of the information lacks research veracity IMHO.
Anyway, the reference to marijuana and religious use I think was really interesting.
It first cites Aryeh Kaplan, a Jewish scholar in the 1980's, postulating data to support cannabis as at least part of the holy anointing oil and this oil as an ingredient in holy incense used in tabernacle/temple worship. I am adding a bit here. You can follow the link to his page and get more. Main point - this scholar gives evidence that cannabis was the plant called
kaneh-bosem in the ancient Hebrew Biblical Old Testament manuscripts.
More interestingly, the wiki reference goes on to mention Sula Benet who seems to imply something else at least possible and fascinating. She suggests that the Septuagint (this was the Old Testament translated into Greek - done around 500 to 300 before Christ)
mistranslated the Hebrew word
kaneh-bosem (either in error or not) to
calamus in Greek (also a smelly herb in that part of the world, but an entirely different plant). This mistranslation from potentially "cannabis" (it might be cannabis, Kaplan thinks so) to "calamus" continued on in future Greek translations and future translations of the Old Testament from the Greek (our King James English translation used this as a secondary source).
Most fascinating to me is Benet seems to suggest that these Hebrew editors then went back and edited older Hebrew texts of the Old Testament to reflect this change![/U] They changed the original writing from
kaneh-bosem to
calamus. Keep in mind, our modern translations (English for most of those reading this) come from these ancient Hebrew manuscripts so
if the change were made it would be reflected in our Bible today.
Summarizing, our current Biblical Old Testament (English translations or others) are based primarily upon the Hebrew manuscripts existent at the time of the translation. Benet's work suggests the original unedited writing of the Old Testament mentions sacred use of the plant
kaneh-bosem in anointing oils and possibly incense. Kaplan's work suggests this plant is cannabis.
If true - and I doubt it - this would be astounding!
is also curious. Even if we accept "Calamus" (
And we love geeks around here fo sho.
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