READER BELIEVES CANNIBAS USED IN OLD TESTAMENT

This is in regards to Bonnie Dykes' letter "Local woman disgusted by
actions of lawbreakers." From the tone of her letter, I am sure
Bonnie considers herself a righteous Christian.

In response to her rallying against a plant, I would ask her who she
thinks created cannabis? And what of God's Covenant of Genesis 1:29?
["Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the
face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a
tree yielding seed;".]

Does she think God was too naive here? Or does Bonnie feel she and
others have the right to override God's gift to the rest of humanity
who might choose to use certain plants prohibited by the laws of man?

On the subject of cannabis, like the history of the Zoroastrian
religion, the Bible may have been influenced by cannabis. . . .
remember Moses and the burning bush that talked to him. According to
a number of academic sources in the original Hebrew and Aramaic
sources for the texts, that bush commanded Moses to make a holy
anointing oil that contained cannabis, under the Hebrew name keneh bosem.

Although it is little known to most modern readers, marijuana and
other entheogens played a very important role in ancient Hebrew
culture and originally appeared throughout the books that make up the
Bible's Old Testament. The Bible openly discusses the use of
mandrake, which is psychoactive, along with intoxication by wine and
strong drink, so the Hebrews were more than familiar with altering
their consciousness.

What will be surprising to most modern readers is the frequent use of
cannabis-sativa by both the Hebrew priests and kings, indicating, as
anthropologist Vera Rubin noted, that cannabis "appears in the Old
Testament because of the ritual and sacred aspect of it."(Rubin 1978)

The Old Testament use of cannabis becomes less surprising when one
considers that cannabis has been popular at some point with virtually
every culture that has discovered its intoxicating properties. Hemp
has "been smoked and ingested under various names (hashish, charas,
bhang, ganja, kif, marijuana) in the Oriental countries, in Africa
and in the Caribbean area for recreation, pleasure, healing and
ritual purposes. It has been an important sacrament for such diverse
groups as the Indian Brahmans, several orders of the Sufis, African
natives, ancient Skythians and the Jamaican Rastafarians.

Pointing out the wide-spread religious use of hemp throughout the
ancient Near East, among the Babylonians, Assyrians, Scythians and
Hebrews, as well as the early spread of its cultic use from northern
Europe, to Siberian Asia, China, India, Asia Minor and Southeast
Asia, the famed anthropologist Weston La Barre suggested that
"cannabis was part of a religio-shamanic complex of at least
Mesolithic age, in parallel with an equally old shamanic use of soma.
. . "(La Barre 1980).

For more than 150 years, various researchers have been trying to
bring attention to the cannabis references within the Old Testament.

Of the historical material indicating the Hebraic use of cannabis,
the strongest and most profound piece of evidence was established in
1936 by Sula Benet (aka Sara Benetowa), a Polish etymologist from the
Institute of Anthropological Sciences in Warsaw.

Respectfully,

Chris Bennett

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada