Updated 2 years ago
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-52847175
This is not an endorsement of smoking pot.
I am wary of drug users trying to co-opt religion. A drug-induced religious experience, without the preparation of prayer and devotional living, is too easy. It’s the same brain wave pattern, obviously, but drugs deliver it on the cheap. That which isn’t worked for, isn’t appreciated. It’s like pressing a button.
But here we have irrefutable proof, which is probably going to make some pf the more reactionary Jews, and by extension many Christians and Muslims, a little uncomfortable (not me – I think it’s fantastic!)
We definitively know now, for certain, that the ancient Israelites ritually used cannabis in the years they recorded the Old Testament.
To be clear, this was dated ~ 700 BC, and Moses was centuries before, ~1400 BC..
The Old Testament was written between 1200 and 165 BC,
So worshippers in Israel were using cannabis right smack dab in the middle of the time the Old Testament was written.
We simply cannot in good conscience ignore the fact that the Bible, at least the Old Testament part, was recorded at least in part by people who had used cannabis.
And God was apparently Ok with it. He proscribed many very detailed laws about minutiae such as picking up sticks on the Sabbath. But not anything remotely about this.
One may infer He approved. Or at least condoned.
In a perfect, rational world, this should be as seismic as the discovery of dinosaur bones, and should completely obliterate any further impediment to national legalization.
One could say, “the guys who wrote the Bible were stoners” and it would still be essentially correct.
The guys who wrote the Bible were stoners.
I won’t go into ‘but God inspired it, it doesn’t matter about the people as that’s a whole other theological conversation.
In any event, the guys who got the papyrus and quills out and put the divine words to paper, were stoners.
That should count for something. In an even more perfect world, worshippers would light up during church. At least as incense. That would be historically accurate, like learning the original Hebrew.
So the Rastafarians were completely on the mark.
…and I always thought Revelations was just too insane not to be written by someone who wasn’t very high, but we don’t have evidence for the New Testament.
