Various theories indicate that Christ followed the tradition of the Jewish magicians to cure the sick with oil made from cannabis. A recent discovery of traces of THC in an altar in Israel consolidates the hypothesis.

Jesus would have used cannabis to heal the sick as an ingredient in the Holy Anointing, inherited from the tradition of the Jewish magicians.

Has the Messiah tasted the hemp flower? Could it have been thanks to the creams and oils of the marijuana plant that certain miracles of Jesus worked and thus the bent ones walked and the possessed stopped convulsing and the blind looked again, long before we humans know about medicine? What are glaucoma, epilepsy and rheumatism or osteoarthritis?

The recent findings of remains of cannabis on a Jewish altar in the sanctuary of Arad, in Israel, where Judean worshipers locked themselves in magical trances 800 years before Christ to connect with God - it is now known that they were immersed in clouds of smoke and vapor marijuana -, consolidates a social and cultural path about which there have always been references but which was consolidated as probable almost a century ago, when a Polish linguistics professor came to the conclusion that the word kaneh-bosem, very present in the Old Testament as a key ingredient of the Holy Anointing, was poorly translated by the Greeks: “the aromatic reed” mentioned in the Exodus was nothing other than cannabis, as fragrant as it was powerful to heal body and mind.

Just as in Vedic mythology, cannabis plants sprouted from the hairs that fell out of the god Vishnu, and it is one of the five sacred plants that the god Shiva offered to the world, or just as Buddha remained for six years under an exclusive diet of hemp seeds while searching for the path to Enlightenment, the origin of Christianity also appears closely linked to the tradition of this ancestral plant.

The ancient Jews consumed cannabis in infusions with wine, they made powerful oils that the shamans of ancient Christian Gnosticism smeared all over their bodies to get closer to God, something that other cultures also did at the same time - 2,700 years ago -, such as the Gushi from the Gobi Desert, China. On the spiritual path, all Eastern religions took advantage of the psychoactive capacity of the plant for their sacramental rites, when the word or concept “drug” did not exist.

“There can be little doubt about the role of cannabis in the Jewish religion,” Carl Ruck, a professor of classical mythology at Boston University, said years ago. The Encyclopedia Britannica in its volume 5 of 1854 published: “Some leading biblical commentators maintain that the gall and vinegar, or myrrh-wine offered to our Savior immediately before his crucifixion, was in all probability a preparation of hemp, and they even speak of its previous use.

The word kanah-bosm appears in Exodus (30:22-23), when God, from a burning bush set on fire, gives Moses the recipe for the magical anointing oil and sacred incense, exclusive to priests. , the sons of Aaron. God tells Moses to mix myrrh, cinnamon, cannabis (translated as “aromatic calamus”) and olive oil. And he orders him: “Anoint them as you anointed their father, so that they may serve me as priests. His anointing will be a priesthood that will continue for generations to come.”

_{Frontal view of the cella of the Arad sanctuary, reconstructed in the Israel Museum based on original archaeological finds: in these monoliths scientists found remains of marijuana}

The Canadian researcher Christ Bennet recovered the research of the anthropologist Sula Benet, who in 1936 discovered the translation error of the Old Testament, and who in her essays "Tracing One Word Through Different Languages" ”, 1936) and “Early Diffusions and Folk Uses of Hemp”, 1975), showed that the Hebrew terms “kaneh” and “kaneh-bosm” identified cannabis.

The scientist traced the modern term throughout history and found similarities with the later term in the Mishnah (the oral Torah of the Jews), kanabos, which referred to cannabis and which is too similar to the ancient Assyrian word kunubu (also translated as qunubu), which was used in rituals similar to that of kaneh bosm by ancient Jews. This word appeared in Exodus 30:23, in the Song of Songs 4:14, Isaiah 43:24, Jeremiah 6:20, Ezekiel 27:19 appeals to the term keneh (or q'aneh) without the bosem. Benet explained that kaneh-bosm was mistranslated as calamus or “calamus,” in Spanish.

Sixty years later, Bennet began searching for information to develop the connection between pre-Christian rites and the role of marijuana in the revolutionary life of Jesus, and began publishing his research in cannabis magazines, such as the famous High Times, and later in his book “Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible.”

_{Moses, the Old Testament prophet, who received the recipe for the Holy Anointing from God (Shutterstock)}

Not the only one, a recently published New York Times bestseller, the book called The Immortality Key, by Brian C. Muraresku, suggests that early Christianity and Jesus were influenced by the cult of Dionysus and served a wine infused with psychedelic drugs in the Eucharist. The book explores the hypothesis of how psychedelia could shape the creation of monotheistic religions, in which cannabis played its great role.

In fact, the anthropologist Weston La Barre referred to biblical references in 1980 in an essay on cannabis, in support of Sula Benet's hypothesis. In that same year, the British Journal New Scientist also published a story referring to Hebrew references in the Old Testament: “Linguistic evidence indicates that in the original Hebrew and Aramaic texts of the Old Testament the “holy oil” that God commanded Moses to make was composed of myrrh, cinnamon, cannabis, and cassia.”

Bennet explains that the term “Christ” derives from the Greek “Khristos”, the same meaning as the Hebrew word “Messiah”, and that literally translated into Spanish means “Anointed One”. According to the New Testament, Jesus did not baptize any of his disciples as priests baptize babies today but rather rubbed their bodies with a thick, strong oil. And he called his twelve apostles to do the same: “And they cast out many demons, and anointed many sick with oil, and healed them” (Mark 6:13).

“After the death of Christ, the apostle James suggests that sick people call their elders to anoint them with sacred oil in the name of Jesus (James 5:14). It must be taken into account that in the ancient world, diseases such as epilepsy were attributed to demonic possession and that their cure, using herbs, was considered an exorcism or miracle. It is interesting that cannabis has demonstrated its effectiveness today in the treatment not only of epilepsy but of other ailments that Jesus and his disciples cured,” Bennet explained to Infobae via Messenger and detailed some examples: skin diseases (Matthew 8, 10 , 11; Mark 1; Luke 5, 7, 17), eye problems (John 9:6-15) or menstrual problems (Luke 8:43-48).

Bennet even quotes “The Acts of Thomas,” a third-century apocryphal text: “You, holy oil, were given to us for sanctification. You are the straightener of crooked limbs.” And another early Christian text, such as “The Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles,” from the second century, relates that Jesus gave his disciples a “box of ointment” and a “bag full of medicine” with instructions for them to go to the city and heal the sick. Christ instructed them to heal “the bodies first” before “healing the heart.”

The Canadian researcher explains that from the time of Moses to that of the later prophet Samuel, the shamanic Levite priesthood used the Holy Anointing oil to receive revelations from the Lord: “At the dawn of the age of kings, Samuel extended the use of anointing oil to the Hebrew monarchs by anointing Saul (and later David) as 'Messiah-king'. These kings guide their people with the benefit of knowledge gained through the use of holy anointing oil to be 'possessed of the spirit of the Lord.'"

_{The use of the marijuana plant has been recorded for at least 5,000 years}

The discoveries at the Arad altar in May 2020 only contribute to the tradition of holy anointing based on cannabis. The 47th edition of the journal of the Institute of Archeology of Tel Aviv University published the article “Cannabis and Frankincense in the Judahite Shrine of Arad”, signed by Eran Arie, Baruch Rosen and Dvory Namdar, who analyzed an obscure material that had been preserved for 2,800 years on the surface of two monoliths of an ancient Jewish temple.

Residues of cannabinoids such as THC, cannabidiol (CBD) and cannabinol (CBN), along with a variety of terpenes and terpenoids, were detected on the smaller altar, “suggesting that cannabis inflorescences had been burned.” Organic residues attributed to animal manure were also found, indicating that cannabis resin was possibly mixed with excrement to allow for gentle heating.

“The largest altar contained a set of indicative triterpenes such as boswellic acid and norursatriene, which is derived from frankincense. The additional presence of animal fat, in related compounds such as testosterone, androstene and cholesterol, suggests that resin was mixed with it to facilitate evaporation. “These well-preserved residues shed new light on the use of the 8th century Arad altars and on incense offerings in Judah during the Iron Age,” explains the introduction to the scientific report.

_{An ancient illustration shows a Jerusalem priest over incense at the altar of the ancestral temple in Jerusalem}

That black material went uninvestigated for 50 years. Scientists always believed that it was incense. But the team led by Eran Arie decided to look for its chemical composition. The discovery they reached could close the circle on the use of cannabis as a psychedelic and sacramental material.

“We can assume that the fragrance of the incense gave a special atmosphere to the worship in the sanctuary, while the burning of cannabis brought at least some of the priests and faithful to a religious state of consciousness, or ecstasy,” Arie told the magazine. Newsweek, adding: “It is logical to assume that this was an important part of the ceremonies that took place at this shrine. The new evidence from Arad shows for the first time that the official cult of Judah, at least during the 8th century BC, included hallucinogenic ingredients. “We can assume that the altered state of religious consciousness at this shrine was an important part of the ceremonies that took place here.”

_{Scientists at the Jerusalem Museum claim that this is the first evidence of the use of hallucinogens in the Jewish religion: one of the containers had marijuana (AP)}

Bennet explains that in the Torah, the column of smoke that rose before Moses in the Tent of Meeting is known as the “Shekinah” and is identified as physical evidence of the Lord's presence. None of the other Hebrews in the Exodus story see or hear the Lord, they only know that Moses is talking to the Lord when smoke rises from the Tent of Meeting.

“It is difficult not to see all the classic elements of shamanism at play in this description of Moses' encounter with God, and like the prophet Zoroaster, Moses can be seen as an ecstatic shamanic figure who used cannabis as a means to seek heavenly counsel. . Such invocation techniques certainly occur in later magic,” Bennet explains.

For the researcher, the magician Moses scrutinized the Lord's messages in an act of biblical capnomancy, a traditional use of cannabis in magical rituals that was carried out in occult circles until modern times.

Bennet quotes Ernest Bosc De Veze, who also wrote a Treatise on Hashish (the resin of marijuana), in 1904 that described the use of cannabis in smoke divination: “capnomancy for divination, is used with smoke obtained from psychic plants such as verbena, hashish or Indian hemp.”

For Chris Bennet, the path to Jesus is direct. That is why he asks: “What will the world say when it discovers that a few centuries after this ancient Jewish use, Christians used cannabis for its miraculous healing properties, as well as in entheogenic initiation rituals? Jesus took the restricted use of cannabis from priests and kings and brought it to the people. “Jesus was a cannabis activist.”

The New Testament says it, in some way: “But the anointing that you received from Him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you; Just as the anointing itself teaches all things, and is true, and is no lie, as it has taught you, abide in Him.” (John 2:27). Apparently, Sula Benet was right.

Source: Fernando Soriano – infobae.com