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Hebrew University researcher: Moses was tripping at Mount Sinai |
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Posted by Wayne de Villiers
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Wednesday, 05 March 2008 |
   "And all the people perceived the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the voice of the horn, and the mountain smoking." Thus the book of Exodus describes the impressive moment of the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.
The "perceiving of the voices" has been interpreted endlessly since these words were first written. When Professor Benny Shanon, professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, reads the verse, he recalls a powerful hallucinatory experience he had when he visited the Amazon and drank a potion made from a plant called ayahuasca.
"One of the things that happens when you drink the potion is a visual experience created via sounds," he says. Shanon presents a provocative theory in an article published this week in the philosophy journal Time and Mind. The religious ceremonies of the Israelites included the use of psychotropic materials that can found in the Negev and Sinai, he says.
"I have no direct proof of this interpretation," and such proof cannot be expected, he says. However, "it seems logical that something was altered in people's consciousness. There are other stories in the Bible that mention the use of plants: for example, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden."
Shanon, former head of the Hebrew University psychology department, said his first experience with ayahuasca was in 1991 when he was invited to a religious ceremony in the northern Amazon in 1991 in Brazil.
"I experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations," he says.
Since that time, he has used it hundreds of times, and has published a book about the plant.
"Hypotheses have been around for 20 years connecting the beginning of religions with psychoactive materials," Shanon says. He believes the Israelites used two plants in Sinai and the Negev: one of them is wild rue, a hallucinogen used by the Bedoin to this day. However this plant is not identified with any plant mentioned in the Bible.
The acacia tree also has psychedelic properties, Shanon says, which the Israelites could have used. The acacia is mentioned frequently in the Bible, and was the type of wood of which the Ark of the Covenant was made. According to Shanon, he drank a potion prepared from a species of acacia while he was in South America, which caused similar experiences to those produced by the ayahuasca.
Shanon also sees signs of a hallucinogenic vision in the story of the burning bush. "Moses 'looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed,'" Shanon quotes from Exodus 3:2. Time passes differently when under the influence of the plant, he notes. "That's why Moses thought the bush was not consumed. It should have been burned in the time he thought had passed. And in that time, he heard God speaking to him."
"But not everyone who uses a plant like this brings the Torah," Shanon concedes. "For that, you have to be Moses." Reposted from : http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/960403.html
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Discuss (4 posts)
| ChristianSkeptic
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Hebrew University researcher: Moses was tripping at Mount Sinai
Sep 30 2009 12:47:09
This thread discusses the Content article: Hebrew University researcher: Moses was tripping at Mount Sinai
The link between the ayahuasca plant of South America and Moses' writing of the Hebrew Torah is really over stretched, and as a skeptic I would be a very careful to say this proves anything, given the fact that the evidence is so strained. Skeptics are meant to be skeptical, careful in their study of the evidence, slow to draw conclusions and reluctant to believe a theory unless there is overwhelming good solid evidence. Personally I feel this article does not really reflect a skeptical approach to the evidence at hand, but rather a subjective, bias and philosophically (I might even say religiously) motivated argument.
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#98 |
| avibank
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Re:Hebrew University researcher: Moses was trippin
Nov 15 2009 10:26:16
I think that its a plausible explanation but then again it could also explain Cinderella and her pumpkin carriage.
The bible , and Torah are all made up fairy tails , not history books. So why try to explain them, this is what rabbis would do not skeptics.
In my experience my friends who are infected with the strain of religion known as Judaism , seem to think that their beliefs and religion are exempt from all criticisms of religion in general.
I think a new topic is in order 
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#152 |
| ChristianSkeptic
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Re:Hebrew University researcher: Moses was tripping at Mount Sinai
Nov 17 2009 13:56:03
Let me give you an example of this kind of logic:
If this argument is plausible, then by the same flow of reason, It's quite plausible that Darwin was "high" as he wrote the Origin of the Species, since I'm sure he drank a cup of tea while writing. And we all know that tea contains caffiene and other mind altering substances. Perhaps the tea that Darwin drank contained the coca plant, after all he did travel around the coast of South America, on his voyage on the Beagal. Which happens to be where the coca plant is indigenous. Therefore we can discount the writings of Darwin was since he was clearly "tripping" on cocaine.
Absurd? I think so
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#154 |
| avibank
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Re:Hebrew University researcher: Moses was tripping at Mount Sinai
Nov 17 2009 16:47:50
Definitely absurd .
Its all so irrelevant that we may as well make up plausible arguments of our own on the fairytale story , which would be just as valid as his hallucinogen claim.
Moses also smoked pot with the seven dwarves.
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#155 |
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