 Cannabis & Religion
RC. Anderson, Ph.D., Th.D., D.Div., D.Cnl.
Ecumenical Catholic Archbishop
Director of Honolulu ASA I often hear people comment about how they are opposed to medical cannabis because it is against their religion. I myself used to feel this way, until I stood back and took a long close look at it, and researched the situation. I have since come to the conclusion that neither God, nor the Holy Bible teach anything against the medical use of cannabis, and in fact, just the opposite is true. The main reason that many religious people believe that medical cannabis is wrong, and therefore against the teachings of God is because of their misconceived view of marijuana due to the federal governments persecution of the plant for the past 70 years. They view marijuana simply as a "drug" which "alters their minds" and believe that the Bible teaches against taking things which alter the mind. While it is true that the Bible does teach against the evils of drunkenness, it does not teach that it is wrong to drink at all. All things are to be done in moderation. Anything can be wrong, if it is done in excess, even eating. Gluttony is a sin. There is a clear difference in using marijuana for recreational use to "get high" and using cannabis for its medicinal properties to treat ailments. The same people that preach that medical marijuana is wrong and against God's teachings will not have a problem with taking morphine, codeine, or other pain killers when they are in pain with an illness, or after surgery. There is no difference whatsoever between morphine, codeine, and medical cannabis, other than the fact that morphine, codeine, and every other man-made medicine has the possibility of killing you if you take it, where with cannabis, there is no possibility at all. Cannabis has been scientifically proven to be the safest medicine known to man, with a wide range of medicinal uses. Mo man-made medicine has ever been proven as effective at treating such a wide range of illnesses and diseases. God placed "every seed bearing herb" on the earth for man to use and blessed them, and this includes cannabis. I myself am an Ecumenical Catholic Archbishop, and after suffering from severe uncontrollable migraines, often 3 to 4 times each week for over 15 years, and using a wide variety of man-made narcotics to unsuccessfully control the severe pain and nausea caused by the migraines was recommended to try medical cannabis by my physician. At that time I lived in a state where medical marijuana was not legal, so I was forced to violate the law to try this medication to see if it would help with my migraines. I began to research the effectiveness of cannabis on migraines and found several studies in which cannabis was used successfully to treat severe migraines. I decided to try cannabis for 6 months to treat my migraines, and noticed a definite change in them. The frequency of the migraines subsided, and I did not have the side effects afterwards that the other narcotics had caused. Another difference that I noticed was the speed at which it controlled the pain of the migraine. With other medications, I would have to wait usually between 15 to 30 minutes to see if the pain from the migraine would ease up or if I would have to take a second dose. With the cannabis, the effects were noticed within seconds of administering the medication. After the 6 month trial, I went back to my other prescription pain killers, and had to deal with the long list of side effects that they caused which included; nausea, loss of coordination, fatigue, constipation, irregular heartbeat, panic attacks, tremors, night sweats, narcotic dependency, and many others. Within a short period of time, the frequency of the migraines also came back. For the next couple of years I continued to research the effects of cannabis on migraines, and its place within Christianity. After much research and prayer, I came to the conclusion that God had created this wonder medicine to heal his children with. Cannabis was used as a medicine long before the time that Christ was on earth, and it was used throughout biblical times to heal people. Holy chrism was used to consecrate the sick and immediately, they began to feel relief of their symptoms. As the holy chrism was absorbed into their skin, it started to treat their illness, and stopped them from being in pain. According to the Holy Bible in the Book of Exodus, this holy chrism contained between six to nine pounds (depending upon translation) of cannabis, (known as kaneh-bosem in Hebrew), which is translated as "fragrant cane" in today's translations, or mistakenly translated as calamus or sweet cane, which did not even grow in the region at that time. Calamus is a marshland plant, and was not found in dry arid climates like the middle east. By the way, even though some translations mistakenly translated it as calamus, the calamus plant is ALSO used as a psychotropic drug. In the Hebrew terms such as Elohim (Pronounced El- Oh- Heem ) is rendered plural. So in the Hebrew Kaneh-bosem is also plural. The singular then is rendered Kaneh-bos. Kaneh-Bos sounds remarkably close to the modern day word Cannabis. Could it be that cannabis was the plant given by God to be used in the Holy Anointing Oil? Cannabis has certainly been cultivated since the beginning of recorded history. Its uses for rope, sails and rigging into ancient times are well documented. Imagine the amount of cannabis rope it would have taken to construct the Temple of Solomon. What other way was there to construct ropes at that time, which could lift the weights of not only the Temple of Solomon, but in fact, the Pyramids themselves. Cannabis was thought to be an Indo-European word specifically of Scythian Origin. The Scythians were largely responsible for the spread of cannabis into Europe. The Scythe, was an invention of the Scythians, used for the harvest of cannabis. This has come to us in the legends of the Grim Reaper. Herodotus, an early Greek ethnographer, in the 5th Century BC wrote of the Scythians and their use of cannabis. The Scythians as they were known by the Greeks, were known, by the Semites as the Ashkenaz. Among the earliest references to Ashkenaz people is found in Genesis 10:3 where Ashkenaz was listed as the son of Gomer, the great Grandson of Noah. The Sythians lived around and traded with the Semites at least as early as 600 BC. Zoroaster the prophet of the Ancient Magi, whose kings followed the Star of Bethlehem based on the ancient prophesies, used a drink called Haoma which has been documented to contain cannabis. As early as 1925 experts have argued that, both the Assyrians and the Babylonians, used Cannabis in their temple incense, Circa 500 BC. In 1993, the Albany New York Times Union reported, that the first physical evidence that Marijuana was used as a medicine in the ancient Mideast, was found. The Israeli scientists found residue of marijuana along with the skeleton of a girl who had died 1600 years before. In this press release, researchers from the Hebrew University, stated that references to marijuana as a medicine are seen as far back as 1,600 BC in Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, and Roman Writings. If you actually buy the Calamus translation for the Holy Oil, then you assume that God specified in Exodus 30:23 a drug commonly known as Ecstasy. Calamus contains an ingredient called asarone. This is a hallucinogen which is metabolized in the liver as trimethoxyamphetamine or ecstasy. The Middle Eastern version of this plant is far more toxic than its North American Cousin. This is deadly to flies and other insects. The Exodus 30:23 reference refers to sweet Calamus. If you look at this in the Strongs concordance where they spell this as qaneh rather than kaneh, they pronounce this as Kaw-Naw, a reed, calamus, and cane are listed as possible translations. The term sweet used in Exodus 30:23 in Hebrew is Bosem. According to the Webster's New World Hebrew Dictionary, Bosem is perfume; scent. The Concordance: the Hebrew is Bosem #1314, fragrance, by impl. spicery; also the balsam plant:----smell, spice, sweet (odour). In some Bibles sweet calamus is translated as aromatic or fragrant Cane. It is where the bosem is fused to the word kaneh or qaneh that the cannabis translation becomes apparent. So then to pronounce this we have kaw-naw-bosem, and is spelled in English qaneh-bosem or kaneh-bosem. In 1936, Sara Benetowa, later Known as Sula Benet, an etymologist from the Institute of Anthropological Sciences, in Warsaw wrote a treatise, "Tracing One Word Through Different Languages." This was a study on the word Cannabis, based on a study of the oldest Hebrew texts. Although the word cannabis was thought to be of Scythian origin, Benet's research showed it had an earlier root in the Semitic Languages such as Hebrew. Benet demonstrated that the ancient Hebrew word for Cannabis is Kaneh -Bosem. She also did another study called Early Diffusion and Folk Uses of Hemp. There is a reprint of this in Cannabis and Culture ISBN:90-279-7669-4. On page 44, she states, "The sacred character of hemp in biblical times is evident from Exodus 30:23, where Moses was instructed by God to anoint the meeting tent and all of its furnishings with specially prepared oil, containing hemp." On page 41 Sula Benet writes, : In the course of time, the two words kaneh and bosem were fused into one , kanabos or kannabus know to us from the Mishna. According to the Webster's New World Hebrew Dictionary, page 607 the Hebrew for hemp is kanabos. Sara Benetowa discovered that the Kaneh-Bosm or Cannabis is mentioned 5 times in the Old Testament. The first occurrence appears in the Holy Anointing Oil as Calamus, (Exodus 30:23). Sara argued that the translation of Calamus was a mistranslation which occurred in the oldest Bible the Septuagint and the mistranslation was copied in later versions. The two ancient Aramaic translations of the Torah, The Targum Onqelus and the Syriac Peshitta also use variations of kaneh bosem in Exodus 30: 23. The Targum uses (w)qnya busma (Targum (Chaldean) Bible.,, The Bible in Aramaic : Based on Old Manuscripts and Printed Texts. Vol. 1, The Pentateuch according to. O.T. Pentateuque (arameen). onqelos by Alexander Sperber 1897, 1959,1973,1992., Leiden; New York; E.J. Brill, page 143 and the Peshitta uses roughly (w)qnya d busma ,,Peshitta (Syriac) Syrian Patriarchate of Antioch and all the East, Syriac Bible 63DC United Bible Societies 1979 UBS-EPF 1996-2M , page 67. I can not find one single place where God teaches us that we are to remain in pain and suffer instead of treating our illnesses with an herb that God himself blessed and placed on the earth for us to use. God does NOT teach that medical cannabis is wrong, and there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING written in the Holy Scriptures that even infers that there is anything wrong with using cannabis or any other healing herb to treat our illnesses and diseases. Anyone who teaches anything to the contrary is mistaken, and is NOT teaching the Word of God. God placed everything that we need to treat our bodies with on this earth and in the infantile wisdom of man, we decided that we could do better than God, and create our own man-made medicines. These man-made medicines are dangerous. When was the last time you saw an advertisement for a medication that did not have a long list of possible side effects, many of which include death. Even if the drug only kills 1 person throughout its history, that's 1 person too many. Cannabis has been around for approximately the last 10,000 years, and its use has not resulted in a single death. Apparently God knows more about creating safe medicine than man does. "Was Jesus a Stoner?" is the mischievous title of an article about the use of cannabis in ancient Judaism in the February 2003 issue of High Times, a pro-cannabis magazine. Its author, Chris Bennett, likes to shock. He is the host of Burning Shiva, a show on Canada's Pot-TV, and an advocate for the medical use and decriminalisation of marijuana. Bennett first looked at the use of drugs in religion two years ago in his book Sex, Drugs, Violence, and the Bible. He postulates that Jesus's ministry was fuelled by mind-altering substances, that he may have used cannabis-based oils to heal eye and skin diseases and that his very name - Christ - derives from being anointed with cannabis-enriched oil. His politics and television career might make it tempting to dismiss him but what Bennett says makes perfect sense. Over the centuries drugs have been used by virtually all religions. Why not Christianity? In ancient times cannabis was widely cultivated throughout the Middle East. It grows like a weed and provides nourishing seed, which is also a good source of fiber used to make rope. People certainly knew of its pleasurable effects; it would have been impossible to harvest it without becoming ecstatic as the drug would be absorbed through the skin. And as long ago as 1935 a Slovakian linguist identified the plant known as "fragrant cane" in the English Bible as flowering cannabis, (known as kaneh-bosem in Hebrew) a link since accepted by some Jewish authorities. Ancient people were fascinated by herbs and their healing powers and knew much more about them than we do; at least about mixing herbs to release their potency. Ancient wines were always fortified, like the "strong wine" of the Old Testament, with herbal additives: opium, datura, belladonna, mandrake and henbane. Common incenses, such as myrrh, ambergris and frankincense are psychotropic; the easy availability and long tradition of cannabis use would have seen it included in the mixtures. Modern medicine has looked into using cannabis as a pain reliever and in treating multiple sclerosis. It may well be that ancient people knew, or believed, that cannabis had healing power. Much of their knowledge, passed down through an oral tradition, has been lost and to some extent it is the modern prejudice against drugs that has stopped us looking for it. Revulsion against drugs and the hippie culture even led to the term "entheogen" being coined to describe a psychotropic substance used in religious rituals. Entheogen comes from the Greek entheos (meaning "god-inspired within") and the word is now commonly employed in English and European languages to discuss sacramental foods used by shamans (mystic or visionary priests) to achieve spiritual ecstasy. So what of the early Christians? At the time they were evolving, they had to compete with other religions of the Roman empire. The strongest of those was Mithraism, imported from Persia, which exists today as Zoroastrianism. Its sacrament, Haoma, was virtually identical to what we know of soma, in Brahmanism. Worshipped as a god, soma was a strange plant without leaves or roots that needed little light and induced religious ecstasy. It was most likely amanita muscaria: a magic mushroom. In ancient Rome sharing the Haoma cemented the bond of brotherhood of emperors, bureaucrats and soldiers. Pagan Greek celebrations at the sanctuary of Eleusis, meanwhile, included a visionary experience for a crowd of 1,000 people, from drinking a potion made from a fungus that grows on wheat and produces an effect similar to LSD. So, did Jesus use cannabis? I think so. The word Christ does mean "the anointed one" and Bennett contends that Christ was anointed with chrism, a cannabis-based oil, that caused his spiritual visions. The ancient recipe for this oil, recorded in Exodus, included over 9lb of flowering cannabis tops (known as kaneh-bosem in Hebrew), extracted into a hin (about 11 pints) of olive oil, with a variety of other herbs and spices. The mixture was used in anointing and fumigations that, significantly, allowed the priests and prophets to see and speak with Yahweh. Residues of cannabis, moreover, have been detected in vessels from Judea and Egypt in a context indicating its medicinal, as well as visionary, use. Jesus is described by the apostle Mark as casting out demons and healing by the use of this holy chrism. Earlier, from the time of Moses until the later prophet Samuel, holy anointing oil was used by the shamanic Levite priesthood to receive the "revelations of the Lord". The chosen ones were drenched in this potent cannabis oil. Early Christian documents found in Eygpt, thought to be a more accurate record than the New Testament, portray Jesus as an ecstatic rebel sage who preached enlightenment through rituals involving magical plants. Indeed, Bennett goes so far as to say that Jesus was probably not born the messiah but acquired the title when he was anointed with cannabis oil by John the Baptist. The baptism in the Jordan was probably to wash away the oil after it had done its work. The early Christians fought hard for followers in the ancient world, recognizing the similarity of their own "foreign" god and his eucharistic meal to the Greek gods. Various sects and even the elite in what would eventually become the Roman Catholic church probably used the full range of available entheogens for baptism, ordination and the eucharistic meal. What we now call the host might have been more than just bread. There are indications that early Christians shared magic mushrooms - and the spiritual visions and ecstasies they occasioned - as their eucharistic meal. A 4th-century mosaic discovered at a basilica in Aquileia in northern Italy depicts baskets of mushrooms. Why? This wasn't a restaurant. Could the "red mushrooms" have been the ritual meal? Eating bread and sharing wine together was, and remains, at the heart of the Christian ritual. We'll never know exactly what Jesus and his disciples consumed at the Last Supper, but as they believed they were drinking the blood of Christ we must accept it was - if not actually hallucinatory - at least fortified by God. Rev. Adam E. Zuniga got an arrow-splitting bulls-eye (In cannabis we trust, Feb. 4); in fact nine pounds of cannabis (kaneh-bosem) are in the holy anointing oil in Exodus 30:23. One reason to stop persecuting and caging humans for using the relatively safe God-given plant cannabis that doesnt get mentioned is because it is biblically correct since God indicates He created all the seed-bearing plants, saying they are all good, on literally the very first page. The only Biblical restriction placed on cannabis is that it is to be accepted with thankfulness (see 1 Timothy 4:1-5). And But whoever has the worlds goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? (see: 1 John 3:17). Jesus Christ risked jail to heal the sick. Further, cannabis is believed by many to be the tree of life and the very last page of the Bible tells us the leaves of that tree are for the healing of the nations.
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