Was Moses high on Mount Sinai?

[The Spartan]

Posted here to go with the Sargon of Akkad vs Moses thread. The link.

Was Moses high on Mount Sinai?
Study suggests Israelites may have eaten hallucinogens, but scholars scoff
MSNBC staff and news service reports
updated 4:26 p.m. CT, Tues., March. 4, 2008
JERUSALEM - When Moses brought the Ten Commandments down from Mount Sinai, he may have been high on a hallucinogenic plant, according to a new study by an Israeli psychology professor.

Writing in the British philosophy journal Time and Mind, Benny Shanon of Jerusalem’s Hebrew University said two plants in the Sinai desert contain the same psychoactive molecules as those found in plants from which the powerful Amazonian hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca is prepared.

The thunder, lightning and blaring of a trumpet which the Book of Exodus says emanated from Mount Sinai could just have been the imaginings of a people in an “altered state of awareness,” Shanon hypothesized.

“In advanced forms of ayahuasca inebriation, the seeing of light is accompanied by profound religious and spiritual feelings,” Shanon wrote.

“On such occasions, one often feels that in seeing the light, one is encountering the ground of all Being ... many identify this power as God.”

Shanon wrote that he was very familiar with the affects of the ayahuasca plant, having “partaken of the ... brew about 160 times in various locales and contexts.”


He said one of the psychoactive plants, harmal, found in the Sinai and elsewhere in the Middle East, has long been regarded by Jews in the region as having magical and curative powers.

Shanon acknowledged that he had "no direct proof of this interpretation" and said such proof cannot be expected.

Biblical scholars scoffed at Shanon's suggestion. Orthodox rabbi Yuval Sherlow told Israel Radio: “The Bible is trying to convey a very profound event. We have to fear not for the fate of the biblical Moses, but for the fate of science.”

While I'm skeptical of his claims, mainly because I doubt the details surrounding the Biblical account, I find the idea highly amusing, nonetheless.

That said the last paragraph frightens me. It sounds like something one of the hick preachers outside of town would say.

[Superman]

Heard this on Howard Stern's show. Funny shit. Drugs would explain a lot of the Bible, actually...

[DaveJB]

Put it this way... after smashing up the golden calf, Moses spent about ten minutes arguing with an invisible man in the sky about whether he should kill all of the unbelievers, or just a third of them. I can imagine drugs having a part to play in that!

[Majin Gojira]

It's got to be true.
It RHYMES!

[Kitsune]

I have yet to see enough evidence to believe that Moses was a real person.....

[TithonusSyndrome]

This article would be a lot more sincere if it didn't try to ask a question about the hallucinogen use of the ancient Hebrews by fudging a mythical figure into the headline.

[SCRawl]

It's funny, but I've been reading Exodus lately -- slogging my way through the Old Testament, actually -- and I've gotten to around chapter 26. The gist of it: the Lord is giving Moses instructions about how to build the Ark, and the tabernacle, and the high priest's office, and his clothes, etc. He's being very specific about every detail, including materials, colours, and dimensions, and it's oh so goddamn tedious to read. So I asked myself: would a fucking diagram be out of the question?

(Sorry, but I had to get that off my chest.)

With respect to the OP, yeah, I find it hard to get worked up about fictional characters in a badly written ancient text.

[Darth Servo]

would a fucking diagram be out of the question?

They didn't have xerox machines then. And colors were even more expensive then than now.

[PainRack]

Since Mohammad was most likely high on soporifics or cave fungus, my only objection to this reasoning is that unlike Mohammad, Moses is entirely fictional.

[Davis 51]

would a fucking diagram be out of the question?

They didn't have xerox machines then. And colors were even more expensive then than now.

He's God. He can invent a fucking xerox machine. Hell, he should have just projected the damn thing onto a PowerPoint presentation in the middle of the fucking sky.

I heard about this on Countdown earlier. My roommate and I were cracking up. Being on hallucinogenics would really explain a whole lot of the crazy shit in the bible.

[Elfdart]

The reason so many mystics/prophets and other assorted nutters come out of the desert is that being deprived of sleep, food water and sensory stimulation can cause hallucinations. The plant life would just be a bonus.

[BountyHunterSAx]

And yet what you're so quick to pass off as hallucinogenic influence served as moral support and guidance to nations for long after these figures' deaths.

-AHMAD

[Mr Bean]

And yet what you're so quick to pass off as hallucinogenic influence served as moral support and guidance to nations for long after these figures' deaths.

-AHMAD

Deuteronomy 20:16-18 (NIV): However, in the cities
of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance,
do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy
them--the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and
Jebusites--as the LORD your God has commanded you. Otherwise, they
will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in
worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the LORD your
God.

Yes... moral teaching, except the bits which arn't, don't mind those

[BountyHunterSAx]

If you think that I believe:

1.) That the Bible - or any Holy Book - can be meaningfully interpreted without reference to context, you're terribly mistaken.

2.) That the Bible is unchanged from the time of its revelation, when Jeremiah 8:8 Specifically says that the lying pens of the scribes have falsified it, then you are again mistaken.


Moral support is perhaps not the best phrase, when I said moral support I really meant it in the sense of 'feel good'. It gave them comfort in times of calamity and hardship - the way that you say you need a friend with you the day of your trial for moral support.

-AHMAD

[Lusankya]

Moral support is perhaps not the best phrase, when I said moral support I really meant it in the sense of 'feel good'. It gave them comfort in times of calamity and hardship - the way that you say you need a friend with you the day of your trial for moral support.

I get that comfort and support from my real friends. Sometimes they even do swell things like lend me money.

[cosmicalstorm]

I drank a mushroom drink in 1999, the feeling was very close to a religious one, you could see giant shadows moving across the nightsky- I heard strange sounds and so on... I would'nt be suprised if this researcher was correct. Provided Moses did really exist, wich I doubt.

[Rye]

If you think that I believe:

1.) That the Bible - or any Holy Book - can be meaningfully interpreted without reference to context, you're terribly mistaken.

2.) That the Bible is unchanged from the time of its revelation, when Jeremiah 8:8 Specifically says that the lying pens of the scribes have falsified it, then you are again mistaken.


Moral support is perhaps not the best phrase, when I said moral support I really meant it in the sense of 'feel good'. It gave them comfort in times of calamity and hardship - the way that you say you need a friend with you the day of your trial for moral support.

-AHMAD

I'm pretty sure the aztec religions gave them a feel good factor and comfort when somebody died and the rest of that bullshit that religion supposedly helps with if you buy into it. Doesn't change the fact it was a primitive and overall stupid idea that killed thousands of people over the years it was fervently followed. The fact is, the bible is the perfect sort of text to set up a priestly hegemon around; it has institutional both false hope and lies to hook those who need that, and it has the unthinking authoritarianism for those who are vulnerable to that, and a perfect way of causing tribalistic points of view through ideology.

As for 1) the context argument; the context was the bible was wrote in large part for political reasons to manipulate and control the masses by standardising oral history/myth, etc in a way the priests wanted them to believe it (in such a way as it insured their place in society, too). Mass murder commandments will of course reflect the primitive and vile times it was written in.

2) The Bible's changed, sure, but not by that much. When it gained political power, anyway, we can see the source texts that influenced the time in the LXX, modern times the KJV, etc.

The influence of mushrooms on the isle of patmos for the author of revelation is generally considered likely, as far as I know. Hallucinogens in the ancient world have frequently been used in association with religious visions, frankly, it seems phenomenally unlikely that the Bible would escape untouched by loonies, junkies and demagogues (using the Mencken definition: "one who will preach doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.").

[The Spartan]

Moral support is perhaps not the best phrase, when I said moral support I really meant it in the sense of 'feel good'. It gave them comfort in times of calamity and hardship - the way that you say you need a friend with you the day of your trial for moral support.

-AHMAD

Yeah, I'll bet the sonsabitches felt real good when the LORD GOD commanded them to go kill all the men of a competing tribe and then rape all the women.

And I'll bet victims of the Crusades felt real great being hacked to pieces in the name of Jesus.

Or all those women who were murdered because some delusional jackasses decided they were witches and burned them at the stake or strung them up to strangle to death.

All over fictional events ascribed to what may very well be a fictional person.

[Darth Wong]

Moral support is perhaps not the best phrase, when I said moral support I really meant it in the sense of 'feel good'. It gave them comfort in times of calamity and hardship - the way that you say you need a friend with you the day of your trial for moral support.

-AHMAD

Ironically enough, given the subject of this thread, many people feel that way about their drug addictions. Alcoholics, for example, crawl into a bottle because it gives them comfort in times of calamity and hardship.

[BountyHunterSAx]

Ironically enough, given the subject of this thread, many people feel that way about their drug addictions. Alcoholics, for example, crawl into a bottle because it gives them comfort in times of calamity and hardship.

I had that in mind when I wrote the post, though I suppose i fail to see the irony. The thing to remember is that some religions exhort their adherents to try and change the world to fit the religion's image of what is right. Unlike alcohol or other drugs which are used as a way of avoiding that which causes them discomfort, and not dealing with the problem.

What I guess I'm trying to say is that some religions - though I certainly can't say all of them - provide moral support via belief in God. And that's a support a human can't match in terms of it always being there. If you believe in an omnipotent God that is loving, then that love is the like of which cannot be rivaled by any on earth.

Though I agree with what was said earlier that 'real friends' can still do swell things for you and provide some modicum of support; it's just that they have their own problems and can only be there for you to a point. I'm not -nor did i ever - say people shouldn't seek material, moral, and other forms of support from each other, but I do contend that belief in a supernatural God capable of a different level of love allows for greater moral support from it - regardless of whether or not it actually exists.

-AHMAD

[The Spartan]

If you believe in an omnipotent God that is loving, then that love is the like of which cannot be rivaled by any on earth.

Even to the point that you'd kill other people to "earn" that love? Then what use is it?

[Ford Prefect]

If you believe in an omnipotent God that is loving

Then you should be living in a constant state of confusion as to why this loving being of unlimited power allows those he loves to suffer. That is the truth of the matter - if you believe that God loves his people, and you believe that nothing is beyond God's power, why do the innocent die in droves? Why are men and women and children crippled by horrific disease? Why do people starve?

If you believe in an omnipotent God that is loving, and you don't recognise what is wrong with that sentence, then there is something wrong. This is what seperates the merely religious from those who are interested in their own faith - one doesn't think.

Though this is getting off-topic.

[Superman]

You could even take it a step further and ask why an all powerful, all knowing god would create souls, which he knows will end up in hell, in the first place. If he knows the future, then he knows which of his own creations are going to burn, and yet he does it anyway.

[Patrick Degan]

I had that in mind when I wrote the post, though I suppose i fail to see the irony. The thing to remember is that some religions exhort their adherents to try and change the world to fit the religion's image of what is right. Unlike alcohol or other drugs which are used as a way of avoiding that which causes them discomfort, and not dealing with the problem.

Hate to tell you this, but religion is also a way of not dealing with unpleasant realities people would rather not face, by fostering belief in an Invisible Cloud Being who's going to solve all your problems for you if you really really really really really really really really really really really believe, instead of actually doing anything proactive on your own. Kings and dictators understand this all too clearly and have been the leading figures in fostering religious devotion, as a means of keeping people controlled and unwilling to challenge the established order for the promise of some afterlife reward.

[Darth Ruinus]

You could even take it a step further and ask why an all powerful, all knowing god would create souls, which he knows will end up in hell, in the first place. If he knows the future, then he knows which of his own creations are going to burn, and yet he does it anyway.

Maybe God has no free will, and he knows he HAS to do it?

Anyways, the idea that Moses was high is highly amusing to me.