Was Moses high on psychedelic drugs?

[Zzyzx]

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Was Moses high on psychedelic drugs?

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/was-mo ... 97518.html

High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week.

Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy.

"As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don't believe, or a legend, which I don't believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics," Shanon told Israeli public radio on Tuesday.

Moses was probably also on drugs when he saw the "burning bush", suggested Shanon, who said he himself has dabbled with such substances.

"The Bible says people see sounds, and that is a classic phenomenon," he said citing the example of religious ceremonies in the Amazon in which drugs are used that induce people to "see music".

He mentioned his own experience when he used ayahuasca, a powerful psychotropic plant, during a religious ceremony in Brazil's Amazon forest in 1991. "I experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations," Shanon said.

He said the psychedelic effects of ayahuasca were comparable to those produced by concoctions based on bark of the acacia tree, which is frequently mentioned in the Bible.

Is this possible?

Can it be supported or dismissed?

[LittlePig]

I wouldn't be surprised if drug use occurred in earlier Israelite religion, but I don't know how we would be able to know anything about Moses (even his existance).

Some people are convinced that religion is all sham and ultimately based on cynical manipulation. Although there may be strong doses of this, especially as a religion gains popularity and power, I tend to think that at the core of all religion lies some profound experience.

From the time of the cave paintings of Altamira and Lascaux, art and religion have been tightly tied to drug use, exhaustion, sensory deprivation, and purposefully induced trance states. This is common in all cultures. Holy men and people seeking divine guidance often subjected themselves to privation or some herb to journey into the spiritual realms. Without a modern understanding of the brain, there would be no reason for these people to see their visions as anything but real, more real than the daily reality they see around them. We even see this in the Bible with fasting, journeys in the desert, and Paul's conversion. Even very modern people still see divine communications in their dreams. On top of this, communal religious rituals are constructed to provide the most profound 'spiritual' experience possible. Lighting, costume, locale, decor, acoustics, all play a role in enhancing a feeling of awe and exciting the wishful imagination. Drugs and 'incense' in those settings would have to profoundly affect people.

[twobitsmedia]

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Was Moses high on psychedelic drugs?

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/was-mo ... 97518.html

High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week.

Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy.

"As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don't believe, or a legend, which I don't believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics," Shanon told Israeli public radio on Tuesday.

Moses was probably also on drugs when he saw the "burning bush", suggested Shanon, who said he himself has dabbled with such substances.

"The Bible says people see sounds, and that is a classic phenomenon," he said citing the example of religious ceremonies in the Amazon in which drugs are used that induce people to "see music".

He mentioned his own experience when he used ayahuasca, a powerful psychotropic plant, during a religious ceremony in Brazil's Amazon forest in 1991. "I experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations," Shanon said.

He said the psychedelic effects of ayahuasca were comparable to those produced by concoctions based on bark of the acacia tree, which is frequently mentioned in the Bible.

Is this possible?

Can it be supported or dismissed?

LOL! You cannot make a case for Moses even existing, but you question whether his "nonexistant" episode with God was drug induced....and...the best they could do was a picture of Charlton Heston as Moses??? LOL!

[Cathar1950]

Maybe the writers were drug induced.
When King Saul was laying around naked having visions with the other prophets, we might wonder if they were taking a drug. It was a common enough practice among the ancients. There is no need for a Moses to exist to have story telling going on.

[Flail]

This post points to the difficulty with hearsay. The reason 'hearsay' testimony is not permitted in courts of law is that such second and third hand accounts are totally unreliable. The Bible and other 'holy books' are total hearsay and what is worse many are from 'visions'. These visions and accounts could be the product of delusion, drugs, indoctrination, faulty observation, faulty recollection, faulty interpretation, falsehood and from a variety of suspect motives. The reason hearsay is not a reliable source of fact or truth is that the 'declarant' is unknown and unavailable for questioning as to his ability to observe and communicate accurate information and as to his veracity,character, indoctrination, bias and motivations. This unreliability is exacerbated when the hearsay is multiple and passed down by word of mouth over many generations and emanating in antiquity.

Christianity attempts a grand cover up of the fatal flaws for the source it's dogma by concocting the notion that the 'scriptures are divinely inspired'. The only source for this is Paul and his 'Road to Damascus' vision. The practice of quoting the 'Bible' as if it has it's own voice is also suspect. Often dialogue and oratory includes vague references such as 'the Bible says',without reference or context as to the identity of the speaker. Such inauthenticity permits the notions of the OT and Paul to have equal import as the teachings of Jesus and are regularly interchanged,mixed and matched.

...and so we dance.

[LittlePig]

When I was a Christian, attempts to explain certain Biblical stories as hallucinations seemed to me rather convenient and a bit of a stretch. I figured that I could discern a hallucination from reality, and I wouldn't stake my life on a mirage. But I also wasn't aware how easy it was to experience a hallucination or how many cultures actively sought them out as a conventional means of religious experience.

In many cultures there is no attempt to dismiss these kinds of experiences as fake or unreal. They are valued and uncritically received, kind of like how some charismatic Christian groups are quick to hear God's voice anywhere and through any kind of sign. Such an experience can even be a kind of 'anointing' or stamp of authority for some decision to be made or an individual's status in the community.

And experiencing a hallucination is an easy thing to do. Simple sensory deprivation, like spending a few hours in a dark cave, or actually going blind after having been able to see, can lead to rather strong visual hallucinations. When I was a Boy Scout as a kid, simply blowing on coals for a long time to start a fire could give me a pretty strong oxygen-loss buzz/trip where the sky would go electric blue, I woud hear a rushing sound, and everything felt ultra-real. It's not really our eyes that see, it's our brain that does the imaging, and image creating. So it's very possible that if there is any historical accuracy to accounts of Jesus meeting Satan in the desert, or Peter seeing a sheet with animals floating down from the sky, or Paul encountering the resurrected Jesus on a long and tiring trip in the hot sun when he loses his sight, well, I gotta say they sound like run-of-the-mill hallucinations.

[LittlePig]

Something more concrete than theories about Moses dropping acid would be an atempt to diagnose Saul/Paul and his conversion experience.

Acts 9
1Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples. He went to the high priest 2and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. 3As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"

5"Who are you, Lord?" Saul asked.

"I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting," he replied. 6"Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do."

7The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. 8Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. 9For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything.

10In Damascus there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called to him in a vision, "Ananias!"
"Yes, Lord," he answered.

11The Lord told him, "Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. 12In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight."

13"Lord," Ananias answered, "I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem. 14And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name."

15But the Lord said to Ananias, "Go! This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. 16I will show him how much he must suffer for my name."

17Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, "Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit." 18Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul's eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized, 19and after taking some food, he regained his strength.

If Saul was a young, zealous Jew going WAY out of his way to persecute Jews who followed Jesus, I'd say something was emotionally akilter with this man. He was not satisfied with studying and teaching or living a normal, Jewish life. He either wanted to gain reputation as a leader or was sincerely upset with early Christians. He took his religious beliefs so far as to police others when there were at that time a wide variety of Jewish beliefs and practices.

If Saul was a very moral individual, he may have come to a point in his life when his view of the world expanded or when his level of empathy for others different from himself had increased. His actions may have come to weigh on him very heavily. People who are VERY committed to a worldview or feel very ashamed of their actions will often become even more extreme in an attempt to compensate for their doubts and insecurities. An example of this might be a homosexual man ashamed of his inclinations who tries harder and harder to appear heterosexual and even harshly condemns other homosexuals. This could have led Saul to a point of emotional and mental exhaustion.

People who are confronted with things they are emotionally unwilling to accept can sometimes experience physical symptoms from the stress. One situation is called conversion disorder. In this situation, blindness, deafness, and motor problems can be experienced for an indefinite time. One of the treatments is an attempt to calm the patient or help relieve them of the psychological factors that led to their depression.

If Saul felt incredibly guilty for his role in causing harm to nice followers of Jesus, and he responded to that by becoming even more zealous, he may have caused his own emotional 'breakdown' and subsequent blindness. Ananias may have helped him out of his depression by the offer of forgiveness. And then a zealous preacher for Jesus is born. Saul goes native and becomes Paul.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_disorder

[cnorman18]

Interesting stuff. Sinai is the greatest mystery in the Bible to me. It seems clear that something happened there; whatever it was had such an enormous impact on my people that their ears are still ringing with it after 3,500 years or so. Center of the Torah, birthplace of the Jewish people, all that.

Here's a slightly longer article from Ha'aretz:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/960407.html

And here's a Blog with some cogent criticisms:

http://stupidscholar.blogspot.com/2008/ ... drugs.html

My opinion? I dunno. Drugs seem unlikely to me. It's rare or never that they induce a single shared mass hallucination. More likely, everyone present would be off in his own little private dreamworld, from what I recall of the 60s.

Since it's certain that the at-first-glance fantastic and unbelievable Exodus story contains at least some elements of literal historical truth--cf. the remarkably similar events surrounding the gigantic Thera eruption in the eastern Med at about that time--it might be unwise to dismiss Sinai as entirely legendary and/or fictional,

What kernels of literal truth might be embedded in that story, I can't say, but somehow I doubt that they are either (a) nonexistent or (b) the traces of a group acid trip. I suspect we might start with a collective memory of the Thera explosion, which would certainly have been audible in both northern Egypt and the western Saudi desert (the ancient land of Midian, site of the real Mount Sinai) and combine it with the great-grandfather of all desert electrical storms, and speculate further from there.

[The Nice Centurion]

[Replying to Zzyzx in post #1]
All this wild theorys a la Alan Atwill !

To make an historic junkie out of poor old Moses on must firrstly take as granted that Moses existed.

Which (along with most bible chars) in our century gets doubted more and more, while at the same time more and more of such wild theorys (like Moses on Drugs) appear.

For Bart Ehrman its a sure thing that Jesus existed (his book: DID JESUS EXIST?), but he assures also that Christ was an alcoholic among other unbiblical things.

Further, for developing such hypothesis, one must believe in the whole Moses story or at last part of it! But why believe in one part and not in the other?

Next is the old Daeniken story of Ezekiel who met and described an alien spaceship, or the aryan Jesus who fought jews while preaching from Mein Kampf.

These storys seem to me to have little to no logical foundation.

But who knows . . .

[LittlePig]

"For Bart Ehrman its a sure thing that Jesus existed (his book: DID JESUS EXIST?), but he assures also that Christ was an alcoholic among other unbiblical things."

I didn't realize Bart Ehrman said Jesus was an alcoholic. Can you provide a reference for that?

"Further, for developing such hypothesis, one must believe in the whole Moses story or at last part of it! But why believe in one part and not in the other?"

That should be obvious. Some parts are more probable than others, so some parts are kept, some parts removed. Alternatively you could assume the written accounts are literal and accurate, a position that requires an awful lot of unreasonable mental gymnastics.