It usually happens during Holy Week each year — a new rash of media pieces attempting to undermine miraculous stories about Jesus and his life. Some of them have been very bad, but the media find it difficult to miss this annual rite of passage.
Well, it’s not Holy Week yet and it’s not Jesus, but this year the media are engaged in a special Torah-era debunking. I’ll let our good friends at Agence France-Press explain:
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.
Now, AFP doesn’t exactly have the best reputation in mainstream media, but they’re not alone in this story. The British papers as well as Reuters and MSNBC have already jumped on the story.
I just find it so interesting that the mainstream media always have so much time and resources to devote to these stories. But maybe there’s something to this story. Let’s hear the Israeli researcher — a cognitive psychologist, of all things — out. Benny Shanon of Hebrew University says the acacia tree mentioned in the Bible contains one of the most psychedelic substances known to man:
The professor, who came up with his theory after experiencing firsthand the effects of a hallucinogenic brew used in religious rituals in Brazil, said the story of Moses and the burning bush also had the hallmarks of a psychedelic experience.
The account in the Book of Exodus of the bush’s ability to burn without being “consumed” is generally attributed to the presence and power of God.
But to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Professor Shanon, who freely admits to having experimented with mind-bending substance “about 160 times in various locales in contexts”, it is evidence of the power of drugs.
So I guess there’s no need to make a joke about his thesis having been developed while he was high. And yes, in case you were wondering, the hallucinogenic brew referenced is none other than ayahuasca! Anyway, Shanon also noted that drug-induced visions included a loss of sense of time, seeing bright lights or fire, the blurring of the senses and profound religious and spiritual feelings.
The thing I find so interesting about these stories is that they rarely do anything more than raise the question. Very few of these accounts include any substantive critique from Biblical scholars or even other cognitive psychologists or botanists.
Now I don’t expect Christians and Jews to start any riots or anything, but it might be interesting if they had the opportunity to ask a few questions. If God wasn’t involved in what happened at Mt. Sinai, how did the drug hallucinations create tablets with the Ten Commandments carved in stone? And for nothing more than drug-induced hallucinations, those Ten Commandments have staying power, don’t they!
It reminds me of a story I heard about a Sunday School teacher explaining to her class that the miracle of Moses parting the Red Sea wasn’t really that miraculous. It turns out, she explained, that a better translation for the body of water crossed by Moses and the Hebrews fleeing persecution in Egypt would have been Sea of Reeds, so called because it was a shallow body of water that wasn’t even deep enough to obscure reeds growing up.
“That’s amazing!” responded one of her young charges. She explained that actually it wasn’t amazing — crossing such a shallow body of water wouldn’t be that difficult and didn’t require any miraculous parting of the water. “Wow! That’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard!” the child insisted. Exasperated, the teacher asked the boy how it was amazing that Moses led his people across this shallow pond. “It’s amazing that Pharaoh’s entire army drowned in a body of water so easy to cross!”
The point of this story is that so many of these debunking stories are presented uncritically. No one is brought in to ask all of the obvious follow-up questions. And it’s getting somewhat tiresome.
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Comments (34) |
March 5, 2008, at 11:03 am
Kind of odd they would just assume the drug-use thesis debunks the whole “saw God” claim considering how many religions posit that drug use actually facilitates divine communion.
Just a minor aside.
March 5, 2008, at 11:04 am
The most obvious folow up question to everyone involved: why do they all believe this biblical story is literally true, that the bible is a history text?
March 5, 2008, at 11:09 am
Most acid heads that I knew in high school didn’t come up with an entire code of morals and rituals when tripping. Occasionally they would come with some revelation that we are all one with God and death is an illusion, but no moral code.
March 5, 2008, at 11:24 am
Steve,
Because Christians do believe that the Bible is a historically accurate description of God’s interaction with men.
It amazes me that journalists would by that something so consistent and coherent as The Ten Commandments could be created on a drug trip.
March 5, 2008, at 11:27 am
As an herbalist I can assure you that acacia trees are absolutely nothing like ayahuasca and it would be rather difficult to suggest that a mild sense of happiness was a psychedelic experience complete with burning bushes or stone tablets. Heck, you couldn’t get high on the burning bush either. So they published the ravings of a guy who dreamed this up on drugs.
As for Moses, Yam Suph does mean “Reed Sea” but no one knows exactly where it was. One of my Hassidic online colleagues had never heard that it was supposed to be the Red Sea until well into adulthood because he only read it in Hebrew. But the miracle in the story still holds as your anecdote makes clear.
March 5, 2008, at 11:52 am
Steve’s question is the first one that came to my mind. How many scholars, historians and archaeologists are comfortable making positive statements of fact about Moses? Not very many, I’d wager. This story shouldn’t have been written - it’s based on sensationalism masquerading as scholarship - but that’s the kind of context that should have been included.
It’s odd that journalists are so often accused of being hostile to authority figures. This is a perfect example of how untrue that is - journalists (mostly from Europe, granted, where standards are much lower than in the US) are basically giving respectful attention to a ludicrous theory just because a guy is a college professor.
March 5, 2008, at 12:55 pm
I would love to see media recognition that historical issues in the bible are a little more sophisticated than literalism vs. science (or some other shibboleth waved around to dismiss the biblical text). For example, a faithful Christian can readily dismiss Cecil B. DeMille imagery of the Red Sea, in favor of the Reed Sea (into which the chariots would have sunk, though not necessarily people walking. This sort of explaining-away, however, seems purposeless to me, and silly, to boot.
As to the substance of the article, I spent a lot of time with drug addicts in my work, and have had a few friends with drug/alcohol problems. It is incredible to think that such folks could generate the profoundly moral system based on the Ten Commandments, which basically teach us how to love God and love our neighbor. Now, I have seen recovering people struggle to rebuild a moral life and guess what: they come up pretty much with ideas that look a whole lot like the commandments of Moses. Maybe they are just reaching back to their Sunday School childhoods, or perhaps the Ten convey something universally moral.
Finally (and excuse my pique), I recently noted on this site the tendency of media to debunk and/or demean Christian belief around Christmas and Easter. My complaint was pretty much dismissed, so I am glad to see another person recognizing the problem. Do we see Islam debunked at Ramadan?
March 5, 2008, at 12:59 pm
Dennis: I think the issue for journalists is not authority but credulity. Secular media folks don’t want to ask probing questions that might make them look like they actually believe in supernatural events. It would go against their secular liberal training.
And no, this isn’t just off the top of my head. I’m a product of the Dade County, Fla., public school system, then Miami-Dade College, then the University of Florida. I got a lot of good knowledge there, but didn’t find a lot of respect for the Bible.
But Benny Shanon, the Hebrew University professor, could have been questioned more closely even on secular grounds. Do the effects of ayahuasca truly match the story described in Exodus? Did people in the Middle East use the drug, or one like it, in Moses’ time? If so, why would they believe his visions over, say, their own? And how does the whole thesis square with Shanon’s specialty in cognitive psychology?
This is another thing that always bemuses me. Many secular journalists are proud of being skeptical of Bible claims. Yet they don’t apply that skepticism to revisionist scholars. The result is a stream of stories that are either uninformed or misinformed.
March 5, 2008, at 1:01 pm
Entheogens are behind all religion. It doesn’t negate belief, its what is at the basis of it.
The Eastman Bible Dictionary says the bush was likely Acacia, so why be upset? Have you read Ezekiel 4:15? What is the manna really? The Encyclopedia catholica says the early christians were drinking ergot kykeon as part of the Sybilline oracles.
Have you tried Ayhausca? Atheists have found God on this sacred brew.
March 5, 2008, at 1:51 pm
Alas, this time it’s Mollie who doesn’t get religion. Specifically the religious experiences collectively known as shamanism. Had the MSM dealt with Judeo-Christian basics as cavalierly as Mollie dismisses shamanic experience, the GR faithful would have been up in arms.
March 5, 2008, at 2:08 pm
Travis’ has already said what I wanted to say, but his comments brought to mind an episode of That 70’s Show which I think is apropo.
The kids are talking about how they always forget all the deep thoughts that they have when they get high. They always say they should write them down but they can never remember what to write when they sober up. So they come up with the solution to tape themselves the next time they smoke dope. I won’t relate the result verbatim, but at the end of the episode, in sober mode, they listen to the tape and the last thing it shows is deep and profound thinking.
I imagine that this theory falls on the same idea. Even if Moses had “deep thoughts’ while tripping, I am positive that it would only have felt that way to him at the time. Even if he could remember them afterwards, I doubt that any such thoughts would seem half as profound once written down, not even to him, much less millions and millions of people throughout the ages.
March 5, 2008, at 2:16 pm
PS. BTW I just found out that my use of “apropo” was not only mis-spelled but also inappropriately used. Did you know that it means “by the way” and is not the French version of “appropriate”. Just thought I would fess up to that in order to save some face. Lesson learned: Do not break long-held personal rule to not use vaguely understood words that one does not generally use in regular conversation.
*Ahem wipes egg of face and moves on a bit wiser than before*
March 5, 2008, at 2:22 pm
I take this as just the most recent recitation of an assumption that runs through a lot of the commentary on this one — the assumption that Moses’s mind was a complete blank as to laws of community when he went up the mountain and filled with such laws when he came back down. In other words, taking the OT as literal history as to how the Decalogue came into being.
If that worthy body of law had, in fact, precedents in Gentile history, and Moses was familiar with them, his experience on Sinai could have been a (Divinely inspired? Sure, if you insist) reworking of them to fit his people’s situation.
March 5, 2008, at 2:32 pm
I’m reminded of the story of the boy who comes home from Sunday school and his father asks him what he learned that day.
“I learned about the Children of Israel who escaped from Egypt.”
“And, what did you learn?”
“Well,” the son continues, “Moses and Aaron got fleets of HumVees together and all the Jews get into them. As they approached the Red Sea, the CBs had set up pontoon bridges and the Jews were able to cross over. Soon the Egyptians were in hot pursuit. As soon as the Egyptians were on the bridge, the Israeli air force came in and bombed the bridge, and the Egyptian forces fell into the sea and drowned.”
The father was aghast. “Are you sure that’s what they taught you?”
“Well,” admitted the son, “If I told you what they told me, you’d never believe it.”
March 5, 2008, at 2:40 pm
Bit of a tangent but:
Isn’t that their job? Question all authority?
Anyway I’ve not read any of these particular stories in depth. But it seems fair enough that people might try to suggest a rational explanation for stuff recorded in the bible. Even if it can’t be conclusively proved, it’s an option, for those of us who aren’t believers. Actually, I’d have thought even believers might not need the stories to be literally true, to carry meaning, anyway.
(And maybe even the scrawlings written down from a trippy dream - divinely inspired or not - can play a part in a growing phenomena. Given luck, or good relations, or conquest, or whatever it is that causes some religions to outgrow others.)
March 5, 2008, at 2:54 pm
Come on, no one else laughed out loud at that?
March 5, 2008, at 3:14 pm
Though the intention is to discredit religious experience, hopefully it will have the effect of encouraging people to abandond second-hand faith and authoritarian structures and begin widerspread sacred use of divine gifts like marijuana and ayahuasca—a bit like the 19th century debunking of folks like Robert Graves. If people can realize that folks like Moses and Jesus are not exceptional and that we’ve long since passed them in our ability to conceive of ethical behavior, then perhaps they’ll seek direct experience instead of starting with someone else’s template.
March 5, 2008, at 4:05 pm
Okay, so I think we’re all probably agreed that Moses didn’t have access to ayahuasca.
So does this professor have a suggestion as to what kind of local plant he may have used, or is it all a case of “All supernatural questions have physical explanations”?
I mean, why go for a drug-induced experience? Why not your plain, old-fashioned epilepsy, mental illness, or fraud? Surely it’s just as likely that Moses was lying as that he engaged in a consciousness-expanding ritual?
Any bets on what the story for Easter will be? We’ve had the Tomb of Jesus, so maybe it’s time for the “Never really existed” or “Didn’t die; moved to Egypt and got married” story to be re-run.
Oh, I forgot: the “never existed” story is for Christmas. So it’ll probably be the “got married and moved to Egypt” one.
March 5, 2008, at 4:19 pm
Stoo,
Isn’t that their job? Question all authority?
I disagree. I think the job of reporters is to report as accurately as possible on events, personalities and trends that seem interesting to a broad public. How is “question all authority” going to help a reporter in the midst of covering a fire at an apartment building? In that case - far more common in journalism than, say, Watergate - it’s just a matter of observing and trying to recount what’s been observed in a concise and accurate way.
March 5, 2008, at 5:00 pm
Oh yeah, I remember that episode! Then at the end Fez is playing a tape of one of their conversations and says, “See? You are all stupid.”
March 5, 2008, at 5:06 pm
Dave,
I don’t think that the assumption is that Moses went up on the mountain with a blank mind. What we are trying to get at is that drugs do not coherant thinking make. Even if he went up there with a well-conceived notion of a code of law, it would have not come down improved or coherently modified for the Hebrews situation. The drug experience, especially one in which hallucinations are a factor does not organize, it scrambles.
The Mosaic law, especially the Ten Commandments are a lucid and sober work for the most part even by today’s standards (modern standards owe their essence to it, after all) One may pick a bone with certain elements of it from our point of view, but even those instances made sense at one time.
March 5, 2008, at 5:14 pm
Isn’t that their job? Question all authority?
I disagree. I think the job of reporters is to report as accurately as possible on events, personalities and trends that seem interesting to a broad public. How is “question all authority†going to help a reporter in the midst of covering a fire at an apartment building?
Having been a general assignment reporter, a good reporter questions all authority. By that I mean, if you don’t have any questions about what someone (that’s “authority”) is telling you, regardless of the subject, then you are not a good reporter…whether your “beat” is crime, sports, or even ….religion. Isn’t that what this website is all about…why reporters, especially those on the religion “beat” do not ask any or more questions of whatever “authority” they are writing about?
March 5, 2008, at 5:15 pm
“I disagree. I think the job of reporters is to report as accurately as possible on events, personalities and trends that seem interesting to a broad public. How is “question all authority†going to help a reporter in the midst of covering a fire at an apartment building?”
Having been a general assignment reporter, a good reporter questions all authority. By that I mean, if you don’t have any questions about what someone (that’s “authority”) is telling you, regardless of the subject, even a fire, then you are not a good reporter…whether your “beat” is crime, sports, or even ….religion. Isn’t that what this website is all about…why reporters, especially those on the religion “beat” do not ask any or more questions of whatever “authority” they are writing about?
March 5, 2008, at 5:51 pm
Wake up people!
http://www.iamshaman.com/amanita/jesus.htm
http://www.secondattention.org/articles/psy_christmas.asp
http://www.egodeath.com/ChristianityAndEntheogenicEucharist.htm
READ!!
Ezekiel 4:15
March 5, 2008, at 6:24 pm
Yeah well ok not every single story in the news ever will have authority as a relevant point. But what I mean is, when an authority figure (politician, priest, corporate director) makes a claim, or takes an action, that’s newsworthy, I think responsible journalists will scrutinise that and ask probing questions, and not necessarily take stuff at face value.
March 5, 2008, at 7:09 pm
MOSES WASN’T ON DRUGS
***Google (www.ufodigest.com):
1}Astronauts of Antiquity
2)Talking to the Gods
3)The Heart Kidneys Theory and the Psychology of the Future
***The book “Planet Eris and the Global Warming” - http://www.infarom.com/new_releases.html
March 5, 2008, at 7:21 pm
I’m old enough to have lived through the 60’s and I do remember the deep thoughts. The “depth” was an illusion - like a person who looks at a picture of water and things - WOW - water for me to drink not realizing that the image is a mirage.
The issue is that some are reductionistic materialists - trying to reduce everything to a materialistic interpretation. Others are open to other possibilities.
March 5, 2008, at 7:38 pm
Ahem says:
Rhetorically denying the efficacy of entheogens doesn’t make it so.
March 5, 2008, at 7:51 pm
Martha asks:
One report mentions the bark of the acacia tree. Another refers to a plant called “harmal.”
March 5, 2008, at 9:31 pm
The purveyors of secular bigotry know no shame. They are also haters of the Western World. It is like the 25% of the British populaiton who think that Winston Churchill was a fictional character but Robin Hood was real. They live on another planet.
March 5, 2008, at 10:35 pm
Rabbi: As I’ve been trying to express (possibly stepping on my own shoelaces in the process) an explanation based on the ingestion of a shamanic substance is not secular. It is religious. Entheogens (as such substances are called by those who want a semantically neutral alternative to “drugs”) are widely considered, by those who use them, as another path to God.
March 6, 2008, at 3:01 pm
Dave: Shanon’s hypothesis is that acacia and harmal were combined. Together, they have a similar effect to the components of ayhuasca: acacia provides the DMT, harmal the MAO.
BHA Science Group article
March 6, 2008, at 4:00 pm
I agree, and I think in the cases of politicians, religious figures and (occasionally) athletes and CEOs, journalists generally do this. But when it comes to scholars and academics, journalists are often much more timid. Journalists take a lot more at face value from academics than they do from the mayor or the president or the pope. The problem is, academics are often wrong or irresponsible, and reporters shouldn’t let them go unchallenged.
That’s easier said than done, though, if you don’t have the sufficient knowledge to challenge someone on their specialty. That’s the problem with “general assignment” reporting. The “jack of all trades, master of none” approach doesn’t work when you’re covering climate change or the HPV vaccine or the ongoing drama of the Episcopal Church. You need specialists.
March 10, 2008, at 2:02 am
its funny if moses was on drugs why in the world would all of the jews listen to him i mean unless they where all high and no one thought to ask what is it we’re smoking or snorting or whatever they did back then to get high during the entire process there is really no way to truly di-prove moses considering all the facts there are and all the extenuating circumstances required to prove one man wrong let alone all the miracles having to do with the christian religion