Moses 'high on drugs during biblical scenes' [View All]

By Tim Butcher in Jerusalem
Last Updated: 4:17pm GMT 04/03/2008



Moses may have been high on drugs during the miracle of the burning bush and delivery of the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher has claimed.

Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said biblical visions are most likely explained by exposure to mind-altering substances, not celestial encounters.


Writing in Time and Mind journal of philosophy, he said substances taken from plants were commonly used in early Jewish religious ceremonies and it is possible they created a mass psychosis in Moses and his followers.

Mr Shanon said plants found in the Sinai Desert, where some of Moses’s miracles are reputed to have taken place, contain natural hallucinogens which can play with the mind’s ability to make sense of sounds and shapes.
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