Dear Figureheads of the World's Judeo-Christian Faiths:

PLEASE EXPLAIN "KANEH-BOS" IN THE BIBLE

We, the meek, are intrigued by “KANEH-BOSM” in the Bible (Exodus 30:23), and seek your wisdom. 

A gaping chasm has formed between old-style faith and the modern world of science and technology. Despite the day-to-day relevance of important Biblical lessons (e.g. “Thou shalt not steal”) many people feel as if the events depicted in scripture are so far in space and in time that what was right-and-wrong millennia ago in the Holy Land is no longer what is right and what is wrong today.  For too many, the Bible’s events occurred in a land of make-believe, as if the parables and fantastic tales of scripture were nothing more than mere story-book lessons like the fables of Aesop.  And while we may debate over Biblical literalism-vs-figuratism, since the advent of the Industrial Age and modern medicine, there exists among the populace a palpable sense that the God of scripture’s era was somehow more present, closer and more involved in the lives of ordinary people than He is today.

Enter kaneh-bos.  Perhaps fuelled by the seemingly widening gap between the Bible vs “reality,” a burgeoning corps of new believers has arisen.  

To this newfound faith’s adherents, the Bible’s narrative has been suddenly brought back to life and made contemporarily relevant, due to recent awareness of one ancient Hebrew word, "kaneh-bos"  --  and its meaning in the Biblical narrative. This new cohort or group, by whatever name it may be called, bridges sect and brand of faith, and takes its cohesion instead from its members’ recently re-awakened knowledge Biblical kaneh-bos. 

Kaneh-bos  literally means “cane + aromatic”, and in the Bible, the plant appears to have been an aromatic sub-variety of normal kaneh, a standard biblical textile crop. 

Many believe that the kaneh-bos depicted in the Bible was a stalk of the medicine known today as cannabis.  The true species of that Biblical plant is irrelevant, for whether or not the original Bible referred to cannabis, or some other plant, the Biblical plant called kaneh-bos was so similar, in the Bible’s depiction, to modern cannabis that even if it was not, kaneh-bos serves as a perfect metaphor for today’s cannabis plant, and for our modern struggles with setting sane policy around it. 

Most modern translations of the Bible’s original texts interpret kaneh-bos not as cannabis, but as its natural antidote[1], calamus.  The faithful are convinced, however, owing to logical proof in scripture itself that the plant called kaneh-bos cannot refer to calamus, and so likely refers to cannabis.

Some of the ways that Biblical kaneh-bos closely resembles modern cannabis (but not necessarily calamus) are as follows:

1.       When kaneh-bos was burned in scripture, it produced a calmative aroma so striking it was used in spiritual contexts.

2.       Biblical kaneh-bos was used in medical contexts which included anti-biotic, anti-spasmodic, anti-psychotic, and anti-inflammatory.

3.       Biblical kaneh-bos’ medicinal and/or spiritual properties were, in terms of chemistry, oil-soluble just like modern cannabis.

4.       Kaneh-bos’ anatomical and physiological form, in scripture, was that of:

A.      a fiber/textile crop which was staple in the Bible (“kaneh”, or “cane”), in

B.      an aromatic, sweet-smelling (“bos”) variety

This mixed-use (fiber and medicine) is highly similar to modern cannabis.

The mixed-use form is notably dissimilar to “calamus”, the plant to which kaneh-bos is usually mis-interpreted, and which was neither biblically nor historically used as a staple textile crop.

Biblical kaneh-bos was a stalk-shaped plant with a rigid stem used in building construction, not a ground-hugging plant such as those non-cannabis species (calamus, sweet flag) sometimes attributed to the word.

5.       Kaneh-bos was at times used medicinally in the Bible, with legal allowances, according to divine instruction, but at other times in scripture, both the plant and its users were seemingly abused by other members of society, just as in the case of modern cannabis.

Calamus, the plant species most often assumed to be kaneh-bos, has medical properties, and can even be abused, but has never been so well known a medicine as cannabis, and it has not been traditionally the subject of historic political disputes the way the Bible depicts kaneh-bos.

 

The planet’s uncounted millions of cannabis users have seen with their own eyes the abuses of authority, for decades, that have been foisted upon us all in the false name of stifling this plant.  God made all plants, including cannabis;  the Devil did not create any plants.  Like all of God’s Creation, kaneh-bos is surely a test to us, to use it wisely, and not abuse it.  

We have all heard human authority wrongly tell us that cannabis causes cancer, when now we know it is a potent anti-cancer tool which can outperform or boost high technology pharmaceutical corporation anti-cancer drugs’ performance. 

We have all heard human authority wrongly tell us that cannabis causes brain damage and/or psychosis, when we now know it does not cause brain damage, and is an excellent anti-psychotic if used correctly  --  just like many modern artificial anti-psychotics which can cause harm if abused.

We were told in the late 1980s and 1990s that cannabis damages the immune system, yet now we know that cannabis suppresses auto-immune disorders, but more safely than the man-made chemical immune-suppressants which generate billions of dollars on corporate revenue each year.

After these sorts of turnabouts in the public eye, much of the public is losing respect for what appears to be unjust authority, such as the use of force, deployed in the effort to stomp out cannabis.  No church should weigh such matters without knowledge that the pharmaceutical companies, which patent competing products, are the major funders of anti-cannabis propaganda, scientifically misleading studies, and, perhaps worst of all, violent anti-cannabis legislation. 

 Many will turn away, even after seeing this corporate money-grubbing takeover of the human lawmaking and public safety education process.  It is too evil to countenance, and so it is easier to turn a blind eye, calling the evil “God’s will”. 

 Still, there is a saying:

"I heard the screams of a hundred million starving children in the developing world, and I turned my face to the heavens and cried out: “God, how could You let this happen?” 

"And God heard the screams of a hundred million starving children, and turned His face to the earth and cried out: “How could you let this happen?”"

While the law of the day should generally be honored and upheld, anyone can think of examples of such bad laws, even in modern history, that they should never have been enforced, and were plain wrong regardless of their legality  --  slavery, for example, or laws which divided rights based on heredity or faith. 

The reason that a given nation’s body of laws should be obeyed is because (it is presumed) they are fair and just laws.  When one law is so visibly unjust, the very purpose for upholding law becomes obscured, and the whole institution of law is eroded.  In that sense, the Churches’ positions on cannabis will determine if the growing body of Bible believers join established churches, or if this flock form yet another offshoot branch on the proverbial forked tree of our faith’s history.  The time to gather is now, lest the flock take to kinder shepherds.

Share with us please your thoughts upon the questions posed here about kaneh-bos, and about cannabis’ appropriate role in modern society.  Please show Biblical adherents new and old, with your wise answers, why each of you is God’s ordained for the high offices in which you sit.  Show the world. 

Help us restore our faith, by at least recognizing that what we see in scripture is truly there, and is truly relevant.  For if the world’s clergy does not see, then the world’s clergy have not guided their flocks, but have instead merely followed them to a proverbial pasture of kaneh-bosim.  

Churches have played their role in the iniquity of global cannabis policies.  75 years ago, a lone man single-handedly engineered a cannabis ban first for the United States, and then for the whole United Nations.  In his posthumously donated and archived personal effects is a note, written in his own hand, indicating how the ban’s successful popularization depended upon the institutional social structure of the churches, which could be used to spread fear of “marihuana” (a derogatory name for cannabis adopted to frighten people) to the most important organized social networks anywhere, the ones which formed the fabric of the community  -- the churches.  Given the amount of unjust suffering this has caused since it occurred, perhaps the world’s churches can help repair and restore human justice, by tempering it with mercy, and by softening the hard-hearted men who enslave others, with violence, over a plant.

Please, leaders of the established churches of antiquity, tell us, now, what to believe.

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[1] Russo, E.  Taming THC: potential cannabis synergy and phytocannabinoid-terpenoid entourage effects. Br J Pharmacol. 2011 Aug; 163(7): 1344–1364.

 

RECIPIENTS:

1.       His Holiness Pope Francis

2.       Most Reverend and Right Honourable Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury

3.       His All-Holiness Bartholomew I, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople

4.       His Holiness Pope Theodore II, Patriarch of Alexandria

5.       His Beatitude John X Patriarch of Antioch

6.       His Most Godly Beatitude, Theophilos III, Patriarch of Jerusalem and all Palestine

7.       His Holiness Kirill I, Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia

8.       His Holiness the Archbishop Irinej, Patriarch of Peć and the Serbs

9.       His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel of Romania

10.   His Holiness Patriarch Neophyte of Bulgaria

11.   His Holiness Pope Tawadros II, Patriarch of Alexandria and all Africa

12.   His Holiness Abune Mathias, Patriarch and Catholicos of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church

13.   His Holiness Abune Dioskoros,  Patriarch of the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church

14.   His Holiness Abune Antonios, Patriarch of the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church

15.   His Holiness Moran Mor Ignatius Aphrem II, Patriarch of Antioch

16.   His Holiness Baselios Mar Thoma Paulose II,  Catholicos of the East

17.   His Holiness Karekin II, Catholicos for all Armenians

18.   David Lau, Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of Israel

19.   Yitzhak Yosef, Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel