Millions of Christians around the world celebrated the death and resurrection of their lord and savior, Jesus Christ, on Sunday. The reputed son of God, anti-Roman rabble rouser and all-around nice guy was crucified to pay for the sins of humanity, according to Christian belief, but it’s more likely that he was executed on trumped-up charges by Roman and Jewish authorities made uncomfortable by his revolutionary preaching.
In America, we celebrate this august event by putting on our best springtime attire, going to mass and, later, hunting for chocolates and colored eggs left by a magical bunny.
Given that this year the highest of high holy Christian holidays fell on 4/20 — the unofficial marijuana holiday named after the police code for the illegal weed — those chocolates and the the obligatory Easter ham may have come in handy for those who celebrated both. While pot is generally frowned upon by those most likely to celebrate Easter, an examination of the issue actually reveals that passing the blunt over Passover, which overlapped 4/20 and Easter, might not be such sacrilege after all.
Indeed, some argue that Jesus himself might have toked up once or twice in the course of his ministry. This argument is based partly on the fact that both cannabis and its derivative products — especially cannabis oil — were commonly used for both religious and medical purposes throughout much of the ancient world, including the ancient Near East. Hebrews living in Jesus’ time, experts say, would have been readily familiar with such substances and would have used them in anointing oils that would have permeated the skin and entered the bloodstream after being applied.
The effects that such anointing are perhaps better left to the imagination, but the use of what we would refer to today as illegal or controlled substances such as cannabis, opiates and hallucinogens like peyote and certain mushrooms, were often used in religious rites specifically to trigger mystical experiences. Peyote, for example, was long used by Native Americans for just such purposes, and there are references to the use of other mind-altering substances in other cultures and places — including, again, the ancient Near East and that religious book par excellence, the Bible.
Anointing oils and the use of cannabis
While the ingestion of such substances might help readers take many Old Testament tales seriously, there are, in fact, curious connections between drugs and various Biblical stories, like Exodus 30:23. In Moses’ famous encounter with the burning bush, for instance, he sees God commanding him to make anointing oil out of myrrh, cinnamon and “250 shekels (about six pounds) of keneh bosem” mixed into a gallon or so of olive oil. The mysterious keneh bosem, it turns out, is the Hebrew root word from which the word cannabis may have been derived.
This practice of using keneh bosem oil in ancient Hebrew rites — including those to anoint kings — apparently lasted until the time of Jeremiah, when the prophet’s more conservative preaching led to its ultimate abandonment. This is most likely not coincidental, as Jeremiah’s time coincided with both political crisis and external conflict that led to the collapse of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah and the exiling and dispersal of its priestly elite to Babylon and beyond. Blaming defeat and national decline on drugs, it would seem, has a long tradition.
Curiously, the practice of using cannabis oil in anointments and rituals was not taken up again until the time of the early Christians — many of whom converted from Jewish sects that sought a return to earlier, more fundamental tenets of their faith at the time of the Roman occupation. As an itinerant revivalist set on bringing his people back into the fold, Jesus was surely well aware of these ancient recipes referred to in what we now call the Old Testament. He may have also been tempted to use them in the course of his ministry, even if merely to demonstrate his bona fides as someone conversant in and loyal to the founding beliefs, practices and traditions of his faith.
Working miracles with marijuana — maybe
If Jesus was aware of cannabis oil and used it, how might he have used it and for what purpose? The obvious candidate here is in the realm of healing, an area in which Jesus became a well-known miracle worker. Magical God-power is, of course, the preferred explanation for his curing of the blind, the lepers and the dead, but it is quite possible that anointing oils with a high enough content of THC — the chemical in cannabis responsible for its narcotic effects — could have had a medical effect. Today, of course, we know that high enough doses of THC can have a meaningful impact on all sorts of disorders and ailments — including, interestingly enough, skin diseases (leprosy), glaucoma (blindness), multiple sclerosis and various neurodegenerative conditions that might have looked like paralysis and death to the ancients.
All this is speculative, of course, and mainstream Biblical scholars are quick to point out that the plant referred to in Exodus might not have been cannabis and that there is no direct evidence that Jesus ever used either cannabis or cannabis oil at any point in his life. Certainly, there is no passage in the Bible that one can point to that says indisputably that Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes because he and his followers had the munchies after getting seriously baked. Still, it is an interesting set of possibilities that sheds light on what Jesus’ relationship with such substances might have been.
Religious adherence in general must take things on faith, but given evidence that is even paltrier than this string of suppositions, is it really so out of the question that the so-called “son of man” may have toked up enough or sloshed around in so much cannabis oil that he thought he could walk on water or raise the dead? Might not his conversations with the devil in the desert have been a Burning Man-like encounter with Moses’ burning bush? Facing his impending arrest and execution in the garden at Gethsemane, might he not have used a little chemical fortitude when faced with the certainty of an agonizing death the next day?
Maybe or maybe not, but people who believe in talking snakes and that Adam and Eve rode on the backs of dinosaurs should not be quick to offer judgment one way or the other.
Still, the slightest possibility that Jesus might have used cannabis in some way should be on our minds when considering the injustice of our evil, draconian marijuana laws. If Jesus used cannabis and was alive today, he might very well find himself locked away in prison rather than performing miracles and preaching the good news of our universal salvation. At the very least, he would likely be horrified by the way we have for so long neurotically demonized a plant that, at its worst, is no more dangerous than alcohol — a substance Jesus was known to imbibe and miraculously produce from time to time.
So, when it comes to deciding on issues of legality and justice in our ongoing debate on marijuana reform, consider the above and think hard about what Jesus might have done. If the plant was possibly good enough for the supposed son of God, does it really make sense to keep it locked away and out of the reach of law-abiding citizens? Is it merciful to take entire generations of young people from some of our poorest, most oppressed communities and imprison them en masse because of a weed? If Jesus was really as good as everyone says he was, it seems doubtful that he would very look kindly on such practices.