One theory has a human named Jesus hoaxing a death to fake the prophesized messiah stuff.
Here is an interesting exerpt from Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible, by Chris Bennett. This book is written from a believer's viewpoint, but a Gnostic one and not the theistic form of that either, so doesn't have any of the usual apologetics. The author raises some good possibilities about what may have happened around that time. I disagree slightly about the possible drugs used in this hoax scenario. I doubt that way back then they would have been able to concentrate cannabis to such a potency to bring about the possible hibernation state, and I think that mandrake must have definitely been in the tincture. Chris is right now suing the gov't here in Canada to win the right to use cannabis as a sacrament. The gov't even has a catholic priest to counter him in court. I guess they don't realize how much Chris has researched the history of xtians fucking up gnostics including forbidding their use of cannabis oil/incense. He is also maybe the only religious person I respect, since he is very against theocracy, inequalities, etc. He has never pushed his religion on anyone at the cannabis forum I know him from, nor does he feel he has to save people, etc. Refreshing compared to other believer types.
http://www.forbiddenfruitpublishing.com/SexDrugs/Book
Cannabis and the Cruci-fiction
DEATH ON THE CROSS?
Three decades ago Dr. Hugh Schonfield shocked the theological world with his sensational book THE PASSOVER PLOT, which suggested that Jesus may have feigned death on the cross through a soporific potion--a hypothesis which if suggested only a few centuries earlier, would have seen the author burned at the stake, or worse. Suggesting that Jesus’ cry from the cross, "I am thirsty," could have been a signal to receive a specially prepared potion, Schonfield speculated that the "plan may... have been suggested to Jesus by the prophetic words, 'They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink'". With precision scholarship, Dr. Schonfield noted that if what Jesus "received had been the normal wine diluted with water the effect would have been stimulating. In this case it was exactly the opposite. Jesus lapsed quickly into complete unconsciousness. His body sagged. His head lolled on his breast, and to all intents and purposes he was a dead man.... Directly it was seen that the drug had worked..."(Schonfield 1965). Deeply influenced by Schonfield's research, the authors of the international best-seller, THE HOLY BLOOD AND THE HOLY GRAIL, expanded more fully on this theme in the early 1980's.
"In the Fourth Gospel Jesus, hanging on the cross, declares that he thirsts. In reply to this complaint he is proffered a sponge allegedly soaked in vinegar - an incident that also occurs in the other Gospels. This sponge is generally interpreted as another act of sadistic derision. But was it really? Vinegar - or soured wine - is a temporary stimulant, with effects not unlike smelling salts. It was often used at the time to resuscitate flagging slaves on galleys. For a wounded and exhausted man, a sniff or taste of vinegar would induce a restorative effect, a momentary surge of energy. And yet in Jesus' case the effect is just the contrary. No sooner does he inhale or taste the sponge then he pronounces his final words and 'gives up the ghost'. Such a reaction to vinegar is physiologically inexplicable. On the other hand such a reaction would be perfectly compatible with a sponge soaked not in vinegar, but in some type of soporific drug - a compound of opium and or belladonna, for instance, commonly employed in the Middle East at the time. But why proffer a soporific drug? Unless the act of doing so, along with all the other components of the Crucifixion, were elements of a complex and ingenious stratagem - a stratagem designed to produce a semblance of death when the victim, in fact, was still alive. Such a stratagem would not only have saved Jesus' life, but also have realized the Old Testament prophecies of a Messiah.(Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, 1982)
Besides opium and belladonna, a preperation of mandrake, which as we have discussed was used durring this time period, may have helped to induce the deathlike stupor needed to fool the Roman soldiers and Jewish populace. Thomas Cisteriensis wrote of the mandrake "The mandragora is a plant which effects such a deep sleep that one can cut a person and he feels not the pain. For the mandragora symbolizes striving in contemplation. Its reverie allows a person to fall into a sleep of such delicious sweetness that he no longer feels any of the cutting which his earthly enemies inflict upon him, and he no longer cares about any earthly thing. For his soul has now closed off its senses from all that is external--it lies in the benevolent sleep of the eternal".
Alternatively, as we haver shown the substance could also have been a preparation of cannabis hemp . More than a century ago, R.R, McMeens wrote that "Some high Biblical commentators maintain that the gall and vinegar, or myrrhed wine, offered to our savior immediately before his crucifixion, was in all probability a preparation of hemp, and even speak of its earlier use"(R.R. McMeens, M.D., 1860)
As Jesus' crucifixion is said to have taken place during the Passover, it is interesting to note that hemp may have been widely available at this time, for according to the comments of Immanuel Low in his German ethno-botanical text, DIE FLORA DER JUDEN the Passover incense contained cannabis resins,(Low 1926\1967) . A connection that is made even more curious by a Talmudic reference that states: "The one on his way to execution was given a piece of incense in a cup of wine, to help him fall asleep",(Sanh. 43a) . Closer to our own time and independently, the German researcher Holger Kersten has also suggested that cannabis may have been amongst the ingredients in the drink which put Jesus into a deathlike stupor,(Kertsen 1986).
How did Jesus come (apparently) to die immediately after he had taken the bitter drink? Was it really vinegar that he was given?.... Perhaps the supposed drink of vinegar instead contained the active ingredients of the sacred drink of the Indians and Persians, Soma and Haoma (respectively)....
Soma, the sacred drink of India, enabled an adept to enter a deathlike state for several days, and to awaken afterwards in an elated state that lasted a few days more. In this state of ecstasy, a 'higher consciousness' spoke through the adept and he had visionary powers. In addition to Asclepias acida, the Soma might also have contained Indian hemp (Cannabis indica)--tradition has it that it featured in the drink of Zarathustra."(Kersten 1986) .
Some of these substances, considered magical sacraments in the ancient world such as belladonna and mandrake, are so powerful that they can put their ingesters into a deathlike coma that could conceivably have made other ancient onlookers think that they had actually died. As well, in extremely high doses, and through powerful extracts, (such as that which we suggested was used in the miracle of Cana), cannabis has been reported to also put its imbibers into a state similar to animal "hibernation" which is combined with a rigormortis like physical condition of catalepsy. Robert Anton Wilson referred to tests sponsored by the US army in the 1950's, where" THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) ... put dogs into 'hibernation' or deep sleep for eight days, after which they were awakened and showed no ill effects"-(Wilson 1973) .
Apparently the U.S. army was by no means the first to find out about this little known quality of marijuana, as the following had appeared some years earlier before the American tests, in Emily Murphy's 1920 piece of Canadian anti-marijuana propaganda, THE BLACK CANDLE: "Eminent medical doctors in India, principally Calcutta, have made experiments with Cannabis Indica and have discovered that it induces symptoms of catalepsy or even trance. It is also claimed that the fakeers of India who suffer themselves to be buried, and who are later disinterred, do so through the agency of this drug. Some years earlier a Dr. James Braid of Edinburgh wrote a monograph on this subject entitled TRANCE AND HUMAN HIBERNATIONS ."(Murphy 1920)
Some excerpts of Braid's research which discussed hashish and the human hibernation state, appear in the 1855 classic PLANT INTOXICANTS, by Baron Ernst Von Bibra in a chapter on hashish . Braid discussed a number of eye-witness accounts of Indian Fakirs who had allowed themselves to be buried alive, amongst which are the words of one Sir Claude Wade, who was present at the court of Runjeet Singh, when one such Fakir was buried in a specially prepared room that was "completely sealed off from the access of atmospheric air" and then disinterred six weeks later! Wade described the end of the allotted time period when he joined Runjeet Singh and the Fakir’s servant and broke the seal of the specially prepared room:
Provided with light, we descended about three feet below the floor of the room, into a sort of cell. This cell too, was locked and sealed, and it contained a wooden box, about four feet long by three feet broad, with a sloping cover, place upright.
Opening the box we saw a figure enclosed in a white bag. The Fakeer's servant took this figure out of the box and placed it upright against the door. When he took off the bag, the legs and arms of the body were shriveled and stiff, and the head reclined, corpse-like, on the shoulders. No pulse in the heart, the temples, or the arms could be discovered.
The servant then sprinkled warm water on the body, while we forcefully rubbed its arms and legs. During this time the servant placed a hot wheat cake on the head, a process which he twice or thrice renewed. He then pulled out of the nostrils and ears the cotton and wax contained in them; and after great exertion opened the Fakeer's mouth by inserting the point of a knife between his teeth and drew his tongue forward, which, however, flew back several times to its former position. He then rubbed the Fakeer's eyelid with ghee, or clarified butter, for some seconds, until he succeeded in opening them, when the eyes appeared quite motionless and glazed. After he applied the cake for a third time to the head, the body was violently convulsed, the nostrils became inflated, and the limbs became pliable and began to assume a natural fullness. The servant then put some of the ghee on the Fakeer's tongue and made him swallow it. A few minutes later, the pupils became dilated and the eyes recovered their natural appearance, and the Fakeer said, in a low, sepulchral tone, scarcely audible, "Do you believe me now?" From the opening of the box to the recovery of the Fakeer's voice, not more than half an hour could have elapsed, and in another half hour the Fakeer talked with us, although with a feeble voice.(Sir Claude Wade)
Other such cases were reported by reliable eyewitnesses and like Wade's description, when the Fakir’s bodies were disinterred they "were found stiff and rigid like a corpse, but on application of the aforesaid treatment they were restored to life.... It is possible that some of the fakirs possess a hemp preparation that enables them to undergo the described experiments . This is especially supported by the catalepsy that sets in after hemp resin has been taken"(Von Bibra 1855). In reference to "catalepsy", Von Bibra is referring to the research on the effects of hashish that had been conducted in India during the first half of the 19th century by a Dr. W.B. O'Shaughnessy, who reported the following account of a patient that had been given "one grain of the resin of hemp... administered in a solution". Worried by the effects the drug was apparently having on the patient some hours after it had been administered, a nurse summoned Dr. O'Shaughnessy to the hospital, where he was alarmed to find the patient "lying on his cot quite insensible";
'...I chanced to lift up the patients arm. The professional reader will judge of my astonishment, when I found that it remained in the posture in which I placed it. It required but a very brief examination of the limbs to find that the patient had, by the influence of this narcotic, been thrown into that strange and most extraordinary of all nervous conditions, into that state what so few have seen and the existence of which so many still discredit-the genuine catalepsy of the nosologist.... We raised [the patient]... to a sitting position, and placed his arms and limbs in every imaginable attitude. A waxen figure could not be more pliant, or more stationery in each position, now matter how contrary to the natural influence of gravity on the part.(O'Shaughnessy 1839)
Although it doesn't happen often, there have been accounts of people being presumed dead, while in such cataleptic states, which is misconceived for the after-death state rigormortis, as has been noted by Robert Wilkins, in THE FIRESIDE BOOK OF DEATH; "Catalepsy is a mysterious condition, characterized by immobility of the muscles which can sometimes be mistaken for death. The limbs have a 'waxy flexibility' and can be molded into bizarre positions where they remain indefinitely"(Wilkins 19????).
In relation with the Biblical resurrections, as was mentioned earlier, Professor Morton Smith has suggested that Lazarus, (as well as the unnamed youth from the excised passages in Mark who is associated with him), did not suffer death, but went through an intense initiation into the "mystery of the kingdom of God"(Mark 4:11). As our research indicates that a potent cannabis extract, as well as ointments and concoctions of other psycho-active plants, were used in such initiatory rituals; and as cited above, potent preparations of cannabis could induce a catatonic state of hibernation that could conceivably have been mistaken for death, it is interesting to note that hemp was likely used for these combined purposes in later medieval times by a strongly Gnostic influenced Islamic group .
THE CRUCI-FICTION
The narrative now brings us to the last days of our Jesus of Sex, Drugs and Violence. Clearly, his rebellious attitude was taken note of by the oppressed Jewish masses, many of whom, especially the down trodden and rejected, had come to see Jesus as a kind of counter-culture hero. Just as in today's world, where any personality is able stand up against the "Authorities" with a certain amount of charisma and appeal is well-loved by the disenchanted members of society, the masses cheered as Jesus exposed the hypocrisies of Church and State, and openly broke their harsh and archaic moral codes in defiance and protest. That Jesus ended up nailed to a cross isn't surprising at all. With the political power held by the Sanhedrin and the hostility that existed amongst all the factions within Judaism at the time, one can only conclude that Jesus was intentionally trying to bring things to a final point of confrontation. And he was very good at it.
Knowing that the messianic expectations of the time was running at fever pitch, Jesus intentionally tapped into this mythos. That the people were fervently waiting for the Messiah is clearly indicated at the beginning of Luke's gospel. When John the Baptist is beginning his ministry the "people were waiting expectantly and all wondering in their hearts if John might not possibly be the Christ." (Luke 3:15) Prior to this reference mention is made of one Simeon, a man who was "waiting for the consolation of Israel." (Luke 2:25) Simeon had had a revelation that "he would not die before he had seen the Lord's Christ." (Luke 2:26) Then Anna, a prophetess who dwelt in the temple "spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem." (Luke 2:38)
By calling for a Davidic Messiah, it is apparent that the Jerusalem that the people were waiting to be redeemed, was the Jerusalem as it was during the glorious monarchic period, which as has been documented, was rife with Pagan worship. As has also been shown, it is apparent that Jesus also attempted to reinstate many facets of the popular Hebrew religion as it was during most of the Monarchic period. This revealing of what had been hidden so long, likely contributed tremendously to Jesus' crucifixion, and not only through orthodox post excilic Judaism. Those who had revealed these secrets to Jesus, may have come to see their prize pupil as the desecrator of their holy secrets, by revealing openly to the unworthy that which had been "hidden since the creation of the world. (Matthew 13:35).
In this respect, like Krishnamurti in our own age, Jesus rejected the spiritual elitism of his former Gnostic tutors, and decided to take their doctrine to the common people who needed it most. As an unclean mamzer, Jesus may have felt compassion for, and identified with, other spurned members of the Jewish populace from which he came, and attempted to help them to liberate themselves, or at least their minds, from the ignorance and control of the Law.
Seeing the undying faith of the people in a coming Messiah, Jesus consciously decided to utilize the myth of the Dead and Resurrected Sun King in the hopes of unifying the people and bringing about their liberation. This is not to say that Jesus was an impostor; he was obviously an initiate of extensive learning and charismatic gifts. Jesus, in this view, was a mortal man who through yogic like Gnostic initiation, had experienced that collective essence which animates us all. Perhaps after getting down to that infinite point, Jesus perceived the myth taking place around him and stepped into the role that needed to be filled, a decision whether good or bad at the time, was rife with consequences for the rest of recorded history. Critics of the decision might comment that Jesus suffered from an early form of the "messiah-complex".
Throughout the text of the New Testament Gospels, attention is constantly being brought to a comparison between Jesus' actions and Old Testament passages interpreted as Messianic prophecies. Although much of this is likely later editions meant to further identify Jesus as the messiah, the tradition is so prevalent that it is hard not to see that there is some basis of historical fact, and Jesus purposefully planned out events in order to fulfill these expectations.
If Christ arranged to receive such a cannabis extract on the day of the Crucifixion, the resulting cataleptic state of hibernation induced by cannabis taken in its most condensed and powerful form could easily have been mistaken for death by the Romans who stood guard over him, and the Jewish crowd who had come out to watch another "Messiah" meet a typical fate. As the powerful preparation took effect, the limbs would begin stiffening, the heartbeat slowing down to an occasional thud, the breath dropping off to a faint whisper, the blood coagulating on a still body that more and more resembled a corpse....... John 19 tells of the night of the crucifiction in detail that fits in completely with this hypothesis:
Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scriptures would be fulfilled, Jesus said "I am thirsty." A Jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus' lips. When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
Now... the next day was to be a special Sabbath. Because the Jews did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken down. The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first man that was crucified with Jesus, and then those of the other. But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead, they did not break his legs..' (John19:33).
Death, in the case of a crucifixion, came through suffocation; as the arms and legs gave out from exhaustion and stress, the lung cavity contracted, and in some cases this took days . By lessening these supports considerably, the breaking of the legs hastened this process. John has it that because Jesus was already dead, the soldiers do not break his legs, but instead pierce Christ's side with a spear. There is even a witness to this, one unnamed bystander: 'The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe. (John 19:35). The man doth protest too much. Professor Morton Smith has suggested that the story of the spear thrust into Jesus' side "may have been introduced to historicise certain Old Testament testimonies"(Schonfield 1965) . At this point in the narrative, to all outsiders, including Jesus' own apostles, all seems to be over for the charismatic leader that they had believed was going to lead them into a new age of glory.
It is the moment before sundown in Jerusalem. On the hill of Golgotha three bodies are suspended on crosses. Two--the thieves--are dead. The third appears so. This is the drugged body of Jesus of Nazareth, the man who planned his own crucifixion, who contrived to be given a soporific potion to put him into a deathlike trance. Now Joseph of Arimathea, bearing clean linen and spices, approaches and recovers the still form of Jesus. All seems to be proceeding according to plan.(Schonfield 1965).
The aloes and spices brought by Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea to Jesus’s tomb to supposeldey embalm their now dead leader pose a particularly curious question, as embalming was not a practice of the Jews of the time. Perhaps these lotions served some other purpose? The account in John regarding Jesus removal from the cross, and the role of Joseph of Arimathea and also Nicodemus, bears an uncanny resemblance to the tale which was discussed earlier of the Fakir and the assistant who helped to revive him after his deathlike entombment. "[I]n reality there were efforts behind the scenes to 'bring Jesus back to life' in the privacy of the tomb cavern, under the direction of Joseph and Nicodemus"(Kersten 1986)..
Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jews. With Pilate's permission, he came and took the body away. He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who had earlier visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy- five pounds. Taking Jesus' body, the two of them wrapped it , with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with the Jewish burial customs . At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no-one had ever been laid..(John 19:38-41)
It does not take an overly active imagination to picture Joseph and Nicodemus rubbing the stiffened joints of Jesus' bodies with large quantifies of healing herbs and spices which they had brought in preparation, and slowly waking their master from his death-like cataleptic state which had been induced by the substance delivered to him on the cross. A scenario that is reminiscent of the role played by the fakir’s helper in the account discussed earlier. Such a scenario, although sounding somewhat fanciful, is far more believable than that of the alternative, held to be true by literally millions of Christians-- That a man died, decomposed for three days and three nights, then arose from the Dead!
Slightly later in The Second Treatise of the Great Seth, Jesus disclaims the doctrine of the literal resurrection as it stands to this day with modern Christianity: Referring to those who "think that they are advancing the name of Christ", Jesus states that they are instead "unknowingly empty, not knowing who they are, like dumb animals. They persecuted those who have been liberated by me, since they hate them". He describes their theology as "ludicrous.... an imitation... a doctrine of a dead man". A theme that Jesus clearly returns to in other Gnostic tractates;
They will cleave to the name of a dead man, thinking that they will become pure. But they will become greatly defiled and they will fall into the name of error and into the hand of an evil, cunning man and a manifold dogma......there shall be others of those who are outside our number who name themselves bishop and also deacons, as if they have received their authority from God. They bend themselves under the judgment of the leaders. These people are dry canals.
--The Gnostic Jesus speaking in 'The Apocalypse of Peter'
Jesus' reference to "bishop and also deacons", who didn't come into existence until some time later, shows that the Gnostic tractate was the work of an eager, later writer, who like the New Testament editors and compilers, was given to adding to existing traditions and putting new words into the mouths of long dead figures. But clearly amongst the Gnostics, since earliest Christian times, there was a long tradition in which could be found a repudiation of the physical resurrection of the dead Jesus, which they termed the "faith of the fools".
As the Gnostic Jesus himself proclaimed of this theme, which contributed so much to the dualistic doctrine of the orthodox church: "...[T]hose who think that they are advancing the name of Christ, since they were unknowingly empty... proclaimed the doctrine of a dead man and lies so as to resemble the freedom and purity of the perfect assembly, (and), joining. themselves with their doctrine to fear and slavery... being small (and) ignorant... do not contain the nobility of the truth, for they hate what the one whom they are, and love the one whom they are not."(The Second treatise of the Great Seth).
As Elaine Pagels so eloquently noted, the doctrine of the crucifixion "legitimized a hierarchy of persons through whose authority all others must approach God. Gnostic teaching,.. was potentially subversive of this order: it claimed to offer to every initiate direct access to God of which the priests and bishops themselves might be ignorant"-(Pagels 1979))
"...the doctrine of the resurrection...serves an essential political function: it legitimizes the authority of certain men who claim to exercise exclusive leadership over the churches as successors of the apostle Peter. From the second century, the doctrine has served to validate the apostolic succession of bishops, the basis of papal authority to this day. Gnostic Christians who interpret resurrection in other ways have a lesser claim to authority: when they claim priority over the orthodox, they are denounced as heretics."(Pagels 1979).
Indeed, the crucifixion and resurrection is the pillar of the Christian faith, but as was stated so long ago: When thou thyself art guilty, why should a victim die for thee? What folly it is to expect salvation from the death of another.”The poet Ovid (43 BC-15 AD) . . How much better it would have been if the Church had chosen the messages of peace and acceptance that was at the core of what Jesus’ taught while alive, instead of the symbol of his death, which was wielded as a tool of oppression, turning the words of the Prince of Peace into the Fire and Brimstone of the Church. Perhaps here yet again we can see the mighty cannabis Tree of Life, breaking the fetters which bind humanity, setting them free from the binds and restraints of outdated superstition!
Here is an interesting exerpt from Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible, by Chris Bennett. This book is written from a believer's viewpoint, but a Gnostic one and not the theistic form of that either, so doesn't have any of the usual apologetics. The author raises some good possibilities about what may have happened around that time. I disagree slightly about the possible drugs used in this hoax scenario. I doubt that way back then they would have been able to concentrate cannabis to such a potency to bring about the possible hibernation state, and I think that mandrake must have definitely been in the tincture. Chris is right now suing the gov't here in Canada to win the right to use cannabis as a sacrament. The gov't even has a catholic priest to counter him in court. I guess they don't realize how much Chris has researched the history of xtians fucking up gnostics including forbidding their use of cannabis oil/incense. He is also maybe the only religious person I respect, since he is very against theocracy, inequalities, etc. He has never pushed his religion on anyone at the cannabis forum I know him from, nor does he feel he has to save people, etc. Refreshing compared to other believer types.
http://www.forbiddenfruitpublishing.com/SexDrugs/Book
Cannabis and the Cruci-fiction
DEATH ON THE CROSS?
Three decades ago Dr. Hugh Schonfield shocked the theological world with his sensational book THE PASSOVER PLOT, which suggested that Jesus may have feigned death on the cross through a soporific potion--a hypothesis which if suggested only a few centuries earlier, would have seen the author burned at the stake, or worse. Suggesting that Jesus’ cry from the cross, "I am thirsty," could have been a signal to receive a specially prepared potion, Schonfield speculated that the "plan may... have been suggested to Jesus by the prophetic words, 'They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink'". With precision scholarship, Dr. Schonfield noted that if what Jesus "received had been the normal wine diluted with water the effect would have been stimulating. In this case it was exactly the opposite. Jesus lapsed quickly into complete unconsciousness. His body sagged. His head lolled on his breast, and to all intents and purposes he was a dead man.... Directly it was seen that the drug had worked..."(Schonfield 1965). Deeply influenced by Schonfield's research, the authors of the international best-seller, THE HOLY BLOOD AND THE HOLY GRAIL, expanded more fully on this theme in the early 1980's.
"In the Fourth Gospel Jesus, hanging on the cross, declares that he thirsts. In reply to this complaint he is proffered a sponge allegedly soaked in vinegar - an incident that also occurs in the other Gospels. This sponge is generally interpreted as another act of sadistic derision. But was it really? Vinegar - or soured wine - is a temporary stimulant, with effects not unlike smelling salts. It was often used at the time to resuscitate flagging slaves on galleys. For a wounded and exhausted man, a sniff or taste of vinegar would induce a restorative effect, a momentary surge of energy. And yet in Jesus' case the effect is just the contrary. No sooner does he inhale or taste the sponge then he pronounces his final words and 'gives up the ghost'. Such a reaction to vinegar is physiologically inexplicable. On the other hand such a reaction would be perfectly compatible with a sponge soaked not in vinegar, but in some type of soporific drug - a compound of opium and or belladonna, for instance, commonly employed in the Middle East at the time. But why proffer a soporific drug? Unless the act of doing so, along with all the other components of the Crucifixion, were elements of a complex and ingenious stratagem - a stratagem designed to produce a semblance of death when the victim, in fact, was still alive. Such a stratagem would not only have saved Jesus' life, but also have realized the Old Testament prophecies of a Messiah.(Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, 1982)
Besides opium and belladonna, a preperation of mandrake, which as we have discussed was used durring this time period, may have helped to induce the deathlike stupor needed to fool the Roman soldiers and Jewish populace. Thomas Cisteriensis wrote of the mandrake "The mandragora is a plant which effects such a deep sleep that one can cut a person and he feels not the pain. For the mandragora symbolizes striving in contemplation. Its reverie allows a person to fall into a sleep of such delicious sweetness that he no longer feels any of the cutting which his earthly enemies inflict upon him, and he no longer cares about any earthly thing. For his soul has now closed off its senses from all that is external--it lies in the benevolent sleep of the eternal".
Alternatively, as we haver shown the substance could also have been a preparation of cannabis hemp . More than a century ago, R.R, McMeens wrote that "Some high Biblical commentators maintain that the gall and vinegar, or myrrhed wine, offered to our savior immediately before his crucifixion, was in all probability a preparation of hemp, and even speak of its earlier use"(R.R. McMeens, M.D., 1860)
As Jesus' crucifixion is said to have taken place during the Passover, it is interesting to note that hemp may have been widely available at this time, for according to the comments of Immanuel Low in his German ethno-botanical text, DIE FLORA DER JUDEN the Passover incense contained cannabis resins,(Low 1926\1967) . A connection that is made even more curious by a Talmudic reference that states: "The one on his way to execution was given a piece of incense in a cup of wine, to help him fall asleep",(Sanh. 43a) . Closer to our own time and independently, the German researcher Holger Kersten has also suggested that cannabis may have been amongst the ingredients in the drink which put Jesus into a deathlike stupor,(Kertsen 1986).
How did Jesus come (apparently) to die immediately after he had taken the bitter drink? Was it really vinegar that he was given?.... Perhaps the supposed drink of vinegar instead contained the active ingredients of the sacred drink of the Indians and Persians, Soma and Haoma (respectively)....
Soma, the sacred drink of India, enabled an adept to enter a deathlike state for several days, and to awaken afterwards in an elated state that lasted a few days more. In this state of ecstasy, a 'higher consciousness' spoke through the adept and he had visionary powers. In addition to Asclepias acida, the Soma might also have contained Indian hemp (Cannabis indica)--tradition has it that it featured in the drink of Zarathustra."(Kersten 1986) .
Some of these substances, considered magical sacraments in the ancient world such as belladonna and mandrake, are so powerful that they can put their ingesters into a deathlike coma that could conceivably have made other ancient onlookers think that they had actually died. As well, in extremely high doses, and through powerful extracts, (such as that which we suggested was used in the miracle of Cana), cannabis has been reported to also put its imbibers into a state similar to animal "hibernation" which is combined with a rigormortis like physical condition of catalepsy. Robert Anton Wilson referred to tests sponsored by the US army in the 1950's, where" THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) ... put dogs into 'hibernation' or deep sleep for eight days, after which they were awakened and showed no ill effects"-(Wilson 1973) .
Apparently the U.S. army was by no means the first to find out about this little known quality of marijuana, as the following had appeared some years earlier before the American tests, in Emily Murphy's 1920 piece of Canadian anti-marijuana propaganda, THE BLACK CANDLE: "Eminent medical doctors in India, principally Calcutta, have made experiments with Cannabis Indica and have discovered that it induces symptoms of catalepsy or even trance. It is also claimed that the fakeers of India who suffer themselves to be buried, and who are later disinterred, do so through the agency of this drug. Some years earlier a Dr. James Braid of Edinburgh wrote a monograph on this subject entitled TRANCE AND HUMAN HIBERNATIONS ."(Murphy 1920)
Some excerpts of Braid's research which discussed hashish and the human hibernation state, appear in the 1855 classic PLANT INTOXICANTS, by Baron Ernst Von Bibra in a chapter on hashish . Braid discussed a number of eye-witness accounts of Indian Fakirs who had allowed themselves to be buried alive, amongst which are the words of one Sir Claude Wade, who was present at the court of Runjeet Singh, when one such Fakir was buried in a specially prepared room that was "completely sealed off from the access of atmospheric air" and then disinterred six weeks later! Wade described the end of the allotted time period when he joined Runjeet Singh and the Fakir’s servant and broke the seal of the specially prepared room:
Provided with light, we descended about three feet below the floor of the room, into a sort of cell. This cell too, was locked and sealed, and it contained a wooden box, about four feet long by three feet broad, with a sloping cover, place upright.
Opening the box we saw a figure enclosed in a white bag. The Fakeer's servant took this figure out of the box and placed it upright against the door. When he took off the bag, the legs and arms of the body were shriveled and stiff, and the head reclined, corpse-like, on the shoulders. No pulse in the heart, the temples, or the arms could be discovered.
The servant then sprinkled warm water on the body, while we forcefully rubbed its arms and legs. During this time the servant placed a hot wheat cake on the head, a process which he twice or thrice renewed. He then pulled out of the nostrils and ears the cotton and wax contained in them; and after great exertion opened the Fakeer's mouth by inserting the point of a knife between his teeth and drew his tongue forward, which, however, flew back several times to its former position. He then rubbed the Fakeer's eyelid with ghee, or clarified butter, for some seconds, until he succeeded in opening them, when the eyes appeared quite motionless and glazed. After he applied the cake for a third time to the head, the body was violently convulsed, the nostrils became inflated, and the limbs became pliable and began to assume a natural fullness. The servant then put some of the ghee on the Fakeer's tongue and made him swallow it. A few minutes later, the pupils became dilated and the eyes recovered their natural appearance, and the Fakeer said, in a low, sepulchral tone, scarcely audible, "Do you believe me now?" From the opening of the box to the recovery of the Fakeer's voice, not more than half an hour could have elapsed, and in another half hour the Fakeer talked with us, although with a feeble voice.(Sir Claude Wade)
Other such cases were reported by reliable eyewitnesses and like Wade's description, when the Fakir’s bodies were disinterred they "were found stiff and rigid like a corpse, but on application of the aforesaid treatment they were restored to life.... It is possible that some of the fakirs possess a hemp preparation that enables them to undergo the described experiments . This is especially supported by the catalepsy that sets in after hemp resin has been taken"(Von Bibra 1855). In reference to "catalepsy", Von Bibra is referring to the research on the effects of hashish that had been conducted in India during the first half of the 19th century by a Dr. W.B. O'Shaughnessy, who reported the following account of a patient that had been given "one grain of the resin of hemp... administered in a solution". Worried by the effects the drug was apparently having on the patient some hours after it had been administered, a nurse summoned Dr. O'Shaughnessy to the hospital, where he was alarmed to find the patient "lying on his cot quite insensible";
'...I chanced to lift up the patients arm. The professional reader will judge of my astonishment, when I found that it remained in the posture in which I placed it. It required but a very brief examination of the limbs to find that the patient had, by the influence of this narcotic, been thrown into that strange and most extraordinary of all nervous conditions, into that state what so few have seen and the existence of which so many still discredit-the genuine catalepsy of the nosologist.... We raised [the patient]... to a sitting position, and placed his arms and limbs in every imaginable attitude. A waxen figure could not be more pliant, or more stationery in each position, now matter how contrary to the natural influence of gravity on the part.(O'Shaughnessy 1839)
Although it doesn't happen often, there have been accounts of people being presumed dead, while in such cataleptic states, which is misconceived for the after-death state rigormortis, as has been noted by Robert Wilkins, in THE FIRESIDE BOOK OF DEATH; "Catalepsy is a mysterious condition, characterized by immobility of the muscles which can sometimes be mistaken for death. The limbs have a 'waxy flexibility' and can be molded into bizarre positions where they remain indefinitely"(Wilkins 19????).
In relation with the Biblical resurrections, as was mentioned earlier, Professor Morton Smith has suggested that Lazarus, (as well as the unnamed youth from the excised passages in Mark who is associated with him), did not suffer death, but went through an intense initiation into the "mystery of the kingdom of God"(Mark 4:11). As our research indicates that a potent cannabis extract, as well as ointments and concoctions of other psycho-active plants, were used in such initiatory rituals; and as cited above, potent preparations of cannabis could induce a catatonic state of hibernation that could conceivably have been mistaken for death, it is interesting to note that hemp was likely used for these combined purposes in later medieval times by a strongly Gnostic influenced Islamic group .
THE CRUCI-FICTION
The narrative now brings us to the last days of our Jesus of Sex, Drugs and Violence. Clearly, his rebellious attitude was taken note of by the oppressed Jewish masses, many of whom, especially the down trodden and rejected, had come to see Jesus as a kind of counter-culture hero. Just as in today's world, where any personality is able stand up against the "Authorities" with a certain amount of charisma and appeal is well-loved by the disenchanted members of society, the masses cheered as Jesus exposed the hypocrisies of Church and State, and openly broke their harsh and archaic moral codes in defiance and protest. That Jesus ended up nailed to a cross isn't surprising at all. With the political power held by the Sanhedrin and the hostility that existed amongst all the factions within Judaism at the time, one can only conclude that Jesus was intentionally trying to bring things to a final point of confrontation. And he was very good at it.
Knowing that the messianic expectations of the time was running at fever pitch, Jesus intentionally tapped into this mythos. That the people were fervently waiting for the Messiah is clearly indicated at the beginning of Luke's gospel. When John the Baptist is beginning his ministry the "people were waiting expectantly and all wondering in their hearts if John might not possibly be the Christ." (Luke 3:15) Prior to this reference mention is made of one Simeon, a man who was "waiting for the consolation of Israel." (Luke 2:25) Simeon had had a revelation that "he would not die before he had seen the Lord's Christ." (Luke 2:26) Then Anna, a prophetess who dwelt in the temple "spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem." (Luke 2:38)
By calling for a Davidic Messiah, it is apparent that the Jerusalem that the people were waiting to be redeemed, was the Jerusalem as it was during the glorious monarchic period, which as has been documented, was rife with Pagan worship. As has also been shown, it is apparent that Jesus also attempted to reinstate many facets of the popular Hebrew religion as it was during most of the Monarchic period. This revealing of what had been hidden so long, likely contributed tremendously to Jesus' crucifixion, and not only through orthodox post excilic Judaism. Those who had revealed these secrets to Jesus, may have come to see their prize pupil as the desecrator of their holy secrets, by revealing openly to the unworthy that which had been "hidden since the creation of the world. (Matthew 13:35).
In this respect, like Krishnamurti in our own age, Jesus rejected the spiritual elitism of his former Gnostic tutors, and decided to take their doctrine to the common people who needed it most. As an unclean mamzer, Jesus may have felt compassion for, and identified with, other spurned members of the Jewish populace from which he came, and attempted to help them to liberate themselves, or at least their minds, from the ignorance and control of the Law.
Seeing the undying faith of the people in a coming Messiah, Jesus consciously decided to utilize the myth of the Dead and Resurrected Sun King in the hopes of unifying the people and bringing about their liberation. This is not to say that Jesus was an impostor; he was obviously an initiate of extensive learning and charismatic gifts. Jesus, in this view, was a mortal man who through yogic like Gnostic initiation, had experienced that collective essence which animates us all. Perhaps after getting down to that infinite point, Jesus perceived the myth taking place around him and stepped into the role that needed to be filled, a decision whether good or bad at the time, was rife with consequences for the rest of recorded history. Critics of the decision might comment that Jesus suffered from an early form of the "messiah-complex".
Throughout the text of the New Testament Gospels, attention is constantly being brought to a comparison between Jesus' actions and Old Testament passages interpreted as Messianic prophecies. Although much of this is likely later editions meant to further identify Jesus as the messiah, the tradition is so prevalent that it is hard not to see that there is some basis of historical fact, and Jesus purposefully planned out events in order to fulfill these expectations.
If Christ arranged to receive such a cannabis extract on the day of the Crucifixion, the resulting cataleptic state of hibernation induced by cannabis taken in its most condensed and powerful form could easily have been mistaken for death by the Romans who stood guard over him, and the Jewish crowd who had come out to watch another "Messiah" meet a typical fate. As the powerful preparation took effect, the limbs would begin stiffening, the heartbeat slowing down to an occasional thud, the breath dropping off to a faint whisper, the blood coagulating on a still body that more and more resembled a corpse....... John 19 tells of the night of the crucifiction in detail that fits in completely with this hypothesis:
Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scriptures would be fulfilled, Jesus said "I am thirsty." A Jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus' lips. When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
Now... the next day was to be a special Sabbath. Because the Jews did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken down. The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first man that was crucified with Jesus, and then those of the other. But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead, they did not break his legs..' (John19:33).
Death, in the case of a crucifixion, came through suffocation; as the arms and legs gave out from exhaustion and stress, the lung cavity contracted, and in some cases this took days . By lessening these supports considerably, the breaking of the legs hastened this process. John has it that because Jesus was already dead, the soldiers do not break his legs, but instead pierce Christ's side with a spear. There is even a witness to this, one unnamed bystander: 'The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe. (John 19:35). The man doth protest too much. Professor Morton Smith has suggested that the story of the spear thrust into Jesus' side "may have been introduced to historicise certain Old Testament testimonies"(Schonfield 1965) . At this point in the narrative, to all outsiders, including Jesus' own apostles, all seems to be over for the charismatic leader that they had believed was going to lead them into a new age of glory.
It is the moment before sundown in Jerusalem. On the hill of Golgotha three bodies are suspended on crosses. Two--the thieves--are dead. The third appears so. This is the drugged body of Jesus of Nazareth, the man who planned his own crucifixion, who contrived to be given a soporific potion to put him into a deathlike trance. Now Joseph of Arimathea, bearing clean linen and spices, approaches and recovers the still form of Jesus. All seems to be proceeding according to plan.(Schonfield 1965).
The aloes and spices brought by Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea to Jesus’s tomb to supposeldey embalm their now dead leader pose a particularly curious question, as embalming was not a practice of the Jews of the time. Perhaps these lotions served some other purpose? The account in John regarding Jesus removal from the cross, and the role of Joseph of Arimathea and also Nicodemus, bears an uncanny resemblance to the tale which was discussed earlier of the Fakir and the assistant who helped to revive him after his deathlike entombment. "[I]n reality there were efforts behind the scenes to 'bring Jesus back to life' in the privacy of the tomb cavern, under the direction of Joseph and Nicodemus"(Kersten 1986)..
Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jews. With Pilate's permission, he came and took the body away. He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who had earlier visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy- five pounds. Taking Jesus' body, the two of them wrapped it , with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with the Jewish burial customs . At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no-one had ever been laid..(John 19:38-41)
It does not take an overly active imagination to picture Joseph and Nicodemus rubbing the stiffened joints of Jesus' bodies with large quantifies of healing herbs and spices which they had brought in preparation, and slowly waking their master from his death-like cataleptic state which had been induced by the substance delivered to him on the cross. A scenario that is reminiscent of the role played by the fakir’s helper in the account discussed earlier. Such a scenario, although sounding somewhat fanciful, is far more believable than that of the alternative, held to be true by literally millions of Christians-- That a man died, decomposed for three days and three nights, then arose from the Dead!
Slightly later in The Second Treatise of the Great Seth, Jesus disclaims the doctrine of the literal resurrection as it stands to this day with modern Christianity: Referring to those who "think that they are advancing the name of Christ", Jesus states that they are instead "unknowingly empty, not knowing who they are, like dumb animals. They persecuted those who have been liberated by me, since they hate them". He describes their theology as "ludicrous.... an imitation... a doctrine of a dead man". A theme that Jesus clearly returns to in other Gnostic tractates;
They will cleave to the name of a dead man, thinking that they will become pure. But they will become greatly defiled and they will fall into the name of error and into the hand of an evil, cunning man and a manifold dogma......there shall be others of those who are outside our number who name themselves bishop and also deacons, as if they have received their authority from God. They bend themselves under the judgment of the leaders. These people are dry canals.
--The Gnostic Jesus speaking in 'The Apocalypse of Peter'
Jesus' reference to "bishop and also deacons", who didn't come into existence until some time later, shows that the Gnostic tractate was the work of an eager, later writer, who like the New Testament editors and compilers, was given to adding to existing traditions and putting new words into the mouths of long dead figures. But clearly amongst the Gnostics, since earliest Christian times, there was a long tradition in which could be found a repudiation of the physical resurrection of the dead Jesus, which they termed the "faith of the fools".
As the Gnostic Jesus himself proclaimed of this theme, which contributed so much to the dualistic doctrine of the orthodox church: "...[T]hose who think that they are advancing the name of Christ, since they were unknowingly empty... proclaimed the doctrine of a dead man and lies so as to resemble the freedom and purity of the perfect assembly, (and), joining. themselves with their doctrine to fear and slavery... being small (and) ignorant... do not contain the nobility of the truth, for they hate what the one whom they are, and love the one whom they are not."(The Second treatise of the Great Seth).
As Elaine Pagels so eloquently noted, the doctrine of the crucifixion "legitimized a hierarchy of persons through whose authority all others must approach God. Gnostic teaching,.. was potentially subversive of this order: it claimed to offer to every initiate direct access to God of which the priests and bishops themselves might be ignorant"-(Pagels 1979))
"...the doctrine of the resurrection...serves an essential political function: it legitimizes the authority of certain men who claim to exercise exclusive leadership over the churches as successors of the apostle Peter. From the second century, the doctrine has served to validate the apostolic succession of bishops, the basis of papal authority to this day. Gnostic Christians who interpret resurrection in other ways have a lesser claim to authority: when they claim priority over the orthodox, they are denounced as heretics."(Pagels 1979).
Indeed, the crucifixion and resurrection is the pillar of the Christian faith, but as was stated so long ago: When thou thyself art guilty, why should a victim die for thee? What folly it is to expect salvation from the death of another.”The poet Ovid (43 BC-15 AD) . . How much better it would have been if the Church had chosen the messages of peace and acceptance that was at the core of what Jesus’ taught while alive, instead of the symbol of his death, which was wielded as a tool of oppression, turning the words of the Prince of Peace into the Fire and Brimstone of the Church. Perhaps here yet again we can see the mighty cannabis Tree of Life, breaking the fetters which bind humanity, setting them free from the binds and restraints of outdated superstition!
