Archaeologists find traces of burnt cannabis in ancient Jewish shrine

[Tanuki]

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/cannabis-found-altar-ancient-israeli-shrine-180975016/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20200604-daily-responsive&spMailingID=42660911&spUserID=MTAzMTc3MDkxMjU0NgS2&spJobID=1780361169&spReportId=MTc4MDM2MTE2OQS2

"Roughly 35 miles south of Jerusalem, in an archaeological site in the Negev desert known as Tel Arad, archaeologists excavating an ancient Jewish shrine have found traces of burnt cannabis and frankincense on a pair of limestone altars, reports Kristen Rogers of CNN.

The new research, published last week in the journal Tel Aviv, provides the first evidence that the mind-altering substance was part of religious life in the ancient kingdom of Judah. Tel Arad contains the remains of a Canaanite city from the third millennium B.C., as well as Israelite fortresses from between the 10th and 6th centuries B.C.
....

It was within this shrine that the two stone altars were discovered with the remains of what appeared to be burnt plant material. The stone altars were found at the entrance of the shrine’s inner sanctum, known as the “holy of holies,” reports CNN. The chemical analysis conducted by researchers helps provide a window into the rituals and spiritual life of the Judahites.

"This is the first time that cannabis has been identified in the Ancient Near East; its use in the shrine must have played a central role in the cultic rituals performed there," says Eran Arie, an archaeologist with the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and lead author of the new research, in the statement."...(more)

[Hoyt]

1. Helps explain some of the crazy crud in the Bible.

[Igel]

3. Or the constant diatribes against the false priests.

No shortage of ranting about lack of faithfulness at that point.

"Jewish" here is territorial, not necessarily religious or even ethnic. There was one altar supposedly in place, and it wasn't at Tel Arad. (Later that was only partially true--the Samaritans had one centuries later, and some Jews set up one with sacrifices in Alexandria. Otherwise you had what became synagogues, but the synagogue movement was post-captivity. Some neuron is telling me the was a third Jewish one but it can't give a location, while another's trying to say that neuron's confused and the Samaritan altar was #3. The community at Qumran didn't have an altar, for example, and if anybody was going to you'd think they would, if they were Essenes and thought their leaders continued the true priestly line. They valued location over descent, it would seem.)

[Crunchy Frog]

2. No wonder God was always talking to them.