Dan McClellan is a Bible scholar who publishes videos in which he confronts misinformation about academic Bible and religion research. This time, he tackles the claim that the biblical incense included cannabis. According to McClellan, this claim is based on findings from the temple at Tel Arad and relies etymologically on the similarity between the term “kaneh bosem” and cannabis, as argued by the Polish philologist and anthropologist Sula Benet, and supposedly confirmed by Michael Zohary in his book “Plants of the Bible” in 1982, and perhaps even earlier, allegedly by a 1980 study from the Hebrew University (Zohary and Raphael Mechoulam’s place). These claims are controversial and have been rejected by mainstream research. Therefore, he argues, while the idea might be reasonable and plausible, it is not proven. This is the extent of the video.
What McClellan does not mention is that the temple at Tel Arad was probably a temple to Asherah, and that worship of fertility goddesses in the ancient Near East did indeed include cannabis, similar to the worship of Ishtar in Assyria. Cannabis hot-boxing was also included in Scythian rituals and various Indo-European religious practices. The fact that the temple at Tel Arad is dated to the Assyrian period suggests that the worship there was influenced by Assyrian practices. The Bible confirms that Assyria had imperial aspirations in the region during that time, and there was a conflict in Israel between the Kingdom of Judah and the Kingdom of Israel about whether to resist the Assyrians. They even fought over it. Ahaz, King of Judah, sent a proposal of subjugation to Assyria, which proved beneficial for Judah as Assyria did not destroy the kingdom. In contrast, when Hezekiah carried out his religious reforms and abolished Asherah temples, he did so with the intent to eliminate Assyrian influence.
Hezekiah, of course, did other things that prompted Sennacherib to attack Judah. This scenario provides a satisfactory explanation, in my opinion, to infer the likelihood that cannabis was used in the worship of the Judahite Asherah, at least during the days of Ahaz, Hezekiah’s father, and Manasseh, his son. It could also possibly extend back to the days of Solomon, as the description of the sinful worship during Ahaz’s time (and also in the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah) applies throughout the days of the Kingdom of Judah, and of course during Solomon’s reign, who is said to have sacrificed and burned incense on high places. He even seemed to perform something like an incubation (in a hot-box) in the temple at Gibeon (i.e the hill). The high places were those where the altars stood, just as it is written about Ahaz: “He sacrificed and burned incense on the high places, on the hills, and under every green tree”. McClellan ignores this.
One of the symbols of incense is the tziporen and the question arises as to what it is of course, and why it is called that. Tziporen is thought to be clove, probably because its buds are sharp and resemble fingernails. But for me it doesn’t make sense. Let me explain.
At this point, it is more important to me to know why it is called that, since the teaching of the “tziporen” in the Bible is not like a plant, but like a sharp thing in general – whether it is a nail as we call it today, probably what a female prisoner of war or like the sages call her a “yefat toar” is supposed to do before one wants to marry her, as stated in the book of Deuteronomy 21:12, or it is a quill or a pen with which one writes, which is notched like “shamir”* (i.e a very sharp stone) as it is written in Jeremiah 17:1. If so, why did sages call what is referred to according to the Torah as an “ovum” (shchelet) as a clove? The original verse is “Take unto thee sweet spices, stacte, and onycha, and galbanum; these sweet spices with pure frankincense”, as they refer shchelet as onycha – but this is according to later interpretation, according to the septuagint it is an onyx gem…
So first of all it is important to note that together with these perfumes, frankincense is also mentioned in the Pentateuch, while in the Song of Solomon the scripture adds more names and one of them is the Crocus (hebrew: Carcom). Crocus is also mentioned in the Braita of making the incense (Babylonian Talmud Keritot, Jerusalem Talmud Yoma) as one of the symbols of the incense, so it is actually quite clear that the list was influenced by what was written in the Song of Solomon, certainly if you look at the Song of Solomon as an allegorical poem with references to worship in the Temple.
At this point let me examine the etymology of the word Tziporen. In Hebrew, the word “Tziporen” means the tip of the finger with the hard sheath that protects the skin there. In general, it means the protective cover against anything. We see that in Aramaic the nail is called “tofra” (like what is a claw in hebrew), in Arabic “tsifar” ظِفْرٌ, in Akkadian ṣupru – in all cases the meaning is either to the talons of a bird, i.e. claws, or to the nails of a person and especially uncut nails or nails in the process of cutting. But if we mentioned a bird, it should be taken into account that the bird is named after a claw. In Hebrew, it is named after this root sˤ.f.r, which also recurs in all the Semitic languages: Asfour in Arabic عُصْفُور, Tsanfar or Tsafra in Aramaic, etc. The word for “morning” is also derived from the sound of birds chirping at dawn and is onomatopoeic, Tsafra in Aramaic. One can only conclude from the fact that the nail or claw is named after the bird and not the other way around, and from the derivation of the word bird in the morning it can be assumed that there are a number of words borrowed from the root sˤ.f.r because of their connection to the bird, such as for example…hair.
In biblical Hebrew, an animal with dense fur was called a tsefir, so the description for feathers is probably also derived from the bird. In Arabic the Sufis or more correctly “ṣūfiyya” are described as those who wear wool, the young goats in Daniel is so called because goats have fur – wasn’t the ancient Adam described in Jonathan’s Targum of the book of Exodus, in Genesis Rabbah and in the chapters of Rabbi Eliezer as one who was surrounded by nails before the original sin of the Tree of Knowledge and then “was stripped” from it, covered not with what is known keratin tissue but simply covered in fur like a prehistoric ape or hominid?
At this point we can conclude that a tziporen does not necessarily describe the same keratin tissue at the tips of the hand, but something else made of keratin – hair. And if so, when the female prisoner of war needs to shave her head and “make her nails”, she needs no more than a haircut**. Or maybe the spice “clove” is also nothing but a spice with “hairs”? This means…. saffron. Why should one go so far, when the etymology of saffron is completely consistent with that of tziporen?
Saffron is prepared from Crocus. Crocus is a bulbous geophyte that after it flowers has three red “hairs” that come out, and are surrounded by styles or yellow “ovules”***. There are several finish levels of saffron, some include only the red, some are mixed with the yellow, some include only the yellow. The spice is also named after the yellow, which is called “asfar” (أَصْفَر)… In other words, another word derived from the root sˤ.f.r is also the color yellow, and the fact that it is not called that in all languages just hints that probably in geographical areas where saffron was not found or It was not local, the yellow color was named after other things that resembled it, such as gold, and not the Crocus product.
In the Braita, on the making of the incense, it is written “The Tzori and the Tziporen…. Nard and Crocus, Borit Karshina which the Tziporen is being sharpened so that it is beautiful, Cypriot wine in which the Tziporen is being held so that they are strong. And if he doesn’t have Cypriot wine, he brings ancient white wine”, That is to say, although it is not clear what the Tziporen is, it is clear that it must be soaked in an alcoholic substance in order to preserve it and prevent it from spoiling (or melting), and it must also be processed in some way to its final form. The fact that it is written that you should take both Tziporen and Crocus, and in different doses, does not mean that these are two different plants. It may be the same plant but in its two forms, one red and the other yellow. We see that Crocus is grown very carefully, because some of its parts are very sensitive. Separate its parts very carefully, process it even more carefully, styling it, that is, it is often dissolved in another substance so that it takes its shape, in the Middle Ages they would put it in oil or animal fat, store it in alcohol so that it does not melt, the attached video can tell you exactly how it is made.
In summary: I have not yet found support in the research for this, but it seems to me that, as in most cases where they go round and round in order not to “force themself on the scriptures”, in the case of the identification of the Tziporen they went that way as well. The commentators are not even sure that it is a plant, like the Ramban who claims that it originates from the sea and perhaps it should be identified with the Hexaplex trunculus snail which produces scarlet dye… But if you have already decided that it is red, why not go straight to the point?
PS: Just noting that in the biblical terminology “symbols of the incense” are basically the incense ingridients. in hebrew: “samemanim”, probably derived from the words “siman” (symbol) but also from “samim” (drugs) as the incense is said to be incense of drugs
* If in the sixth century BC a feather was used for ink as a writing instrument, as in legends, this may be used as a “proof” that a nail is a feather
** It turned out that the biblical “nails” are for uncombed hair knots like Bob Marley’s dreadlocks.
*** In Onkelus’ Targum of Exodus 2 it is said about Moses, because from I took him from the waters, “shachaltiye”, In Berachot 8a it is said about the painless death that it is so delicate it is like taking out a piece of hair from milk, “ke mishchal binita”. We see that we associate the verb šḫl with hair. The “hairs” of the saffron are gently pulled from the saffron flower, it must be done manually because of the delicate way in which it is done.
Entheogens and sacred herbs 