i have been searching the net for some excellent sites on the masons.
this past weekend we went down to nc for a wedding and my wife and i broke the news to our nonjw family that we were no longer involved with jw.
i could not believe the open arm welcome my uncle and aunt were almost in tears- they told us we have seen you come home each yr from the main office in ny and then you got married and you would come home and we wanted to say something about the jw but you seemed to be so well respected by the local jw - whenever we would tell folks that our newphew was up in ny- the jw would get all excited- they told us they thought it was so sad for i only made $90 a month.
No worries Susan, some of the stuff that has been found out in the last few years is just mind blowing.
The one thing that has struck me is that when someone say's look they are pretending to be christian it is really the other way around except they don't know it because the church has always been secretive of their own origin.
Eyebrow, thanks for your comment's
THP
i have been searching the net for some excellent sites on the masons.
this past weekend we went down to nc for a wedding and my wife and i broke the news to our nonjw family that we were no longer involved with jw.
i could not believe the open arm welcome my uncle and aunt were almost in tears- they told us we have seen you come home each yr from the main office in ny and then you got married and you would come home and we wanted to say something about the jw but you seemed to be so well respected by the local jw - whenever we would tell folks that our newphew was up in ny- the jw would get all excited- they told us they thought it was so sad for i only made $90 a month.
Gus,
I thought since you seem to have some sort of interest in Masonry that you'd be interested in learning a little bit more about some of it's origin's. Such as who is Hiram Abiff? This link is an excellent source for some real info on Freemasonry.
http://www.geocities.com/walknmud/HiramDiscovered.html
THP
i have been searching the net for some excellent sites on the masons.
this past weekend we went down to nc for a wedding and my wife and i broke the news to our nonjw family that we were no longer involved with jw.
i could not believe the open arm welcome my uncle and aunt were almost in tears- they told us we have seen you come home each yr from the main office in ny and then you got married and you would come home and we wanted to say something about the jw but you seemed to be so well respected by the local jw - whenever we would tell folks that our newphew was up in ny- the jw would get all excited- they told us they thought it was so sad for i only made $90 a month.
Hi,
I've been busy and not really able to follow this thread anyway I am back today.
What is it with some people? Druids, dangerous, child molesting through rituals? I'm sorry but you are definately WRONG, it is absoulutely laughable.
I know what these rituals are and I can promise you there is no child molesting ritual in place in either 'rite' full stop.
Anyone who want's to know the truth about freemasonry and their origens can find out, unfortunately you also have to wade through tons of crap in relation to masonry usually written by people who are either out to make a buck or just people that 'blow smoke' through their arse.
ROTFLMAO
THP
i have been searching the net for some excellent sites on the masons.
this past weekend we went down to nc for a wedding and my wife and i broke the news to our nonjw family that we were no longer involved with jw.
i could not believe the open arm welcome my uncle and aunt were almost in tears- they told us we have seen you come home each yr from the main office in ny and then you got married and you would come home and we wanted to say something about the jw but you seemed to be so well respected by the local jw - whenever we would tell folks that our newphew was up in ny- the jw would get all excited- they told us they thought it was so sad for i only made $90 a month.
Madapostate,
As I said I didn't doubt what you were saying infact I would be surprised if it wasn't that way.
It seems from what I have read and understand by those who attend, it is just another exclusive club where nonsense takes place.
Modern freemasonry could not be summed up better.
THP
i have been searching the net for some excellent sites on the masons.
this past weekend we went down to nc for a wedding and my wife and i broke the news to our nonjw family that we were no longer involved with jw.
i could not believe the open arm welcome my uncle and aunt were almost in tears- they told us we have seen you come home each yr from the main office in ny and then you got married and you would come home and we wanted to say something about the jw but you seemed to be so well respected by the local jw - whenever we would tell folks that our newphew was up in ny- the jw would get all excited- they told us they thought it was so sad for i only made $90 a month.
Hi madapostate,
I wrote a rather lenghty reply and as I was about to post it my computer chucked a big wobble'y and I lost it all so here's a short one instead.
About the "business thing" the 'book of constituition' makes it clear that these signals are not to be used for any mutual identification in business life. Whether or not some do anyway I can't say and I do not doubt you at all I just thought I should point that out. It could be that the scottish rite allows it but the modern certainly does not. I know that some belonging to the 'scottish rite' Identify themselves to others by means of particular rings but there would be only perhaps ten to fiften such rings. If anyone is interested I'll tell you what I do know about them or at least what the theory around them are.
THP
i have been searching the net for some excellent sites on the masons.
this past weekend we went down to nc for a wedding and my wife and i broke the news to our nonjw family that we were no longer involved with jw.
i could not believe the open arm welcome my uncle and aunt were almost in tears- they told us we have seen you come home each yr from the main office in ny and then you got married and you would come home and we wanted to say something about the jw but you seemed to be so well respected by the local jw - whenever we would tell folks that our newphew was up in ny- the jw would get all excited- they told us they thought it was so sad for i only made $90 a month.
Hi,
Some great info there I thought I'd just chip in a bit more.
The theory that there is some great secret hidden within freemasonry is hardly surprising given that they use secret handshakes and signs and even language for mutual recognition. Why do that if there is nothing to hide? Well here is my understanding of it all.
These secret signals is simply a means of restricting attendance at lodge meetings to qualified people sort of like a coded membership card. The United Grand Lodge of England (York Rite) has put out very clear guidlines concerning it's uses and really there is nothing strange about it. The United Grand Lodge of England is universally recognised to be the premier Masonic authority in the world and they currently preside over some three hundred and sixty thousand members in England and Wales. The GB of freemasonry have their headquarters in Great Queen street, London and is run as a private limited company with only four directors. There is an estimated five million Masons world wide. The Grand Master has according to their constituition got to be a prince of royal blood and currently the holder of that office is the Duke of Kent. English freemasonry is structured sort of like JW's with an unelected hierarchial pyramid that channels unquestioned authority upwards through the po's, do's, co's and finally to the GB.
They (United Grand Lodge) claim that there is nothing known of the origins freemasonry prior to 1717 however there are minutes still in existance of scottish lodge meetings dating back to 1598 and there are records of James VI of scotland (James I of England) being initiated into the lodge of Perth and scoon (scone) in 1601. He may well have been the one to bring freemasonry to London as early as 1603 when he moved there. Enlish freemasonry is very different from the freemasonry of scotland that are commonly called the 'Antient rite'. The antients have long accused the 'moderns' of making changes to the rituals which they thought they were not entitled to do and maybe rightly so and that is how the split came about. The secrets of freemasonry can be found in the antient scottish rite's rituals and were most likely invented by the knights templars themselves in an attempt to re-enact certain events on their crusade in the holy land. Some of these rituals tell the story of how they carried out excavations under the temple in Jerusalem and how they carried the treasures they found back to Scotland where the new Jerusalem was being built in the form of a copy of the original temple that was destroyed in jerusalem in 70AD.
The 'moderns' never quite understood what the rituals meant and consequently changed them and today in modern freemasonry 24 of the 33 degrees have no ritual at all. The temple they built is here http://www.rosslyn-chapel.com and if you are interested a lot of good info on antient freemasonry and templar history can be found here too.
As for whatever secret the templars wanted to hide the freemasons of today have no idea and the meanings of the rituals have been long forgotten until now when a lot of interest has been awoken around the fact that rosslyn chappel may well house one of the greatest findings in history. On the question was Russel a freemason? Perhaps he was but he would not have understood any secrets that may or may not have been contained in the rituals of freemasonry that he in turn may or may not have subscribed to. should you join with your uncle then be prepared to re-enact old events such as the killing of Hiram Abif in the temple or why not the one where the templars lower themselves down the shaft underneath the temple in Jerusalem and find treasures beyond the scope of belief.
THP
Info from various sources but mainly a book called The History of Freemasonry by R.F. Gould
awake september 8, 2001 page 20-21. the bible's viewpoint.
did god condone the slave trade?.
the real question should be "did god condone slavery?".
Francois
I could not agree more, spot on.
THP
awake september 8, 2001 page 20-21. the bible's viewpoint.
did god condone the slave trade?.
the real question should be "did god condone slavery?".
Awake September 8, 2001 Page 20-21
The Bible's viewpoint
Did God condone the slave trade?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The real question should be "did God condone slavery?"
Problem being that The Awake would have to admit more and refute less so that question might have been, how should I put it, out of the question or at least far more troublesome.
What the Awake has done is, although they do admit God condoned slavery, is that they claim that it was a "vastly different" kind of slavery that the Jews and early Christians were up too.
I will therefore attempt to see as to weather or not the Awake has been completely truthful in answering this rather delicate question.
"Dark sweating bodies bent almost in two shuffle up gangplanks under the crushing burdens of enormous bales of cotton. Ruthless overseers drive them on with rawhide whips. Screaming children are torn from the arms of weeping mothers and sold to the highest bidder in auctions. These are likely the stark, brutal images that come to mind when you think of slavery.
Ironically, it is said that many slave traders and slave owners were deeply religious individuals. Historian James Walvin wrote: "There were hundreds of such men, Europeans and Americans, who praised the Lord for his blessing, giving thanks for profitable and safe business in Africa as they turned their slave ships into the trade winds and headed for the New World."
Some people have even asserted that God condoned the slave trade. For example, in a speech to the General Conference of the Methodist Church in 1842, Alexander McCain stated that the institution of slavery was "ordained by God Himself." Was McCain correct? Did God approve of the kidnapping and raping of girls, the heartless separating of families, and the cruel beatings that were part and parcel of the slave trade of McCaine's day? And what of the millions who were forced to work as slaves under brutal conditions today? Does God condone such inhumane treatment?"
*** Rbi8 Numbers 31:7-17 ***
7 And they went waging war against Mid'i·an, just as Jehovah had commanded Moses, and they proceeded to kill every male. 8 And they killed the kings of Mid'i·an along with the others slain, namely, E'vi and Re'kem and Zur and Hur and Re'ba, the five kings of Mid'i·an; and they killed Ba'laam the son of Be'or with the sword. 9 But the sons of Israel carried off the women of Mid'i·an and their little ones captive; and all their domestic animals and all their livestock and all their means of maintenance they plundered. 10 And all their cities in which they had settled and all their walled camps they burned with fire. 11 And they went taking all the spoil and all the booty in the way of humans and domestic animals. 12 And they came bringing to Moses and El·e·a'zar the priest and to the assembly of the sons of Israel the captives and the booty and the spoil, to the camp, to the desert plains of Mo'ab, which are by the Jordan at Jer'i·cho.
13 Then Moses and El·e·a'zar the priest and all the chieftains of the assembly went out to meet them outside the camp. 14 And Moses grew indignant at the appointed men of the combat forces, the chiefs of the thousands and the chiefs of the hundreds who were coming in from the military expedition. 15 So Moses said to them: “Have YOU preserved alive every female? 16 Look! They are the ones who, by Ba'laam’s word, served to induce the sons of Israel to commit unfaithfulness toward Jehovah over the affair of Pe'or, so that the scourge came upon the assembly of Jehovah. 17 And now kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has had intercourse with man by lying with a male.
*** Rbi8 Numbers 31:25-47 ***
25 And Jehovah proceeded to say this to Moses: 26 “Take the sum of the booty, the captives both of humankind and of domestic animals, you and El·e·a'zar the priest and the heads of the fathers of the assembly. 27 And you must divide the booty in two between those taking part in the battle who went out on the expedition and all the rest of the assembly. 28 And as a tax for Jehovah you must take away from the men of war who went out on the expedition one soul out of five hundred, of humankind and of the herd and of the asses and of the flock. 29 From their half YOU should take it and you must give it to El·e·a'zar the priest as Jehovah’s contribution. 30 And from the half of the sons of Israel you should take one out of fifty, of humankind, of the herd, of the asses and of the flock, of every sort of domestic animal, and you must give them to the Levites, the keepers of the obligation of Jehovah’s tabernacle.”
31 And Moses and El·e·a'zar the priest went doing just as Jehovah had commanded Moses. 32 And the booty, the rest of the plunder that the people of the expedition had taken as plunder, amounted to six hundred and seventy-five thousand of the flock, 33 and seventy-two thousand of the herd, 34 and sixty-one thousand asses. 35 As for human souls from the women who had not known the act of lying with a male, all the souls were thirty-two thousand. 36 And the half that was the share of those who went out on the expedition amounted in number to three hundred and thirty-seven thousand five hundred of the flock. 37 And the tax for Jehovah from the flock amounted to six hundred and seventy-five. 38 And of the herd there were thirty-six thousand, and the tax on them for Jehovah was seventy-two. 39 And the asses were thirty thousand five hundred, and the tax on them for Jehovah was sixty-one. 40 And the human souls were sixteen thousand, and the tax on them for Jehovah was thirty-two souls. 41 Then Moses gave the tax as Jehovah’s contribution to El·e·a'zar the priest, just as Jehovah had commanded Moses.
42 And from the half belonging to the sons of Israel, which Moses divided from that belonging to the men who waged war: 43 Now the half of the assembly from the flock amounted to three hundred and thirty-seven thousand five hundred, 44 and of the herd, thirty-six thousand, 45 and the asses, thirty thousand five hundred, 46 and human souls, sixteen thousand. 47 Then Moses took from the half belonging to the sons of Israel the one to be taken out of fifty, of humankind and of domestic animals, and gave them to the Levites, the keepers of the obligation of Jehovah’s tabernacle, just as Jehovah had commanded Moses.
*** Rbi8 Judges 21:10-23 ***
10 Hence the assembly proceeded to send twelve thousand of the most valiant men there and to command them, saying: “Go, and YOU must strike the inhabitants of Ja'besh-gil'e·ad with the edge of the sword, even the women and the little ones. 11 And this is the thing that YOU should do: Every male and every woman that has experienced lying with a male YOU should devote to destruction.” 12 However, they found out of the inhabitants of Ja'besh-gil'e·ad four hundred girls, virgins, that had not had intercourse with a man by lying with a male. So they brought them to the camp at Shi'loh, which is in the land of Ca'naan.
13 And all the assembly now sent and spoke to the sons of Benjamin that were on the crag of Rim'mon and offered them peace. 14 Accordingly Benjamin came back at that time. Then they gave them the women that they had preserved alive from the women of Ja'besh-gil'e·ad; but they did not find enough for them. 15 And the people felt regret over Benjamin because Jehovah had made a rupture between the tribes of Israel. 16 Consequently the older men of the assembly said: “What shall we do to the men that are left over as to wives, for womankind has been annihilated out of Benjamin?” 17 Then they said: “There should be a possession for those who have escaped of Benjamin, that a tribe might not be wiped out of Israel. 18 As for us, we are not allowed to give them wives from our daughters, because the sons of Israel have sworn, saying, ‘Cursed is the one that gives a wife to Benjamin.’”
19 Finally they said: “Look! There is a festival of Jehovah from year to year in Shi'loh, which is to the north of Beth'el, toward the east of the highway that goes up from Beth'el to She'chem and toward the south of Le·bo'nah.” 20 So they commanded the sons of Benjamin, saying: “Go, and YOU must lie in wait in the vineyards. 21 And YOU must look, and, there now, when the daughters of Shi'loh come on out to dance in circle dances, YOU must also come out from the vineyards and carry off for yourselves by force each one his wife from the daughters of Shi'loh, and YOU must go to the land of Benjamin. 22 And it must occur that should their fathers or their brothers come to conduct a legal case against us, we also shall certainly say to them, ‘Do us a favor for their sakes, because we have not taken for each one his wife by war, for it was not YOU that did the giving to them at a time when YOU would become guilty.’”
23 Accordingly the sons of Benjamin did just that way, and they proceeded to carry off wives for their number from the women dancing around, whom they snatched away; after which they went off and returned to their inheritance and built the cities and took up dwelling in them.
Okay, the first story really tells it all and so does the second. God does not mind at all the heartless separation of families in-fact he makes absolutely sure they are separated from each other for ever by commanding that they kill every one except the women. The Israelites didn't do their job properly though, notice how Moses gets upset when he learns that all women and children were kept alive, he didn't want that, he only wanted the little girls who were still virgins. So now these poor little girls lost the remaining part of their families and further they had become kidnapped victims of the Lord and slaves to the Israelites. The really ugly part is that some of these girls ended up being human sacrifices and I guess one might say that that more than matched McCaine's era. The second story is equally cruel and more girls end up kidnapped and forced into being the wife's of complete strangers which in my book constitutes rape perhaps on a scale unheard of, the word sex-slave comes to mind rather easily.
Lets see how the Awake deals with the questions at hand.
Slavery and the Israelites"The Bible states that "man has dominated man to his injury." (Ecclesiastes 8:9) his is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the oppressive forms of slavery that have been devised by man. Jehovah God is not indifferent to the suffering that slavery has wrought.
For example, consider a situation that developed with the Israelites. The Bible tells us that the Egyptians "kept making their life bitter with hard slavery at clay and mortar and bricks and with every form of slavery in the field., yes, every form of slavery of theirs in which they used them as slaves under tyranny." The Israelites "continued to sigh because of the slavery and to cry out in complaint, and their cry for help kept going up to the true God." Was Jehovah indifferent to their plight? On the contrary, "God heard their groaning and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." Furthermore, Jehovah told his people: "I shall certainly bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians and deliver you from their slavery."---Exodus 1:14; 2:23, 24; 6:6-8.Clearly, Jehovah did not approve of 'man dominating man' through abusive slavery. But did not God later allow slavery among his people? Yes, he did. However, the slavery that existed in Israel was vastly different from the tyrannical forms of slavery that have existed throughout history.
God's law stated that kidnapping and selling a human was punishable by death.
Furthermore, Jehovah provided guidelines to protect slaves. For example, a slave who was maimed by his master would be set free. If a slave died because his master beat him, the master could be punished by death. Women captives could become slaves, or they could be taken as wives. But they were not to be used for mere sexual gratification. The gist of the law must have led right-hearted Israelites to treat slaves with respect and kindness, as if these were hires laborers. ---Exodus 20:10; 21:12, 16, 26,27; Leviticus 22:10, 11; Deuteronomy21: 10-14."Some Jews voluntarily became slaves to their fellow Jews in order to repay debts. This practice protected people from starvation and actually allowed many more to recover from poverty. Furthermore, at key junctures in the Jewish calendar slaves were to be released if they so desired.* (Exodus21:2; Leviticus 25:10; Deuteronomy 15:12) Commenting on these laws regarding slaves, Jewish scholar Moses Mielziner stated that a "slave could never cease to be a man, he was looked upon as a person possessing certain natural human rights, with which the master even could not with impunity interfere."
What a stark contrast to the abusive systems of slavery that mar the annals of history!*( The fact that provision was made to allow some to remain with their master clearly indicates that Israelite slavery was not abusive.)
Exodus 21:
*** Rbi8 Exodus 21:1-36 ***
21 “And these are the judicial decisions that you are to set before them:
2 “In case you should buy a Hebrew slave, he will be a slave six years, but in the seventh he will go out as one set free without charge. 3 If he should come in by himself, by himself he will go out. If he is the owner of a wife, then his wife must go out with him. 4 If his master should give him a wife and she does bear him sons or daughters, the wife and her children will become her master’s and he will go out by himself. 5 But if the slave should insistently say, ‘I really love my master, my wife and my sons; I do not want to go out as one set free,’ 6 then his master must bring him near to the [true] God and must bring him up against the door or the doorpost; and his master must pierce his ear through with an awl, and he must be his slave to time indefinite.
7 “And in case a man should sell his daughter as a slave girl, she will not go out in the way that the slave men go out. 8 If she is displeasing in the eyes of her master so that he does not designate her as a concubine but causes her to be redeemed, he will not be entitled to sell her to a foreign people in his treacherously dealing with her. 9 And if it should be to his son that he designates her, he is to do to her according to the due right of daughters. 10 If he should take another wife for himself, her sustenance, her clothing and her marriage due are not to be diminished. 11 If he will not render these three things to her, then she must go out for nothing, without money.
12 “One who strikes a man so that he actually dies is to be put to death without fail. 13 But where one does not lie in wait and the [true] God lets it occur at his hand, then I must fix for you a place where he can flee. 14 And in case a man becomes heated against his fellow to the point of killing him with craftiness, you are to take him even from being at my altar to die. 15 And one who strikes his father and his mother is to be put to death without fail.
16 “And one who kidnaps a man and who actually sells him or in whose hand he has been found is to be put to death without fail.
17 “And one who calls down evil upon his father and his mother is to be put to death without fail.
18 “And in case men should get into a quarrel and one does strike his fellow with a stone or a hoe and he does not die but must keep to his bed; 19 if he gets up and does walk about out of doors upon some support of his, then the one who struck him must be free from punishment; he will make compensation only for the time lost from that one’s work until he gets him completely healed.
20 “And in case a man strikes his slave man or his slave girl with a stick and that one actually dies under his hand, that one is to be avenged without fail. 21 However, if he lingers for a day or two days, he is not to be avenged, because he is his money.
22 “And in case men should struggle with each other and they really hurt a pregnant woman and her children do come out but no fatal accident occurs, he is to have damages imposed upon him without fail according to what the owner of the woman may lay upon him; and he must give it through the justices. 23 But if a fatal accident should occur, then you must give soul for soul, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 branding for branding, wound for wound, blow for blow.
26 “And in case a man should strike the eye of his slave man or the eye of his slave girl and he really ruins it, he is to send him away as one set free in compensation for his eye. 27 And if it should be the tooth of his slave man or the tooth of his slave girl that he knocks out, he is to send him away as one set free in compensation for his tooth.
28 “And in case a bull should gore a man or a woman and that one actually dies, the bull is to be stoned without fail, but its flesh is not to be eaten; and the owner of the bull is free from punishment. 29 But if a bull was formerly in the habit of goring and warning was served on its owner but he would not keep it under guard, and it did put a man or a woman to death, the bull is to be stoned and also its owner is to be put to death. 30 If a ransom should be imposed upon him, then he must give the redemption price for his soul according to all that may be imposed upon him. 31 Whether it gored a son or gored a daughter, it is to be done to him according to this judicial decision. 32 If it was a slave man or a slave girl that the bull gored, he will give the price of thirty shekels to that one’s master, and the bull will be stoned.
33 “And in case a man should open a pit, or in case a man should excavate a pit and should not cover it, and a bull or an ass does fall into it, 34 the owner of the pit is to make compensation. The price he is to return to its owner, and the dead animal will become his own. 35 And in case a man’s bull should hurt another’s bull and it does die, then they must sell the live bull and divide the price paid for it; and also the dead one they should divide. 36 Or if it was known that a bull was in the habit of goring formerly but its owner would not keep it under guard, he should without fail make compensation with bull for bull, and the dead one will become his own.
Well, I don't know if you can say 'not abusive' about these 'guidelines'. You could beat the crap out of your slaves so long as he or she could get up again in a couple of days, no worries.
The next part of the article goes under the sub heading of "Slavery and Christians" and this is where the Awake takes the opportunity to equate the relationship between master and slave with employer and employee, read for your self:
Slavery was part of the economic system of the Roman Empire, under which first century Christians lived.
Hence, some Christians were slaves, and others had slaves. (1Corinthians 7:21, 22) But does this mean that disciples of Jesus were abusive slave owners? Hardly! Regardless of what Roman law permitted, we can be confident that Christians did not mistreat those under their authority. The apostle Paul even encourages Philemon to treat his slave Onesimus, who had become a Christian, as "a brother." *---Philemon 10-17.The Bible gives no indication that the enslavement of humans by other humans was part of God's original purpose for mankind. Furthermore, no Bible prophecies allude to humans owning fellow humans through slavery in God's new world. Rather, in that coming paradise, righteous ones "will actually sit, each under his own vine and under his fig tree, and there will be no one making them tremble."---Micah 4:4.
Clearly, the Bible does not condone the ill-treatment of others in any form. On the contrary, it encourages respect and equality among men. (Acts 10:34, 35) It exhorts humans to treat others the way that they would like to be treated. (Luke 6:31) Moreover, the Bible encourages Christians humbly to view others as superior, regardless of their social standing. (Philippians 2:3) These principles are totally incongruous with abusive forms of slavery practiced by many nations, especially in recent centuries.*( Similarly, some Christians today are employers; others are employees. Just as a Christian employer would not abuse those working under him, disciples of Jesus in the first century would have treated servants according to Christian principle.---Matthew 7:12
THP
if you think that there is very little evidence for the use of cannabis in the bible think again, here is a few pages out of "indications of the hashish vice in the old testament".. before you get into it i suggest you make yourself a cup of something to go with the reading, enjoy.. by c. creighton, m.d., *london*.
from: janus, archives internationales pour l'histoire de la medecine et la geographie medicale, huitieme annee, 1903, p. 241-246 note: "canticles" refers to the old testament book "song of solomon" or "song of songs".
"vulgate" and "lxx" are early translations of the christian bible.
part 3
*Samson's riddle.* -- According to old and new criticism, by Budde and others, there is a glaring contradiction between the real or original Samson, the boisterous village hero of whom many stories were told, and the religious Samson, the judge of Israel, who was dedicated to God as a Nazarite "from the womb to the day of his death". It is admitted, however, that there is a peculiar unity in the text of the story as it has come down to us in the Book of Judges, notwithstanding the apparent incongruity of making Samson a Nazarite. The Nazarites are mentioned as early as the prophecies of Amos, having been allowed to drink wine in the laxity of morals then prevailing. Samson is not only the earliest Nazarite known, but he is a Nazarite indeed, inasmuch as his vow was not terminable after a certain period, as in the ritual of the Book of Numbers, but was imposed upon him from the womb to the day of his death. In that respect he has no compeer until John the Baptist. At the same time, he is the typical village hero, adored for his strength, boldness, cunning, and wit, and gratified by numerous amours. Budde remarks that many must have known a modern counterpart in village life. Two instances in literature occur to one as containing the elements of a modern Samson legend, -- the Oetzthal hero in Madame von Hillern's *Geier Wally*, and the hero or *jigit* of the village on the Terek in Tolstoy's early work, *The Cossacks*. Budde, who would eliminate altogether the Nazarite vow from the real Samson legend, is surprised that the hero does not eat and drink to excess: "Excess, or at least enormous capacity, in eating and in drinking strong liquors, is amongst the things that may almost be taken for granted. It is strange enough that this trait is not strikingly displayed in Samson. Who knows, whether from the store of legends that circulated regarding him, there may not have dropped out this or that portion dealing with the subject in question?" (Art. "Samson", in Hasting's, *Dict. of the Bible.* Edin. 1902.) Josephus appears to have entertained a similar suspicion; for, in his paraphrase of Delilah's attempts to bind Samson, he makes on of the attempts to be made upon him when he was drunk with wine. But it is impossible to take out the Nazarite vow from the story as we find it; that thread is woven inextricably into the tapestry; and it may be assumed that Samson's unshorn head was meant to symoblise his constancy to the vow -- or, at all events, to the letter of it. My view (which I submit with deference to the professed Biblical critics) is, that the method of the literary artist, who composed the existing story, is consistently ironical and witty. Anyone, who has had his attention directed to the point, will have found that the instances of Biblical wit are more numerous that might be supposed from the solemnity of commentators. Why should not this ancient literature have had its sallies of wit and humour as well as another? The Hebrew grammars, remark that the humorous figure of paronomasia, or pun, is more indigenous to the Semitic than to any other languages.
Samson's riddle, on the surface, was a mild pleasantry, hardly worth investing with the dignity of enigma; it has even been questioned, whether it was a fair problem, considering that it was based upon one particular if not unique incident known to himself. He killed a young lion, and threw the carcase into a wood; in passing that way some time after, he turned aside to look at it, and found that a swarm of bees had built their combs inside the ribs. (This is the natural reading, which is adopted by Josephus in his paraphrase.) He ate some of the honey, and gave some of it to his father and mother; but, for some deep reason, he abstained from telling his parents that the honey had been taken from inside the skeleton of a lion. At his wedding feast some time after, he propounded a certain riddle to the thirty young men of Timnath, who were the wedding guests, and laid a wager that they would not guess the answer within a week. Being still at fault on the seventh day, they went to Samson's wife, and induced her to coax the answer from her husband. Samson answered: "Behold, I have not told my father and my mother, and shall I tell thee?" However, he told her the incident of the lion and the bees, and she told the young men of the village, who came to Samson with this confident and jubilant solution, "What is sweeter than honey? What is stronger than a lion?" Samson answered oracularly, "If ye had not plowed with my heifer, ye had not found out my riddle". This answer appears to have been given ironically, with his tongue in his cheek, the reservation being, that their ploughing (with a heifer) had been but shallow, that they had not got to the bottom of the matter at all. He may be assumed to have been still in his ironical mood when he proceeded to pay the forfeit, by killing thirty other Philistines of Ashkelon and stripping them of their shirts to give to the thirty Philistines of Timnath.
Leaving these evidences of ironical behaviour, let us turn to the famous riddle itself. Is it possible that it can have any deeper meaning than the incident of the bees' nest in the lion's carcase?
What I suspect in Samson's riddle is *an ambiguity in the terms in which it was stated*. To those who heard it, it might mean either what it means as printed in the text, or it might mean something else as an equivoque. Of course, no single text can reproduce an equivocal effect of spoken words, depending upon paronomasia. There is a good example in 'Hamlet', III. 2. 262: *Ophelia*: "Still better and worse". *Hamlet*: "So you *must take* your husband". This is the reading of the first quarto; but it is clear that "must take" is to be pronounced ambiguously, from the fact that the second quarto prints it: "So you mistake your husbands", which is necessary to the innuendo, and is in the folio and in most later texts, although "must take" is the natural *ductus idearum* from the previous reference to the Marriage Service. The equivoque in Samson's riddle is of the same kind. It may mean what the text makes it to mean, or it may mean exactly the converse, without changing the order and works; thus:
An eater came forth out of meat,
Strength came forth out of sweetness; -- namely, Samson's strength from hachish. To understand how the *spoken* Hebrew words might be heart to bear either sense, according as they were apprehended by the ear, one must observe that the preposition "out of", which governs the meaning by being placed in front of one or other of the two nouns, is the sound *m*' (contraction of *min*), and that the same sound happens to begin the other nouns also: *m' ahachal* *yatsah* *maachal*
out of the-eater came forth meat *m' gaz* *yatsah* *mathok*
out of the strong came forth sweetness. There appears to be no way of prefixing the prepositional *m'* to the last noun of each line except by reduplicating the *m* which is already there, as if by stammering over it -- *m' maachal, m' mathok*, which might be merely a slight stammer, or might mean respectively, "*out of* meat", and "*out of* sweetness". Again, *to get rid* of the preposition from before the first word of the first line, one must read (as the LXX had actually done) *mah achal*, the first syllable being a distinct word, the interrogative pronoun, ..., *quid*, which would be used to introduce the riddle as a query, "What is this?" to get rid of the preposition from before the first word in the second line, one has to substitute for *gaz*, which is the adjective "strong", its abstract noun *magohz* = "strength", a substitution which is recommended as balancing *mathok* "sweetness", in abstract form. The concealed reading would then be: *mah* *achal* *yatsah* *m' maachal*
What is this? An eater came forth out of meat, *magohz* *yatsah* *m' mathok*
strength came forth out of sweetness Thus, to the ear, the riddle may really contain that deeper problem which ought to be in it if it is to stand for the riddle or secret of Samson's own strength. The superficial meaning, which Samson's wife jumped at and conveyed to the young Philistines of Timnath, is that food (honey) came forth out of the eater, (lion), sweetness out of the strong one. The deep meaning is just the converse -- that the eater "came forth out of" meat, strength out of sweetness. Thus we arrive at some kind of "food", (not drink) which made one an eater, or a devourer, like a lion; a sweet food from which came strength. It is pointed out that the antithesis of the second line, between "sweet" and "strong", is not a good one; and the Syriac version has gone so far as to change "strong" into "bitter" for the sake of the antithesis to "sweet". But the author certainly wanted to introduce the idea of strength, even if it were no full antithesis to sweetness; and his reason, doubtless, was, that he was thinking of Samson himself, and of the secret of his strength, which was a cryptic "sweetness". From various points of view, we arrive at the conclusion, that the honey from the carcase of a lion was not the honey of bees, but an allegory of that strong kind of honey which causes Jonathan's eyes to be enlightened, namely the resin of the hemp-plant. It was "sweeter than honey, stronger than a lion", as the men of Timnath are the unconscious means of suggesting, by the mood and figure of the answer.
We are now able to follow the ironical purpose of the author in its entirety, in making Samson a Nazarite and yet a boisterous, free-living village hero of the most admired type. The stimulant, which the hero used, was not drink, it was food; thus it was outside the purview of the Nazarite vow, which specified many things , but did not specify hachish: "wine and strong drink, vinegar of wine and vinegar of strong drink, liquor of grapes, grapes moist or dried, everything that is made of the vine from the kernels even to the husk". Samson could be made to pose cleverly as a Nazarite, and yet have his fling all the same. Budde's desideratum of strong drink, to complete the equipment of Samson as a village hero, is supplied by a subterfuge. It appears that the Jewish sense of humour ran strongly in that direction.
The story of Samson is not far removed in time, or in manner of telling, from that of Saul and Jonathan; so that, if I am right in my interpretation of the nature of the taboo which Jonathan broke, the period at the end of Judges and the beginning of the Kings was one in which the hachish-question had become actual. thus it becomes probable that the strength of Samson had the same source in stimulants as the prowess of Jonathan upon a particular occasion. It is also remarkable that Samson's "strength" collapses, just as Saul's courage fails him; and that the failure in both cases is described by the same phrase:- in the case of Samson the words are, "the Lord had departed from him", in the case of Saul the narrative reads, "God is departed from me, and answereth me no more, neither by prophets nor by dreams". The material sense of both I take to be, that the stimulant had lost its power over them, it being a property of hachish to produce hebetude in those who have used it habitually over a long time. Samson's recovery of his strength is, of course, for the sake of dramatic catastrophe.
*The apologue of "Nebuchadnezzar" in Daniel*. The beginning of these inquiries upon indications of hachish in the Bible was a suggestion made to me by the late R.A. Neil, of Cambridge, that the "grass" which Nebuchadnezzar was given to eat may have been grass in the colloquial Arabic sense of hachish, the word by which Indian hemp is now so commonly known being the same as the ordinary Arabic word for grass or green herbage in general (*hachach*). In seeking to follow up this idea one finds much to corroborate it in the details of the story of "morality" which is told of Nebuchadnezzar. The story begins with an account of dreams and visions of the night, in which the central object, the tree reaching to heaven and spreading to the ends of the earth, is highly characteristic of the elusive and infinite demensions in the subjective perceptions of hachish intoxication (Compare Bayard Taylor, *The Lands of the Saracens*; the pyramid of Gizen came before him, with its sides resting against the vault of the sky).
Daniel, being asked to interpret the dream, declares that the tree is the mighty Nebuchadnezzar himself, and the fate of the felled tree his fate: "They shall drive thee from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field, and they shall make thee to eat grass as oxen, and they shall wet thee with the dew of heaven." This fate, it appears, was on account of his sins and iniquities. But, as the root of the tree was to be left in the earth, so there was a power of recovery in the degraded prince, and he was to return to his kingdom after seven years. It happened as Daniel had said: "Nebuchadnezzar was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles' feathers, and his nails like birds' claws. And at the end of the days, I Nebuchadnezzar lifted up mine eyes unto heaven, and mine understanding returned unto me." One might provide much amusement by recalling some of the many literal attempts, ancient and modern, to explain the nature of Nebuchadnezzar's debasement. The double sense of the word "grass", which may be assumed to have existed in the ancient Semitic languages or dialects as in modern Arabic, is a key to the whole enigma. There appears to be a cryptic reference to hachish not only in the recurring phrase "They shall give thee grass to eat, as oxen", but also in the significant introduction of "dew" with equal reiteration, "they shall wet thee with the dew of heaven." The allegory is easily extended to, "let a beast's heart be given unto him", "let his portion be with the beasts of the field", and, "his body was wet with the dew of heaven". But the most significant detail of all is that which follows the last quoted phrase: "until his hairs were grown like eagles' feathers, and his nails like birds' claws". This is again the grotesque exaggeration and metamorphosis of one's own features etc. caused by the hachish subjectivity, which is unlike anything else in morbid imaginings. There have been real instances among Oriental rulers of hachish degradation such as "Nebuchadnezzar's"; an example was rumoured when Upper Burma was occupied by the British some five-and-twenty years ago. The apologue of Daniel, told of one under a great historical name, is meant to be general, and has had a sufficiently wide application, doubtless, in ancient times as well as in modern.
Lastly, and still in the same Chaldaean atmosphere, we find in the first chapter of Ezekiel a phantasmagoria of composite creatures, of wheels, and of brilliant play of colours, which is strongly suggestive of the subjective visual perceptions of hachish, and is unintelligible from any other point of view, human or divine. This is the chapter of Ezekiel that gave so much trouble to the ancient canonists, and is said to have made them hesitate about including the book. Ezekiel was included in the Canon, but with the instruction that no one in the Synagogue was to attempt to comment upon Chapter I, or, according to another version, that the opening chapter was not to be read by or to persons under a certain age. The subjective sensations stimulated by hachish are those of sight and hearing. It would be easy to quote examples of fantastic composite form, and of wondrous colours, which have been seen by experiments. I must content myself with the generality of Theophile Gautier (cited by Moreau, *l.c.*, from feuilleton in *La Presse*), that, if he were to write down all that he saw, he should be writing the Apocalypse over again (*recommencer l'Apocalypse*). If this contains an innuendo against the Apocalypse of John, I do not agree with it, in asmuch as I believe that no part of Scripture is more rational in its method, or more calmly inspired in its motives. But, as regards the apocalypse introductory to the prophecies of Ezekiel, one need not hesitate to assign it to the source indicated by the witty Frenchman.
Okay, that was a lot of reading I know but I did not want to leave anything out.
THP
if you think that there is very little evidence for the use of cannabis in the bible think again, here is a few pages out of "indications of the hashish vice in the old testament".. before you get into it i suggest you make yourself a cup of something to go with the reading, enjoy.. by c. creighton, m.d., *london*.
from: janus, archives internationales pour l'histoire de la medecine et la geographie medicale, huitieme annee, 1903, p. 241-246 note: "canticles" refers to the old testament book "song of solomon" or "song of songs".
"vulgate" and "lxx" are early translations of the christian bible.
part 2
It is remarkable that the LXX translators had no suspicion of this cryptic meaning. Their Greek version is the most confused of any; but it appears that they were aware of something obscure, and that they made an honest attempt to give a meaning to the Hebrew pair of words "honey wood", translating the word for "honey" by itself and again, by itself the word for "wood" in the Hebrew text (v. 25, 26), by ... bee-house. The Greek of the LXX is: .... The strange word ... is obiously a transliteration into Greek of a Hebrew word. Wellhausen, in his earliest work, *Der Text der Buchen Samuelis*, Gott. 1871, p.91, has given an explanation, which I should not have recalled had it not been pronounced to be "remarkably clever" by Driver, (*Notes on the Hebrew Text of the Books of Samuel*, Oxford, 1890, p.86). Wellhausen says: "... und ... ist Duplette, beides dem hebraischen *yagar* entsprechend. Demselben Worte aber entspricht nach v.26 auch .... Also haben wir hier ein Triplette". I speak with deference; but I do not understand how ... (Hebrew) can be a doublet of ..., still less how ... can be a doublet of either or both. ... as a Hebrew word written in Greek characters appears to be exactly the part of a verb meaning "we have done foolishly", or "they are foolish", which would have been used as a marginal remark (although now incorporated in the text) to signify that the passage was unintelligible or corrupt. How it can stand for *yagar*, meaning "wood" (..., a wood or coppice), is probably clear to Hebraists; at all events, that is assumed in Wellhausen's theory of a doublet, the sense being "there was honeycomb on the ground". The idea is that of "honey" in some association with "wood", which the LXX took to the bee-house. The natural association of "honey" with "wood", is "vegetable honey", or plant-honey; and it is clear from the powerful effect of a minute quantity of it, and from the kinds of effect, (aphrodisiac and bellicose) that the honey-wood was the hemp-plant with the resinous exudation.
The effects, in the case of Jonathan, are unmistakeable. A mere taste of the honey on the end of the rod caused his eyes to be enlightened. His defence, when put on his trial for breaking the taboo, was the small-ness of the quantity he ate; a plea which reminds one of the famous apology of the young woman for her love-child, that "it was such a little one". There is an old explanation of this enlightenment, discussed by F.T. Withof, "De Jonathane post esum mellis visum recipiente" (*Opusc. philolog. Lingae, 1778, pp. 135 - 139). It turns upon on the Talmudic saying, *Oculi tui prae jejunio obscuranti sunt*; and upon another passage in the same, where food is to be administered to one, "*donec illuminentur oculi ejus*". Some colour is given to this idea of the illuminating effect of food for the hungry, by the context, I Sam. 14, 24, 28, namely the formal words of the taboo, "Cursed be the man that eatheth *food* until the evening", and the remark, that "the people were faint", as if by abstinence from food. But the minute quantity tasted by Jonathan shows that all these references to "food" are merely cryptic or allegorical. Also the effect upon Jonathan was, that he ran *a-mok* amongst the Philistines; and it is implied not vaguely that, if his followers had also partaken of the same food, "there had been now a much greater slaughter among the Philistines". Jonathan's exceptional prowess upon the occasion was also the ground of his being rescued by the admiring populace from the death to which he had been condemned by his father for breaking the taboo.
The evidence that Saul himself was a hachish-eater is not so direct as in the case of Jonathan. There is not a hint of it until after the incident of the forbidden honey in the attack upon the Philistines; but, in the inquiry upon that breach of law, it is significant that Saul and Jonathan are ranged together upon one side of the trial by lot, and the people on the other, the second ballot being between Saul and Jonathathan. The next chapter introduces the very old theme of revenge upon Amelek for treachery many generations before; Saul goes upon the expedition, brings back Agag with him, and disobeys the prophet's orders in other respects. From that disobedience his ruin dates. Samuel had a most unaccountable animosity to Agag, so that he hewed him in pieces with his own hands. The presumption is, that he had corrupted Saul by the evil example of his Amalekite ways. Next, we have the appearance of David upon the scene, in the capacity of a harper, to soothe Saul's fits of fury and melancholy, when he was under the influence of the evil spirit. Dr. J. Moreau (de Tours) in his valuable work *Du Hachish et de l'Alienation Mentale*, Paris 1845, has shown that music has no effect upon the ordinary run of melancholics (pp. 84-85); the idea that it might be useful in lunatic asylums comes from the misunderstood example of David playing before Saul. But this idea, says Dr. Moreau, "belongs to the domain of comic opera"; not only so, "mais nous avons maudit souvent la harpe de David et l'hypochondrie de Saul, qui ont manifestement produit toutes les billevesees". The only kind of mental alienation that is influenced by music, as Dr. Moreau shows farther, is that due to the intoxication of hachish -- "la puissante influence qu'exerce la musique sur ceux qui ont pris du hachish... La musique la plus grossiere, les simples vibrations des cordes d'une harpe ou d'une guitare vous exaltent jusqu' au delire ou vous plongent dans une douce melancholie". And yet Dr. Moreau does not suggest that Saul's susceptibility to the music of David's harp was owing to the fact that his "evil spirit" was hachish. The inference seems to obvious to have been missed, after he had distinguished between ordinary melancholia and hachish-intoxication in regard to the effects of music; and yet I do not find any such diagnosis of Saul's malady in any part of his book. That diagnosis is not only consistent with several things told of his malady, but is also elucidative of his ruined career. The sudden throwing of his javelin at David as he played before him is as graphic an illustration as could be given, of the ungovernable fits of temper which hachish produces. Also the extraordinary exhibition that Saul makes of himself in the end of chapter 19 is best understood as a fit of drunkenness. But the most significant, as well as the most pathetic, of all, is the failure of his courage on the night before the battle of Gilboa. Here we see the stalwart hero of the people with his nerves shattered by intoxicants now no longer able to stimulate him: "And when Saul saw the host of the Philistines he was afraid, and his heart greatly trembled". Those who are acquainted with Robert Browning's poem "Saul", will see how well the hypothesis of hachish fits in with the poet's conception of a heroic life wrecked by some mysterious "error". That he and Jonathan should have been practicing in secret that which was taboo to the people at large, is exactly parallel with Saul's secret dealings in witchcraft, against which there was a public law. It is also of the same kind as the evils against which Samuel is reported to have cautioned the people when they demanded kingly rule -- namely the autocratic self-indulgences of the palace. In his last desperate strait, Saul gets the witch to summon the spirit of Samuel, his old monitor; but Samuel is unable to help him; "Because thou obeyedst not the voice of the Lord, nor executedst his fierce wrath upon Amalek, therefore hath the Lord done this thing unto thee this day". It is always Amalek; and Amalek was just that tribe of Arabs, of the southern desert, who were engaged in the carrying trade between the Arabian gulf and Lower Egypt or the Mediterraneae, -- the trade in gold, and spices, and drugs: probably the same Arabs among whom the name of *hachashin* was found in the medieval period, and from whom the latinised name of *assassini* was brought to Europe by returning Crusaders. (Silvestre de Sacy, *l.c.*) In the two instances already given, the hemp-plant is pointed to somewhat plainly by the use of the Hebrew word for "wood" in association with the notion of "honey", the translators having evaded the point in both cases: in the one by rendering the single word, *yagar*, by *favus*, honeycomb, in the other by rendering the remarkable and unique compound name, *yagarah hadebash*, also by *favus*. In those instances, the hypothesis of hachish rests upon the sure basis of a phrase in the original text which is otherwise unintelligible. But, in the remaining instances, there is no such support for the hypothesis; there is only a degree of probability, which must take its chance with rival interpretations. The probability, in the case of Samson's riddle, arises from the cryptic association of "sweet" with "Strong", of honey with a lion; in the case of Daniel's apologue of Nebuchadnezzar's fall, it arises from the eating of "grass", the Semitic word having both a generic and a colloquial meaning (hachish), as well as from the introduction of the subjective perceptions of hachish intoxication as gigantic or grotesque objects.
cont...
THP
