A recent article about the validity of Moses' experience of God looked set to divide opinion, but after hitting the headlines has drifted into obscurity.
Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, caused controversy with his theory that many events in the life of Moses aren’t divine but were the result of narcotic substances.
Yet in a very short space of time, his views have been dismissed as nonsense and disappeared from view.
The Story of Moses
The life of Moses is well known through both the Christian and Jewish traditions as well as Islam, and Moses is an important prophet in all three religions.
An Israelite raised as an Egyptian after being placed in a basket on the river, Moses was chosen by God to lead his people to freedom, and God appeared to him as a burning bush and a pillar of cloud as he guided them to safety from under Pharaoh’s rule.
With God’s power, Moses parted the Red Sea as he led the slaves into the desert. It was after wandering across the sand and keeping faith with God that Moses climbed Mount Sinai to collect the Ten Commandments.
How the Professor Explains the Story
While Professor Shanon doesn’t necessarily dispute the events, he told Israeli public radio: “As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don't believe, or a legend, which I don't believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics.” (Quoted from Yahoo News)
He also suggests that Moses was intoxicated when he claims to have seen the burning bush, as were the numerous people in the Bible who claim to have “seen” sounds.
Shanon bases his conclusions, published in Time and Mind journal of philosophy, on his own experiences of drug use in the Amazon jungle 17 years ago. Believing that drug use was common in Biblical times, he says that the bark of the acacia tree, which is frequently mentioned in the Bible, contains psychotropic qualities.
What This Means for Western Religions
Despite an obvious link with Rastafarianism and communication with God through drug use, most people reject Shanon’s “research” as nothing more than fiction itself. Maybe it wouldn’t be too much to suggest that Shanon was drug-induced when he wrote this paper.
For the more serious religious people, this publication is nothing more than a hypothesis at best. One person’s opinion doesn’t make a fact and there’s likely to be more debate among atheists and agnostics about the actual existence of Moses rather than whether he experienced God or not.
