Origins of Cannabis Smoking | Hacker News Reader

Origins of Cannabis Smoking

advances.sciencemag.org

51 pointsconse_lad9 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20167586

Something I didn't see mentioned in either of the older threads: some people speculate that the mention of "sweet cane" in Exodus 30:23 is actually a misinterpretation and that it should actually be "cannabis". The literal Hebrew [1] is בֹ֖שֶׂם וּקְנֵה־ "ḇō·śem ū·qə·nêh-" or, rearranging that a bit, "qeneh-bosem", which looks a lot like "cannabis". If this speculation is true, it would indicate cannabis was used for religious ceremonies by the early Israelites.

[1] https://biblehub.com/interlinear/exodus/30-23.htm

The Hebrew word, בשם (fragrant, sweet), is used to describe cinnamon earlier in the same verse...

Yeah, and it's interesting how in English "cinnamon" and "cannabis" both start with "c*nna". Almost as if they're both using a common root.

http://www.balashon.com/2008/03/cinnamon.html

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%BA%CE%AC%CE%BD%CE%BD%CE%B...

They don't seem related from a non-scholar's perspective.

That first link looks like a long-winded way of saying "LOL who knows". I did find its conclusion pretty interesting, where it was suggested that cinnamon ultimately comes from an ancient Chinese word for "spice". Now what other meaning does the word "spice" carry these days? Synthetic cannabinoids!

What's amazing to me is that smoking with pipes or with leaves was unknown in the old world before Columbus.

Though, archaeology in India is massively underfunded. It wouldn't surprise me to find that smoking was much older than the 1500s...

Amusing to imagine a European encountering Tobacco from the New World for the first time. "What is this?" "It's tobacco, sir! Comes from the Redmen over the sea." "What do they do with it?" "Oh, they roll it up, stick it in their faces, and light it on fire."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20183942

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