Sula Benet


Sara Benetowa, later known as Sula Benet, was a Polish anthropologist of the 20th century who studied Polish and Judaic customs and traditions.

Biography

Born in Warsaw, then part of the Russian Empire, Benet was fascinated with Polish peasant culture since her early youth. This interest eventually led her to enroll as a student of literature and philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities in the University of Warsaw, graduating with a degree in anthropology in 1935. She then attended graduate school at Columbia University, where she received her doctorate in 1944. Also at this time she first made known at a seminar in Warsaw her theory that "calamus" in the Bible is hemp.

Cannabis research

Benet discovered that the Biblical plants or spices "kaneh", "kaneh ha-tob", and "kaneh-bosem", which are usually translated as "sweet calamus" or "sweet cane", were actually hemp. "Kaneh-bosem" was an ingredient of the holy anointing oil:
This ingredient is, however, not mentioned amongst those prescribed in Ex. 30:34, from which the incense for the Temple was to be prepared.
According to Julius Wellhausen's documentary hypothesis, Ex. 30:23 belongs to a priestly source, composed sometime between the 8th and the mid-6th century B.C.
Based on similar words in cognate languages Benet concluded that "kaneh" and "kaneh-bosem" refer to hemp. In many ancient languages, including Hebrew, the root "kan" had a double meaning, both hemp and reed. The error originated from the oldest Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, in the third century B.C., where the terms "kaneh" and "kaneh-bosem" had been translated as "sweet kalamos". In the many Bible translations that followed, including Martin Luther's, the same error was repeated. Benet further claimed that the Scythians, who were described by Herodotus as ritual hemp users in the fifth century B.C., were at least one millennium older than has been previously assumed.
Sulah Benet's claim has found increased support in the academic community among lexicographers and botanists. The standard reference lexicons of Biblical Hebrew, and reference works on Hebrew Bible plants by scholars such as University of Jerusalem botanist Michael Zohary mention Benet's suggestion, while others argue the word refers to an either different species of hemp or a different plant entirely. Celsius has suggested sweet flag, which grows in Egypt, Judaea, and Syria, containing in its stalk a soft white pith with an agreeable aromatic smell, and forming an ingredient of the richest perfumes. Royle identified the "sweet cane" of Scripture with the Andropogon calamus, a plant extensively cultivated in India, from which an oil, deemed to be the famous spikenard of antiquity, is extracted. According to Boissier, "kaneh" was the common marsh reed, Arundo donax L. Some biblical scholars and botanists believe that the qaneh is probably sugarcane.
In Hebrew, "kanebas", "kanebiys", "kanebos", derived from Greek "kannabis", first appear in the Mishnah. The Jerusalem Talmud notes that while in mishnaic times hemp was an important commodity because of the difficulty of cultivating linen, in the days of the Amoraim linen replaced it.
THC-containing Cannabis has been found in a Jewish temple in Tel Arad as CNN had reported on May 28, 2020.
It had been burnt besides frankincense for a ritualistic form of what is known in the Cannabis culture
as hotboxing. It is also verifying Sula Benet's theory of Kaneh bosem as being
hemp.
Benet died in New York in 1982.
Her papers are held in New York University archives.

Works