Wednesday, March 26, 2008

BENNY SHANNON wants to correct the record:
I never said Moses was stoned when he saw God

Words such as 'trip' and 'high' misrepresent my work on psychoactive plants, says Benny Shanon

* Benny Shanon
* The Guardian,
* Wednesday March 26 2008
* Article history

The Guardian ran two articles on my work concerning the putative use of psychoactive plants in ancient Israel (Moses saw God 'because he was stoned - again', March 6; Face to Faith, March 8). Your news report conveys a picture very different from the one I present in the scientific journal Time and Mind, which is devoted to the history of culture and consciousness. Your report contains words and sentences I have neither written nor uttered, some introduced in quotation marks as if coming from me. Terms such as "drug", "trip", "high" and "stoned" are ones I have nothing to do with and which I do not condone.

Moreover, your first report suffers from some basic misunderstandings of my crucial arguments. ...
Background here and here.