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It sounds like the kind of claim designed to start an argument at Thanksgiving dinner: cannabis may be mentioned in the Bible.

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Maybe.

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The controversy centers on two ancient Hebrew words: kaneh-bosem (also transliterated qaneh-bosem). They appear in Exodus 30:23, where God gives Moses instructions for making the sacred anointing oil. The ingredients include myrrh, cinnamon, olive oil—and kaneh-bosem, commonly translated into English as “aromatic cane,” “sweet cane,” or “calamus.” But in the 20th century, Polish anthropologist Sula Benet proposed something considerably more provocative.

 

She argued that kaneh-bosem referred to cannabis. Benet believed the similarity between kaneh and ancient words associated with cannabis wasn't coincidence. She also argued that an early Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures rendered the plant incorrectly as calamus, with that identification then carrying forward into later Bible translations. 

 

If she was right, one of the ingredients in the sacred oil used to anoint priests and holy objects wasn't simply an aromatic reed. It was cannabis. And that's where this gets interesting. Not because Benet's interpretation has been proven—it hasn't.

 

Critics argue that the linguistic connection isn't strong enough. Standard biblical Hebrew scholarship has generally identified qaneh as some variety of aromatic reed or cane, and some scholars specifically reject Benet's proposed connection between kaneh-bosem and cannabis. Even Jewish scholar Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan treated the cannabis identification as a possibility, noting that some identify keneh bosem with hemp based on linguistic considerations, rather than presenting the identification as a settled fact. 

 

So no, we can't confidently rewrite Exodus: Myrrh. Cinnamon. Cannabis. Olive oil.

 

But we also don't have to pretend the question was invented on social media last Tuesday. It has been debated for decades, involving anthropology, Hebrew linguistics, biblical translation and the frustrating problem of identifying a plant from a word written thousands of years ago. And perhaps that's the most interesting part.

 

We tend to read ancient texts through modern definitions. Medicine. Drug. Sacred. Intoxicating. We put each word into its own tidy little box. Ancient people didn't necessarily have the same boxes. Whatever kaneh-bosem actually was, it was valuable enough to be named among the ingredients of one of the Bible's most sacred preparations.

 

Was it cannabis? Possibly.

Was it definitely cannabis? No.

But after several thousand years of translation, one little unidentified plant is still managing to cause quite a stir. And somehow, I suspect it would appreciate that.