Of the historical material indicating the Hebraic use of cannabis, the strongest and most profound piece of evidence was established in 1936 by Sula Benet (aka Sara Benetowa), a Polish etymologist from the Institute of Anthropological Sciences in Warsaw.
Benet later stated that:
"In the original Hebrew text of the Old Testament there are references to hemp, both as incense, which was an integral part of religious celebration, and as an intoxicant".
(Benet 1975)
Through comparative etymological study, Bennett documented that in the Old Testament and in its Aramaic translation, the Targum Onculos, hemp is referred to as kaneh bosm, which is also rendered in traditional Hebrew as kannabos or kannabus.
The root "kan" in this construction means "reed" or "hemp", while "bosm" means "aromatic".
This word appeared in,
Exodus 30:23
Song of Songs 4:14.
Isaiah 43:24
Jeremiah 6:20
Ezekiel 27:19
In 1980 the Hebrew University in Israel confirmed Benet's identification of Kaneh-Bosm as hemp, and the respected anthropologist Weston La Barre (1980) referred to the Biblical references in an essay on cannabis.
In that same year respected British Journal New Scientist also ran a story that referred to the Hebrew Old Testament references, (Malyon & Henman 1980).
A modern counterpart of the word is even listed in Ben Yehudas Pocket Dictionary and other Hebrew source books. Further, on line, the Internet's informative Navigating the Bible, used by countless theological students, even refers to the Exodus 30:23 reference as possibly designating cannabis.
In 1995, with the publication of Green Gold, the biblical references to cannabis were given their most thorough examination up to that time, but unfortunately this information is still not widely known by most modern day Jews, Christians or religious scholars."