Sex, Drugs , Violence and the Bible
By Chris Bennett and Neil McQueen

The Christ

As we know, one of the main ingredients of the anointing oil was cannabis. There was enough cannabis used to make this oil a very powerful psychoactive. As well as being used by Moses, Aaron, and the priests of the Levites, whose station was conferred by the use of the anointing oil, anointment also came to be the means of coronating the new kings of Israel and Judah. All those who experienced the anointing oil first hand were then known as the anointed or in Hebrew the messiah.

This is a term that may be familiar to many of us. But it is with this title that there lies a surprise. For the Hebrew term messiah translates into English as "anointed one"; while in Greek it is none other than "Christ". Christ, like Messiah, means anointed one. In order to be the Christ one had to have been anointed. If he hadn't been anointed he never would have been the Christ.

As we have seen the anointing oil went out of practice following the return of the exiles from Babylon, a decline that continued through the Maccabean revolts and the Roman occupation where there are only scanty references to the oil. But there is ample evidence that Jesus re-introduced the psychoactive anointing oil and that it was in common usage among the early Christians. as the Christ or Anointed One this may hold the key to the central mystery of his life.

The polemical writings of many of the early Church fathers gives us one view into the lives, beliefs and practices of the "heretical" Gnostics. To these early dogmatists the Gnostics were following a patently false view of Jesus and had to be either corrected or wiped out. But it through there writings that we can see that indeed the anointing oil was held in special reverence by the Gnostics and that there was a special power within it that they viewed as being very important:

"Celsus reports of the Ophite Gnostics that they possessed a 'seal' the recipient of which was made a 'son' of the 'Father'; his response was: 'I have been anointed with the ointment from the tree of life.... In some [Gnostic] texts like the Pistis Sophia and the Books of Jeu [Ieou] the 'spiritual ointment' is a prerequisite for entry into the pleroma, by which the highest 'mystery' is meant." (Rudolph 1987) Likewise the Naasenes "claimed to be the true Christians because they were anointed with the 'ineffable chrism,' poured out by the serpentine 'horn of plenty'"(Mead 1900). In the Gnostic viewpoint, as recorded in the Gospel of Philip, the pseudo-initiates of the empty rite of Baptism "go down into the water and come up without having received anything,". Here we can see that baptism which became so central to the notion of being "saved" in Catholic Christianity wasn't viewed with the same reverence as the anointing oil, or the "chrism" by the Gnostics. To the Gnostics it is the anointing oil that holds the key to grace:

"There is water in water, there is fire in chrism." Gospel of Philip. "The anointing with oil was the introduction of the candidate into unfading bliss, thus becoming a Christ" (Mead 1900).

Indeed the Gnostic tractate the Gospel of Philip records that the " anointing chrism is superior to baptism. For from the anointing we were called 'anointed ones' (Christians), not because of the baptism. And Christ also was (so) named because of the anointing, for the Father anointed the son, and the son anointed the apostles, and the apostles anointed us. He (therefore) who has been anointed has the All. He has the resurrection, the light, the cross, the Holy Spirit..." Throughout the text "light" is "associated usually with chrism" (Isenberg 1978) , and it is stated that if "one receives this unction...this person is no longer a Christian but a Christ" (Gospel of Philip). Similarly, The Gospel of Truth records that Jesus specifically came into their midst so that he "might anoint them with the ointment. The ointment is the mercy of the Father...those whom he has anointed are the ones who have become perfect".

Likewise the early Christians were Christians because and only because they had been anointed with the holy anointing oil.

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