When Moses brought the Ten Commandments down from Mount Sinai, he may have been high on a hallucinogenic plant, according to a new study by an Israeli psychology professor.

Reader support makes our work possible. Donate today to keep our site free. All donations TRIPLED!

The thunder, lightning and blaring of a trumpet which the Book of Exodus says emanated from Mount Sinai could just have been the imaginings of a people in an "altered state of awareness," [Benny Shanon of Jerusalem’s Hebrew University] hypothesized.

Lurking behind this story seems to be the assumption that if Moses was on hallucinogens, then he wasn’t experiencing the divine. But what’s the basis for that inference?