love & kisses {cure as cure can}


The Wisdom of Ben Sira, which was composed at or around 185 BCE, contains a beautiful chapter in which Ben Sira praises doctors and the science of medicine. He is referring to conventional medicine, not
some "alternative" medicine, though the latter was very common in the ancient world, so much so that it was difficult to distinguish between "conventional" medicine & medicine that involved exorcism and spirits.

This distinction will become clearer when we examine the medicine praticed in the Essene sect, which has tightly been identified as the group that lived at Qumran. Following the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls,
it became evident that this famous community grew out of a broader apocalyptic movement. This commu-nity composed a number of literary worls, including Jubilees (from the second century BCE), the texts that make up 1 Enoch, a rough contemporary of Jubilees that displays a great deal of similarity from a literary & other perspectives, in its literary & religeous aspects, and the scroll known as the Genesis Apocryphon, discovered at Qumran. Starting with Josephus' account of the Essenes: he writes that they
"display an extraordinary interest in the writings of the ancients, singling out in particular those which make for the welfare of soul & body; with the help of these, & with a view to the treatment of diseases, they make investigations into medicinal roots and properties of stones."
Concerning the benefits and risks of different stones, this was an ancient view that still has its adherents today. For instance, the amethyst was thought to protect against inebriation ~ indeed, the name amethyst is Greek for 'no inebriation.' What were the ancient texts from which the Essenes learned to cure illnesses?

The Essenes undoubtedly possessed the Book of Cures that Noah supposedly passed down to his son, Shem. We learn of such a 'Noah Book' from Jubilees, Hebrew fragments of which were uncovered in the Qumran caves. According to Jubilees, one of the angels taught Noah how to heal all diseases, so that he might use the plants of the earth to cure them:
"And the healing of all their illnesses together with their seductions we told Noah so that he might heal by means of herbs of the earth. And Noah wrote verythings in a book just as we taught him according to every kind of healing ... and he gave everything which he wrote to Shem, his oldest son".
It is striking that this chapter has a rough parallel in the introduction to Sefer Assaf ha-Rofe {'The Book of Assaf, the Healer'} and scholars have not been able to explain how thia account found its way into a medieval Hebrew book. About Yehoshua haNatsri aka haMashiah has been told that he changed water into wine, mixed his spit with clay to smear on infected eyes, cast out evil spirits & cured all kinds of different diseases and illnesses during his travels all over Galilee, Levanon, Syria, Samaria/Shomron, the valley of the Yardeenriver & Judea ...

Sleep well, dream sweet & tell us all about it if you really want to do so! I will surely try to as long as I'm still alive and kicking: crossing borders, walking through minefields, visiting prisons make me appreciate
the power of our mind as much as the facts of life incorporated in bread & wine, doctors and their nurses.

engel
02 mei 2010 - bewerkt op 03 mei 2010 - meld ongepast verhaal
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Asih, man, 80 jaar
   
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