Noah’s Pharmacopeia - Healer, Healing, Healed

In honor of Dr. Roland Griffiths, who passed this week, the Piacezner Rebbe, whose yartzeit was this past week and who guided us back to prophetic consciousness, and all those working with plants as medicine. 🪴

NOT in this week’s parsha, but from the extra-biblical the Book of Jubilees, a work from the 2nd Temple period, we learn of the mythic origin of sickness, medicine, and healing. According to Jubilees’ antediluvian account, Noah and his sons’ families divide the earth amongst themselves into territories, each taking an oath to honor each other's sovereignty. While humans promise to remain in peace, demonic forces begin to create death and destruction amongst them.

Noah, still the righteous leader of his generation, prays to God to remember His oath to protect humanity after the flood. The chief of the destructive spirits creates an Abrahamic-type bargain with God to allow one-tenth of the demons to remain if he, in turn, teaches humans how to use plants to heal themselves from the corrupting power of the demonic forces. Noah learns about the power to heal directly from the power to destroy, records this knowledge in a book, and entrusts it to his beloved son Shem, the progenitor of the ancestral line of Israel. According to Jubilees, the Jewish people possess knowledge and skill with plant medicines since the very beginning of time:

"The chief of the spirits, Mastêmâ, came and said: 'Lord, Creator, let some of [the demons] remain before me, and let them obey me, and do all that I shall say to them; for if some of them are not left to me, I shall not be able to execute the power of my will on humanity; for these are for corruption and leading astray before my judgment, for great is the wickedness of humanity..'

He said: Let the tenth part of them remain before him, and let nine parts descend into the underworld.' He commanded one of us to teach Noah all their medicines; for He knew that they would not walk in uprightness, nor strive in righteousness…We explained to Noah all the medicines of their diseases, together with their seductions, how he might heal them with herbs of the earth. Noah wrote down all things in a book as we instructed him concerning every kind of medicine. Thus the evil spirits were precluded from (hurting) the sons of Noah.He gave all that he had written to Shem, his eldest son; for he loved him exceedingly above all his sons." (Jub. 10:8-14).

This scene is, of course, completely missing from the Hebrew Bible’s narrative, as well as many of its theological features. Most importantly for me is the remarkable light the Book of Jubilees shines on the absence of an etiology of medicine and human-initiated healing within Torah itself. God is referred to as a “Healer,” who prevents the afflictions of Egypt to be visited upon the Jewish people when they maintain the conditions of the covenant. How God heals may be demonstrated by what precedes–a bush or branch is thrown into acrid waters of Marah, sweetening them and saving the people from thirst in the desert (Ex. 15:23). In several texts, God is prayed to or called upon to heal one’s self or another (Num. 12:13, et al.). There are only two instances of humans being described as ‘healers’ or ‘physicians.’ The first is the Egyptians who embalm the deceased Hebrew patriarch Jacob–given that the patient is quite dead, perhaps there is not much more to say about this example (Gen 50:2). The second is mentioned from the mouth of the exasperated Jeremiah, condemning the degradation of Israelite society, and crying “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician to be found? Why has healing not yet come to my people?” (Jer. 8:22). Here, Jeremiah uses an ironic metaphor–those with effective measures to return Israel to its former righteousness are in plentiful supply, making their castigation even more acute–-they simply continue to refuse treatment.

In Tanakh, sickness and healing are largely initiated by Divine punishment or favor, although healing can be effectuated by a human intercessor. This healing can bring people back from the brink of death, turn brackish water sweet, mend broken hearts and bones, or cure the existential condition of an entire nation. The most detailed discussion of healing throughout the Hebrew Bible focuses on the tzaraat disease, which affects humans and objects alike. While the priests are actively involved in examining the infection and positively identifying it, it is not for the sake of providing treatment, only for maintaining the holiness of the sanctuary by declaring someone ritually unfit for sacrificial worship, and performing the ritual to purifying them once the tzaarat is gone. Like several examples within the Levitical tradition, Divine action is often represented with niphal verbal forms, attributing an impersonal, almost passive quality–without explicitly mentioning a therapeutic agent or mechanism, the tzaarat is simply “healed” (Lev. 13:18, 27 et al.)

Specific medicine applications of plants are nearly unmentioned in the Hebrew Bible. Aside from the metaphorical abstraction of “balm–tzari,” discussed above, the only treatment we learn of is figs, which are prescribed as a remedy for curing boils (Is. 38:21). If there is a direct connection between Rachel’s stated barrenness, her bargain with Leah to acquire Reuven’s mandrakes, and her conceiving of Yosef (Gen. 30:14-24), the text does not disclose their direct or apotropaic healing powers. One final reference to plant medicine exists, but only as a telos of the building of the third Temple and a revivification of the mythic spring which once flowed and watered the Garden at the beginning of time (Ez. 47:12). This new Edenic river produces trees whose fruit yields will end the ancient preoccupation with food scarcity and whose leaves will be used for healing, making medicine available to anyone who is ill. This messianic vision entails everyone having exactly what they need, as often as they need it.

While there is scant textual material to demonstrate a well-developed Biblical approach to medicine, it is hard to fathom that there weren’t lineages of Israelite apothecaries with their particular traditions for healing–with plants, and prayer, and rituals. Like other inter-Jewish disputes, perhaps the book of Jubilees came to provide a mythic source for these cures, or perhaps for the idea of using medicine at all. This tension continues into the rabbinic period, where voices over time continue to wrestle with faith in God as healer over human agency and obligation to heal the sick.

Jubilees did not make it into the rabbinic canon (although its authority was accepted by the Ethiopian Jewish community), and seeking medical attention is far and away no longer a debate among contemporary Jews. Yet, I wonder about how the current discussion about incorporating psychoactive plant medicines into the Jewish spiritual–and healing–tradition would shift if we had Noah’s Pharmacopeia, the book, or even the story, as a founding myth of our people. As students of Noah, what would our relationship to pain, suffering, and trauma be like? What would be the nature of our relationship to the natural world, the source of our medicines? Our songs, our liturgies, our rituals, our Torah–would they be seen as medicine just as readily?

In this time of upheaval, dis-ease, and despair, let us become b'nai Noach again, for the sake of our bodies, our communities, and our planet.