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- This article is about the Biblical food "manna". See Mannaz for the rune; For the Eastern US organization, see Metropolitan AIDS Neighborhood Nutrition Alliance; for other uses, see Mana.
Manna (sometimes or archaically spelled mana) is the name of the food miraculously produced for the Israelites in the desert in the book of Exodus. Manna ceased to appear when the Israelites first harvested their crops in their new homeland. "Man hu", or "manna" in the Hebrew language is translated as "what is it". George Ebers (Durch Gosen zum Sinai, 1881, p. 236), derived "manna" from the Egyptian mennu, "food" (JE "Manna"). By extension "manna" has also been used to refer to any divine or spiritual nourishment.
Catholics see manna as a symbol of the Eucharist (Gospel of John, 6). When Paul calls the manna "spiritual food" (First Corinthians, 10:3), he alludes to its symbolical significance with regard to the Eucharist as much as to its miraculous character (CE "Manna"). The New Testament explains the relationship between manna and the original messianic apostles in John 6, when Jesus says `I am the bread of life`.Hebrews 9:4 demonstrates for the Christian that the sacred manna is the essence of the Holy.
According to Judeo-Christian tradition, the mysterious substance which was provided miraculously by God to the Hebrews during their forty years in the desert descended by night like hoarfrost in the form of coriander seed of the color of bdellium (Book of Numbers 11:7). It was collected before sunrise, before it melted in the sun. The people ground it, or pounded it, and then baked it (Num. 11:8). A double portion was to be found on the day before the sabbath, when none was to be found. When the Hebrews arrived at Gilgal, on the 14th of Nisan, and began to eat the grain grown there, the manna ceased.
[edit] Identifying manna
Some modern readers believe this may have been an edible cake called Shewbread or Showbread wafer or the sap of a variety of succulent plant found in the Sinai peninsula, which may have had appetite-suppressing effects (plants of the genus Alhagi are sometimes called "manna trees"). [1] Others have hypothesized that it was one of the species of kosher locusts found in the region. [2] The most widespread explanations, however, are either crystallized honeydew of scale insects feeding on tamarisk twigs, or thalli of the Manna Lichen (Lecanora esculenta).[3] At the turn of the 20th century local Arabs in Palestine collected the resin of the tamarisk as mann es-sama ("heavenly manna"), and sold it to pilgrims (JE "Manna").
Experts in the fields of Ethnomycology and Entheogens such as R. Gordon Wasson, John Marco Allegro and Terence McKenna have speculated, that just as with the sacred Hindu Rigvedas' repeatedly high praise of the miraculous food Soma or the Aztecs' Teonanacatl roughly translating as "flesh of god", some suggest psilocybe mushrooms as the prime candidate in Manna's accurate identification [4].
Immanuel Velikovsky hypothesized that manna consisted of a "hydrocarbon rain" that resulted from a close encounter between Venus and Earth. This claim has been debunked by Carl Sagan, Stephen J. Gould, and others.
[edit] Modern term
The term manna is also used in the modern context to refer to a secretion from various plants, including certain desert or semi-desert shrubs and especially the Ash Fraxinus ornus (manna or flowering ash) of Southern Europe. [5] The material is produced by sap-sucking insects that secrete a honeydew like liquid, that when dried forms manna; it has a sweet taste. Eaten in large quantities, it is mildly laxative and has been used medicinally for that purpose.[6]
[edit] Christian vegetarian view
According to the essay “The Semiotics of Food in the Bible,” by Jean Soler, the Creator (God) originally intended for man to only eat the food borne by plants such as fruits and vegetables. Plants were not considered “living” in part because they cannot move so “killing” them was not a sin. The manna that was given to the Hebrews during the exodus was vegetarian and as follows: “It was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafer made with honey” (Exodus 16:31). The Babylonian Talmud, however, presents a view that its taste varied depending on who ate it: "For the youth the manna tasted like bread, for the elderly like oil, and for the small children like honey" (Yoma 75b).
According to Judeo-Christian tradition, God originally intended for man to not eat meat. (Genesis 1:29) This changed, however, due to the Fall of Man. Eating of animals was prohibited at the beginning because in order to eat animal one must first kill it, and this was against God’s will. There are verses in other parts of the Bible that suggest heaven will return to that vegetarian system (Isaiah 11:6). People were, in time, permitted to eat only clean animals such as those that are strictly herbivorous, including sheep and cattle. (see Leviticus) Carnivorous animals and swine were considered unclean because they ate the blood of the animals they killed. The blood was considered the life that God gave and therefore only God has the rights to the blood.
[edit] Manna as a mushroom
It is the view of a minority that the biblical reference to manna refers to one of a number of entheogenic mushrooms. The use of entheogenic substances throughout history, from Native American Church Peyote, the Uniao de Vegital's ayahuasca, the Hindu and Sikh Soma and Amrit, and the Indo-Iranian Haoma seems to validate the biblical use of manna as a mystifying sumbstance of transcendent experience. (Mushrooms and Mankind)
Exodus 16:4 and 16:14 both describe characteristics of manna which are similar to that of a number of mushrooms.[6] For example The Bible as quoted in Exodus 16:14 reads:
- And when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, upon the face of the wilderness there lay a small round thing, as small as the hoar frost on the ground.
- And when the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another, It is manna: for they wist not what it was. And Moses said unto them, This is the bread which the Lord hath given you to eat.
[edit] References
- Mushrooms and Mankind : The Impact of Mushrooms on Human Consciousness and Religion by James Arthur [7]
- Magic Mushrooms in Religion and Alchemy by Clark Heinrich [8]
- The Mystery of Manna: The Psychedelic Sacrament of the Bible by Robert Forte [9]
- Food of the Gods : The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution by Terence Mckenna [10]
[edit] External links