I swear I once had a multiple choice test at school with a question about this and one of the options was "gold, frankincense and weed". One of my best friends sat next to me and we fucking lost it.
A dude can suddenly talk to God through a burning bush, and then continues to talk to him face to face in a double layered tent he goes into after anointing himself and whenever he's talking to God a cloud appears at the door? Sounds a lot like Herodotus talking about the Scythians anointing themselves, going into a tent, and burning cannabis inhaling the fumes...
It's not so inappropriate; in the middle east you can just buy a waterpipe (bong) anywhere. It's called a hookah or a shisha and it's the standard way they smoke tobacco.
And weed they also smoke weed with it because yes it is a bong.
The tobacco was introduced to the Old World only in 16th century, so the only thing the Biblical Magi could smoke with their shisha in year 4 B.C. was weed.
Oh yeah, I've seen multi-user ones that stand on the floor with multiple pipes coming out for instance. But like, functionally it still draws smoke through water to clean out the particulates and make it better to inhale. It is essentially the same device.
I always heard that you do not want to smoke pot with a hookah because you'll gunk up your nice glassware - get a proper bong instead, and just use shisha (the flavored tobacco) in the hookah.
Oh that's goooood. Those parents were probably snickering and trying to not laugh out loud for the whole play. 11/10 - improved the whole evening for sure.
Everyone was myrrhmuring about it and Mary was frankly incensed! Joseph and little Jessie had some golden father son bonding time with that thing a couple decades later, though.
Myrrh mixed with posca or wine was widely used in many ancient cultures to produce pleasurable feelings and as an anti-inflammatory and analgesic.
— The all-holy Wikipedia
Here in the modern age we forget just how much the diggity-dank (whether cannabis proper or whatever herb grows as a nearby weed) was important in human life and culture. Tobacco and coffee came late in history and heck we've almost forgotten about khat (which is a controlled substance in the US, probably because it would compete with coffee and tobacco if it were well known)
The only reason were not allowed to trip balls through our lives now is because it interferes with our industrial work. Seriously, the industrialists pressured states to restrict drugs because it slowed assembly lines.