I've read that book (although not cover-to-cover), and there are some interesting aspects to it, even though it has some serious flaws; but as you say, it is now at least 50 years old, and new discoveries and research throws * a lot* of older works into disarray. Can we still take on the ideas presented even if the presuppositions have been subsequently been shown to be false?

Anyway.... the point of your article is spot on.

Translation is everything — language creates chaos, as I wrote in a previous article.

I will however correct you on your translation of the greek word φαρμακεια.

The word can be used as a reference to 'one who poisons'. However the word means using substances; it is both 'poison' and 'medicine'. It was understood in the Greek (as it is today) that a substance can be have either effect, depending on how it is used.

Those with deep knowledge of bio-chemistry (and alchemy) would understand this paradox.

So the term would have referred to healers who used herbs and other physical substances to be ingested. These same people would have also made up 'poisons' for use in assassinations, and what not.

Why would the Hebrews been told not to "suffer an herbalist to live"?

Jan Assmann wrote a great book called Moses the Egyptian in which he spells out the evidence to show that Moses was trained in the Egyptian mysteries, and maybe even was Egyptian (not a Hebrew) who led a group of semitic-speaking people out of Egypt as a separatist movement. There is also suggestion that the man Jesus was also trained and educated in Egyptian sciences.

Both of them may well have been "witches". Strange that Hebrews and Christians alike are told to persecute such people, don't you think?