His colleagues in Jerusalem immediately responded with a letter to the Times on 16 March 1956 refuting his claim. But it was after the publication of two of his books, The Dead Sea Scrolls (1958) and The People of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1958) – both widely regarded as the most authoritative on the subject – that things began to unravel.

The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross sets out John Allegro's quest through a family tree of languages to find the truth about where Christianity came from. For example, when one of the apostles says he teaches "Christ crucified, a stumbling block for the gentiles and a folly for the Jews", the author shows how 'stumbling block' and 'folly' can both be puns for mushroom names. And I think we do have to consider the good possibility that the culture of ancient Sumer and the Sumerian language was influential upon later bronze age civilizations, which in turn would have been influential upon iron age civilizations. The book of Isaiah is a so very important part of the Dead Sea Scrolls, especially chapter 53, which prophecies about Christ.

No, it was to prove that mushrooms are a gatekeeper to a wealth of silent knowledge which may or may not have brought about Christianity. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. The historian Dr Henry Chadwick wrote in the Daily Telegraph that there was “no particle of evidence for all this exciting conjecture. This is a forum for discussion of academic biblical studies; including historical criticism, textual criticism, and the history of ancient Judaism, early Christianity and the ancient Near East.

What I could appreciate, however, was Allegro's defense of the notion that much of what appears to be obscure and outrageous ancient religious literature is, in fact, experientially based and relevant to the concerns of real life. The bulk of his work on the Dead Sea Scrolls was done by 1960 and he was at odds with his scrolls colleagues. The group that found these texts, took them up, and built them into The New Testament didn’t understand that they were parables, allegories, and fables rife with hidden messages, word-plays, and covert meanings.The sacred mushroom was at the center of the Israeli cult(s), it was their god-endowed plant that gave them temporary access to heaven and immortality.