The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth

by John Marco Allegro

Book Overview

Was Jesus of Nazareth a real historical person or a fictional character in a religious legend? What do the Dead Sea Scrolls reveal about the origins of Christianity? Has there been a conspiracy to suppress information in the Scrolls that contradicts traditional church teaching? John Allegro addresses these and many other intriguing questions in this fascinating account of what may be the most significant archaeological discovery of the twentieth century.As...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0879757574
• ISBN13: 9780879757571
• Release Date: March 1992
• Publisher: Prometheus Books
• Length: 278 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.3" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Paradigm

An excellent addition to any library. Not only does it grab the reader, but also provides plenty of examples to illustrate Allegro's assertions. You will quickly learn the "teacher of righteousness" found within the Dead Sea Scrolls is in fact a building block or prototype for a Jesus of Nazareth. Allegro's book offers invaluable insight to the origins of Christianity and the early Christian Church. With this information, it is clear why the Vatican wishes these documents were never found.

A Brilliant Author -Maligned and Martyred For the Truth

Book in excellent condition. Eisenman and Allegro, while not in full agreement, are obviously on the right track. Christianity is known to have begun in Israel by Jews. It is well known by those scholars who are not biased that early Christianity was boxed in by Jews and Rome. They chose Rome. And so anything resembling what Jesus (or what ever the title represents) preached died completely around 325 CE when Rome adopted it.

A gripping read

One of the most fascinating books I've ever read. I definitely give this book a 5 star rating. I spent 9 months of the last year researching Allegro's personal history, communicating with his family, etc., verifying accusations against Allegro, and investigating the personal history of those, like John Strugnell, who spent their lives in attempt to destroy Allegro's career. I've spent 12 years researching this field in total. John goes deep into pre-Christian Essene/gnostic history, and shows us how the fanatical Essene political leader the 'Teacher of Righteousness' was applied the attributes of more ancient theology such as astrotheology and shamanism/drug use talked about in our own research (search Pharmacratic Inquisition for a free demo video). From this "Teacher of Righteousness" we begin to see a three tear system of the current pervading religious dogma, and how, like ancient kings, the Teacher of Righteousness, who died in 88 BCE, was considered holy because he was closest to god's word, the semen and drugs, and labeled the anointed "Christ." Quote: "Essene or Essenoi or Essaoioi means `physician'. Although the name `Essene' was known only in its transliterated Greek forms, Essenoi, or Essaioi, there seemed good reason to believe it represented an Aramaic, ie Semitic, word meaning `Physician' (`asa', plural `asayya'), and reflected the popular idea that these pious people, like Jesus and his followers, exercised power of demons, an essential part of folk-medicine." Pg 12 Though he does not go as in depth into the drug use of these groups as he did in (the contested, and fabulous work) / The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, / he does make many references to drugs, and he does delve deep into the sun/Morning-star worship (the Morning-star was Venus and named Lucifer) of the Essenes (meaning 'Physicians'), and their fertility rites. He explains in depth just how the name 'Christian' (Christ) is derived from chrism (semen anointing), and the correlation of the Sun and the Morning-star and their correlation to morning 'dew', and rain as being the Sky Gods' semen, which impregnated the mother earth--from which the most powerful drug plants had the most of God's seed. --- Quotes: "In any fertility religion it is the god who is responsible for impregnating Mother Earth and the wombs of women and animals. This life-giving force was then, naturally enough, associated with rain and with sperm, and the god within the thunder-storm also motivated the sexual urge in man and beast. It was thought that menstrual blood had a similar potency to that of seminal fluid, and that it was the combination of the two in the womb that produced offspring." Pg. 118 "The semen of the fertility god could be seen spurting as rain from heaving during an orgasmic thunderstorm; in concentrated form it appeared in certain powerful plants like the Mandrake, or Holy Plant, identified in many cultures with the sacred fungus, Amanita muscaria, or in the aromati

Probably the best book I ever read on the subject

I have read many books about Christianity and Jesus historic discussion; besides that I watch every Tv program that discusses this time of history. I read the portuguese translation of this book. Well, I have to say that this is, probably, the best book I ever read on the subject. Allegro became a largely polemic historian when he spoke about his theory that the New Testament episodes were evoked by mushrooms' consumption and not by real events. Unlike Kersten, Messadié and other polemical authors, John Allegro doesn't fall in just an easy speculation completely without logic and strong historical evidence. No, Allegro knows deeply the religious background of the Essenians and other Near-East cults. He can so easily describe the rituals and beliefs of those strange gnostic movements that one feels like we're actually reliving those past times with them: the reader can see the Ancient World through the eyes and words of John Allegro. Although, the majority of historians believe that Jesus really existed, even if some of the events written in the New Testament may have not happened like that, there is one thing that must be stated: we found no strong proof of Jesus existence to this day. There is no record of Jesus from his age. The original Gospels were only written some 40 or 50 years after Jesus death and may have been badly translated by the posterior Gentile christians: we can read only the remains of the greek Gospels and never the originals (if there were any real originals). The 1st century roman and jewish historians don't know anything of importance about Jesus, even though they knew of the Christian movement. Even the early III century's Catholic Christian patriarchs seem to be greatly ignorant of their early antecessors history and do not provide any actually historical background of the age or for the original Hebrew records: any knowledge of the real events of the past is lost to them and only tradition remains. Most of the Testimonium Flavianum of Flavius Josephus is know believed to have been forged by some Christian copist and doesn't still represent a strong argument to Jesus existence, because Josephus could have been deceived by some popular stories told by the Christian tradition which may not be historically true. Besides, the stories spoken in the Gospels seem to be intended mostly for preaching and not for historical background: many of the events and rituals described in essential episodes don't match our knowledge of the age. Pilatos wasn't a coward governor afraid of cruxifying a Jewish rebel and Pilatos didn't convert to Christianism like the sayings of the Christian tradition: Pilatos was dimissed by the Emperor by his excessive ruthlessness towards the people in 36 and committed suicide in Vienna shortly after; there wasn't any roman census at the time of Herodes (because Judea wasn't a roman province at the time); there isn't any evidence about a roman tradition of releasing a pr