NO UPHEAVAL AS OF YET

A distinguished British scholar John M. Allegro has written a sensational book that is certain to cause the greatest upheaval in orthodox Christian thinking since Charles Darwin said Man was descended from the ape.

For he not only argues the non-existence of Jesus Christ and the Apostles, but claims that Christianity itself – as well as Judaism and other religions of the near and Middle East—are no more than hangovers from an ancient fertility cult.

Such a claim, such a challenge, to orthodox belief, coming as it does from one of the country’s leading experts in his field, is something of a religious H-bomb—threatening a shattering fall-out.

The controversy it will arouse must certainly lead to furious and acrimonious debates and schisms that will divide, not only Christians but Jews, Mohammedans and others whose religions have their origins in the areas covered by Mr. Allegro’s researches.

It is a fundamental challenge. To many it might suggest not only that there was no Christ or Moses.

“When I left the Royal Navy in 1947 I began to train for the Methodist Ministry as a theological student at Manchester University. This led me to a study of the ancient Semitic languages – including Old Testament Hebrew and Aramaic—and I became progressively more interested in the language and less in theology.

“Then came my appointment as the first British representative on the Dead Sea Scrolls editing team in Jerusalem.

From my work on these texts, the next step was a re-examination of New Testament names and titles, and to the realization that more lay behind them than was generally appreciated.

“And so I probed deeper—to the very beginnings of civilization. To Sumeria.

-Sunday Mirror
April 5th, 1970