The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth

The binding on my book completely failed when I opened the cover of the book. Not one page stayed in place. But, it didnt prevent me from finishing this exceptional book.

Love the way the book is preserved. Well done! Far exceeds my expectations. Proud of you people in Amazon! Keep up the good work!

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 prisoner by the time of Easter (and it is most unlikely that something like that could happen in a Roman Province) and the Jewish law forbids the Sinedrius of arresting and executing people during Easter time (it is very doubtful that such a transgression of the Law should be made by the Sinedrius). Well, Allegro doesn't talk about many similarities between Christian beliefs and the cults of Dyonisius and Mythra, much popular at the time. But he gives us an interesting perspective. An ancient parchment of the Gospel of Marcos was found in Qumran. Many of the beliefs of the Essenians ressemble early christianity and the Teacher of Righteousness life also reminds us of the Jesus tale. Allegro explores with great insight the rituals and life in Qumran, concluding that the christian tales appeared after the fall of Qumran, when the group dispersed itself. The tales of Christ must have been symbolic lessons told by a group of former Essenians, and some people which adopted the christian beliefs - without understanding the mystic order of these tales - thought them to be entirely true. And so the greatest fraud of History was born... Allegro knows what he's talking about and is a recognized scholar, whose knowdlege of ancient languages remains one of the best among archaelogists. His logic and cohesion of speech is unmatched. He bases his thesis on hard evidence, doesn't create absurd historical events (like Kersten) and a profound analysis of gnostic beliefs. This is a quite reasonable perspective of the ideas and forces behind early Christianity. We should be thankful for Allegro! Even if his thesis may not be 100% enlightening - some questions still remain to be answered - he has shown us another way of looking at the Christian problem. Making people think about the past is never a bad deed!16th of April, 1999

Eisenman in his "James, brother of Jesus" hypothesizes that James the Just is the righteous teacher in the dead sea scrolls and that Paul is the wicked priest. John Allegro before him hypothesized a bit differently; He says the wicked priest is some former Greek ruler and Jesus was the righteous teacher; only, this Jesus was crucified long before the Jesus Christ of the New Testament - like around 88 B.C.I havn't read Eisenman's work yet. I've read Finkelstein's "The Bible UnEarthed", Earl Doherty's "The Jesus Puzzle", and Acharya S's "Christ in Egypt." I think I'm making good time! Well, now, I've read John Allegro's little book here. I feel like I've read maybe the inspiration for Eisenman's work; the question is who's right about who the righteous teacher and the wicked priest is?The above issue is probably what whould stop most people from reading this great, well written book today. I don't know about all his details; he sometimes doesn't give a reference to some of his points; but, more often than not, he gives references to primary sources; you do that in this business and you've got to take it somewhat seriously. The only thing that mythology can point to is printed words and ruins; so, how seriously can you ever take anything about this Bible stuff? If you can get a reference to a primary source . . . ;He of course cannot talk about all aspects of the dead sea scrolls since they were not released in his lifetime; but, what he does is show the culture of the dead sea scrolls writers, and he makes key connections. I mean if your new to this stuff as I was you'll look at the chapter headings and feel like your diving into some meaningless culture; but, each chapter points to the next; what's said in one chapter often makes sense of the chapter heading coming right up. It was something I found in the way he structured the book. I mean what he did in this book was to just give a bare outline hint that the essenes could indeed have evolved into proto-christianity. He could do no more during the time he lived!He just seems to find little threads based on primary references and shows connections all the way to the New Testament. In the end, he mentions that the New Testament notes all kinds of slang and code words for spells and so on; but, he does not begin to show those. Maybe those are in his Jesus is a Mushroom book(oh boy, I have read yet another thousand page tomb!)All in all, I'm thinking this book may have been the inspiration for Eisenman's works.Also, his last chapter is more about philosophy and suggesting that maybe we shouldn't be so harsh on the writers of the New Testament; he notes that they seemed to be torn between keeping their religion pure and for the individual and making one religion to rule the world. He notes that some of the pro-roman tax paying appears to be more of a compromise; that they seemed to be reluctant to put that in there.I myself have found that there are things to appreciate about this whole Judao-Christian religion; that it is solar-theology personified(the Bible starts out with saying god is for controlling the stars and signs . . . astrotheology right there!). I've spent a lot of my life trying to understand the nature and origin of mathematical concepts. And abstraction is certainly a major feature. Abstraction is the common form that many similar structures can take on. The quick and easy example is that two apples and two oranges are just to concrete structures of the abstraction number two. Jesus Christ is just the common form of the solar theology of the mediterraenean back then.It's nice that Jesus Christ can be viewed this way; but, I don't like how Jesus Christ and God are ultimately used; they are ultimately just vague words used to explain away everything without explaining anything. Jesus Christ is the Alpha and Omega; he's everything he needs to be. Whether good or bad happens, god(and even Jesus Christ) did it; if it's something that is perceived at one time to be bad, the common mental trick is to say "god works in mysterious ways."See, In 1931, Kurt Godel proved these 'incompleteness' theorems about logic in general. He said that a finite set of axioms cannot prove an infinity of truths. This is assukming those axioms are consistent. If they are inconsistent, then they can prove an infinity of truths! They can prove everything including all inconsistent statements. This is what God is ultimately, an algebraic X standing for I don't know and I don't want to know. The trinity of gods but one god anyway is more proof of the inconstent statements that christianity for one uses to sweep all problems under the rug.I point out because people want to find silver linings in all this disproof of the Bible and religion in general. I mean you can show all this to bible-philies all you want; it's not what they're in it for. And also, that trying to get closure on this is almost impossible; this is the only closure; that it is a vagueness trick. You, they did, could spend the rest of eternity going through textual interpretation; it's a kind of inconsistent psuedo-mathematics that can absorb the energies of humanity. Humanity is obviously the technologically dependent species; we need to learn the universe to survive. Spending forever in this inconsitent statements trying to get every nuance out of it is futile; it is an infinit bottomless pit; it's a trap that you can get addicted to. Mathematics, the exporation of the universe is the real purpose of humanity. This is what's wrong with the bible then and now.After reading John Allegro's book, do you really want to read Eisenman's stuff? Maybe you could be disciplined and find time when you get stuck on some mathematical problem; or, maybe you're waiting for some experimental results to come in, you could dabble some more in this bible. But, this book is a trap; it's like quicksand. It's like being addicted to gambling. You'll think you'll find Jesus Christ or lay the thing to rest - finally. But, no, you won't; it's an inconsistent statement that can prove every contradictory statement forever; it's just literary commentary on top of literary commentary; that's what the bible is; Joseph of Genesis, then Joseph who goes around conquering canaan, and then Joseph of the New Testament, or in greek, Jesus. It's just literary commentary on top of . . . forever;

Ce livre est constitué de scan rendant sa lecture fastidieuse et ne permettant pas les nombreuses facilités (surlignage par exemple) des vrais format kindle.

Product was advertised as used but came in mint condition! Delivery was fast and no surprises. Great value too.

Very good, Allegro is brilliant.

Interesting read, its quite thick with detail, however it feels needed.

I’ve been waiting for the Kindle version for a while, and… It’s very poor and requires zooming on each page… Very disappointed.