In looking over the Dead Sea Scrolls I became aware
of John Allegro. This story I am about to tell is tinged
with a little humor. I think it is funny.

I bought The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth
by John M. Allegro. It was not really that informative because
I had read "the same" somewhere before. However, on page 19 Allegro
write's, ... W.N. Ewer's quip, How odd of God to choose
the Jews. I recognized a sense of humor and that is
always helpful.

On page 69 he writes, ... there appears a mysterious king of
Salem called Melchizedek, 'King of Righteousness', to whom even
the patriot Abraham does obeisance and pays tithes. He is said
to be priest of El Elyon, 'God Most High', although he
is no where else mentioned in Biblical history.

On page 72 he continues, "The Fourth Gospel Similarly locates a
Salim in the Jordan Valley, near the scene of John the
Baptist's activities at Aenon, 'where there was much water'
(John 3:23)

[Offa; what Allegro is discovering is the multiple names for
locations ascribed to by Josephus (Book 13-313). John the
Baptist was baptizing in the Kidron valley which is also called
the Jordan Valley. This Salim (or Salem) is going to be Qumran.]

Allegro goes on (bottom of page 72). So much for what we may
call the 'realities' of biblical topography. But we have at this
point to remind ourselves that where the Essenes are
concerned we are not dealing so much with locational actualities,
based upon physical geography, comparative weight of rival
traditions, similarities between modern place-names and their
ancient counterparts, archaeological surroundings, and all the
rest of the modern topographer's apparatus for locating biblical
sites, but with religious symbolism and typology. We are in a
shadowy half-world, where hard facts of history fade of into
mythology, and where the clear dividing line we like to draw
between fact and fiction has no place in religious speculation.
If a sacred site can be shown from features identified with some
natural, or unnatural, formation on the ground, then that is
sufficient to warrant its acceptance in such circles, no matter
how much better support could be advanced on rational grounds
for alternative locations.

[Offa, Allegro is on the right tract.]

Allegro goes on to describe an apparent alternate location for
Mount Gerizum. This mountain is supposed to be located some
thirty miles north of Jerusalem and near Shechem.

John Allegro, page 74;However there is a text in the book of
Deuteronomy which, read literally in the present form, seems to
offer an alternative location for Mount Gerizum, and one that is
much nearer the site of the Israelites' crossing-place into the
Promised Land, by ancient Jericho.

Deu 11:29 And it shall come to pass, when the LORD thy God
hath brought thee in unto the land whither thou goest to
possess it, that thou shalt put the blessing upon mount
Gerizim, and the curse upon mount Ebal.

Deu 11:30 Are they not on the other side Jordan, by the
way where the sun goeth down, in the land of the
Canaanites, which dwell in the champaign over against
Gilgal, beside the plains of Moreh?

John Allegro, page 74; The plain meaning of this passage can only
be that Mount Gerizum lay just across the fords of the Jordan,
near Gilgal, which lay between Jericho and the river, ...

Offa; I was really getting into Allegro. Did he know about multiple
names for locations? did he know pesher? Alas, The rest of the
book went nowhere. He was just another fundie.

The humorous part was that I just had to have the book The Sacred
Mushroom and the Cross so I went to www.amazon.com and looked
for it. It cost me $70.00 and what a waste? Isn't that funny?
Remember that Christmas story about that little kid that had to
have the Red Ryder bb gun, "you'll shoot your eye out kid!"
I know the feeling!

The reason for this story is to show another reference for multiple
locations and names.

thanks, offa

P.S. Allegro did not realize that this Mount Gerizum is actually
near to Qumran and is the same mountain where Judas Iscariot as
Satan offered Jesus the world.

Offa, is there any relationship between Morton Smith's work and Allegro's?

Michael

Michael,
I may be getting a lesson here as far as Morton Smith
is concerned. The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross was
published in 1970. Professor Morton Smith published The
Secret Gospel in 1974. Allegro's The Dead Sea
Scrolls and the Christian Myth was first published in
1984 and a revised edition (my copy) was published in 1992.

I was not interested in Morton Smith until about now. I
guess I will put him on a back-burner. Allegro write's about
The Secret Gospel in Appendix 2 of the 1992
edition. The sacred mushroom story is about "a mystery
religion involving drug taking and frenzied god-possessed
orgies with political overtones." <-that was taken off
the book cover. Allegro writes in Appendix 2 the
following (regarding Smith's findings) "Further references
also make it seem that Jesus was understood to have indulged
in possibly homosexual practices concerned with a particular
form of baptism."

I am not really concerned with what Allegro writes concerning
these hypothesis'. I realize that he was a fundie
(understood only the ideal language). I have not read Morton
Smith and the reviews I have read have steered me away from
him. I believe I read somewhere that he discovered some
sacred documents then misplaced them. (I do not buy snake-oil).

So Michael, in answer to your question I believe Allegro had
these thoughts and did read Morton Smith after the fact and
then he may have changed The Dead Sea Scrolls and the
Christian Myth for this reason?.

Concerning the idiom naked I do not visualize a bare
torso. In my pesher I realize that when king Herod was caught
naked in his house and the enemy soldiers fled, he
was without his guard. In one of the gospels a young man
fled away naked. This nakedness was his being
"defrocked". The young man was Simon Magus who was formerly
a chief priest. He also became a "young man" because he had
lost his stature. Morton Smith and John Allegro with their
fundamental thought relate sex with being naked.

thanks, offa

Offa, if it helps you any and for what it's worth, "defrocked" sounds good to me because "figleaves" were needed to cover our ego after we consumed from the tree on knowledge. Before this, in Gen.2:25 we were naked to wit and felt no shame. It is our ego that we protect with 'the clothes that make the man.'

Amos

Allegro was totally discredited. To this day he is called the "mushroom man" and is known as a Joke. Even before that the other shcolars on the translation committee were very disatisfied with his work, some even considered him incompetant and all knew his motives for doing the work were highly prejudicial and unscientific.