Christian Origins
Allegro believed that Essenism was the matrix of Christianity. He suggested that there were so many correspondences between the scroll texts and the New Testament — words and phrases, beliefs and practices, Messianic leadership, a teacher who was persecuted and possibly crucified — that he thought the derivation obvious. This brought him into conflict with the Catholic priests on the editing team, and with most church spokesmen, who maintained the orthodox assumption that the arrival of Jesus was the unique, historical, God-given event described in the Gospels. Allegro also started to look in more depth at the way the New Testament appeared to weave together a mix of folklore, myth, incantation and history.
Read more about this topic: John M. Allegro
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