I think he'd been at the Magic Mushrooms himself but there are strange stories behind John Allegro. He'd worked on the Dead Sea Scrolls and knew things that were not released at the time - or for the next 30 years. He was also about the only non-Jesuit on the project, fell out with them over their reluctance to publish anything and left or was pushed out. The fact is that he was a very highly respected scholar. It's possible that Sumerian words got adopted in a ritual context if they were the original standard for such things. It was certainly used as the Classical Language by Semitic Akkadians which is how we came to know the written before the presumed spoken.

So much of the bible reminds me of what a believer said once that made a lot of sense. You hear of some (usually Cornish) saint arriving from overseas to preach the gospel sitting on his altar-stone. What has got lost over the years and turned it into a miracle is that the altar-stone was sitting on a damned great ship at the time image There's a lot in the bible that if you actually do read it as either credible fiction or fact just takes the miraculous out of it. The Last Supper is one of my favourites. Jesus says somebody will hand him over, they all refuse to admit it's them, by his divine powers he indicates it will be Judas and tells him to get on with it and nobody knows where Judas has gone image Read it straight and it looks like he's saying somebody'd better do a deal with the Temple (for protective custody? Because he has friends in high places?) before the Romans catch up with him, nobody wants to do it, so he chooses Judas.

God created man and man created God. So is it in the world. Men make gods and they worship their creations. It would be fitting for the gods to worship men. (Gospel of Philip: Logion 85: 1-4)
Last Edited By: Erasmus Jan 2 10 8:15 AM. Edited 1 times.