21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Allegro legacy of controversy lives on!, June 17, 2005
This review is from: John Marco Allegro: The Maverick of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature) (Hardcover)
John Marco Allegro - The Maverick of the Dead Sea Scrolls
- By Judith Anne Brown -daughter of John Allegro.
John Marco Allegro is hereby vindicated! Scholars of the world beware!
Judith Anne Brown has inherited the same writing style, razor sharp wit, and knack for forcing people to think, as well as for stirring trouble and controversy that her father had.
Judith takes us through a riveting and fascinating glimpse at the life of John Marco Allegro. From John's youth as the son of an immigrant family, to his beginnings in the British Navy, to starting his studies as a Methodist minister. While studying for the ministry, she shows his personal, detailed letters that start him questioning the authority of Biblical teachings; to finally leaving the ministry to begin his studies at Manchester, and then Oxford, making him noticed as an up and coming biblical and language expert and Dead Sea Scrolls authority. Then finally on to his discovery that Christianity and religion is primarily based on entheogen (drug) use and star/sun worship.
Judy takes the reader through the times of laughs and the times of tears and turmoil.
She provides an outline of John's personal history, his family, his life as a playboy, the falling apart of his marriage, to the inner turmoil and outrage he had that no one would look at his views open mindedly and seriously, because they challenged the orthodox.
She provides and excellent breakdown of the content of each of his books, screen writes, and personal letters; proving John's side of the story. Judith gives the reader interesting and easy to follow story line, with a deep understanding into the most controversial of topics in recent decades.
This book contains a beautiful collection of previously unpublished photographs of John, the family, and the Middle East during his expeditions.
If this book wasn't written about John, I would have forgotten that I wasn't reading John's own work. Judy certainly has the Allegro ability to stir controversy--only this time people will have to pay attention. She has thoroughly debunked the 30 years of attacks, lies, and rumors that had spread over the years against John.
At times the book may move you to tears while reading about his personal struggles and the emotions over the blanketed attacks stirred regarding his unorthodox approach at religious scholarship and finally to his sudden death, on his birthday, on Feb. 17, 1988-and continuing legacy today.
Judith Brown has provided substantiation for Allegro's views, and debunked those empty attacks on his integrity and scholarship. Any intelligent and open-minded scholar will hereby be forced into reconsidering many of John's views...and for that matter, Judith's own views.
This book provides an absolutely solid foundation for future work to begin building on John Marco Allegro's ideas--an excellent foundation for up and coming publications by her and other scholars and authors.
The Allegro legacy of controversy lives on!
A better than 5 star rating.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
john marco allegro by judith brown, October 21, 2007
This review is from: John Marco Allegro: The Maverick of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature) (Hardcover)
Obviously, a favorable review of her father who was much maligned for presenting a novel
explaination for the origins of myth and religion, specifically the Christian
faith. He has never been seriously challanged by authentic philologists,
only by religious zealots and others who are convinced the Earth is flat.
Her portrait of a driven, ambitious and wounded man is full and warm and shows
much love of the man and his ideas, who opened the world to the hidden
exegeses by biblical scholars too frigtened to make known to a deluded public
what the Chuches and their minions were doing to them and the 'civilized'
world.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Allegro's Daughter Puts Forth a Clear History of His Work, June 13, 2009
This review is from: John Marco Allegro: The Maverick of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature) (Hardcover)
Judith Anne Brown's John Marco Allegro: The Maverick Of The Dead Sea Scrolls is an essential addendum to her father's important work. John Allegro was severely maligned after his publication of The Sacred Mushroom and the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1970. An unfounded response to his book from the religious and academic community at the time prejudged and condemned him unfairly. His work translating the scrolls found at Qumran, where the ancient Hebrew Bible literature was discovered by local sheep herders in the late 1940s, was the most scientific method undertaken by the international team. His non secular education, including extensive study at Oxford prior to going to Israel, provided an objective approach comparing the literature in the scrolls with derivations of words as they had evolved in the region. As Ms. Brown points out, John Allegro placed an asterisk next to each Sumerian word root theory not found in earlier extant literature. He was clear headed about his etymological projections, he was not propagating the intrigue of psychotropic fungus culture. Because of the latent fear of the subject ingrained in the myco-phobic consciousness learned by the present Angelo-European and other peoples, the readers of the world have been set astray of Allegro's work in etymology. Her book has somewhat redeemed his academic integrity, though too late and too unnoticed to have not lost his scientific work into the annals of ignorance.
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