Speaking of etymology, has any body else read or heard of "the sacred
mushroom and the cross" by John M. Allegro? I just finished reading it,
and according to my dad it caused a great stir when it was first published,
but I'm wondering why I had never heard of it OR it's thesis until he
passed the book to me?
I suspect that it will be of interest to virions if only because it shows
how radical a reinterpretation of the Bible is actually possible. Having
read it, I can say that it's more persuasive than you might at first blush
think -- despite being radically off the wall, it is built on very solid
etymological evidence. (the fact the Mr. Allegro can notice puns and
word-play in/between hebrew and sumerian just amazes me). Never-the-less,
I still find it too outrageous to be plausable, although I must admit, many
parts of the Gospel of John make more sense if the "Christ" (literally
"anointed one", like a slimy mushroom cap) is actually a mushroom[1]...
Here's the blurb on the back:
"A MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH in our understanding of the origin and nature of the
languages of the Bible has made possible the decipherment of the names of
the Jewish God and the patriarchs, and now shows the religion of the
Israelites and their inheritors, the Christians, to have been founded on a
very ancient fertility cult centered on the worship of the sacred mushroom,
the red-topped Amanita Muscaria.
After many years of studying the origins and roots of words common to the
Sumerian and later Middle Eastern languages, John Allegro believes that
many of the stories and characters, and much of the authority and
historical probabilities existent in both Old and New Testament must be
examined afresh.
Biblical stories, previously supposed at least partly historical, now
appear as mushroom myths, conforming to a pattern of such mythology
throughout the ancient Near East and classical writings. When, later, the
mushroom cult because sophisticated into a mystery religion, involving
drug-taking and frenzied god-possessed orgies with political overtones, it
ran foul of the authorities.
To avoid persecution, its devotees transmitted their secret formulae in
adaptations of the old mythologies, and it is to such cryptic devices that
we owe the Jesus stories of the New Testimate. The Roman persecutors of
the early Christians were probably not deceived by the tale of the
crucified Jewish rabbi, but the later Church purged away disturbing
reminders of it's cultic origins in the cause of "respectability", and
thereafter preached an historical Jesus.
"The mushroom has always been a thing of mystery. The ancients were
puzzled by its manner of growth without seed, the speed with which it made
it appearance after rain, and its as rapid disappearance. Born from a
volva or 'egg' it appears like a small penis, raising itself like the human
organ sexually aroused, and when it spread wide its canopy the old
botanists saw it as a phallus, bearing the 'burden' of a woman's groin.
Every aspect of the mushroom's existence was fraught with sexual allusions,
and in its phallic form the ancients saw a replica of the fertility god
himself. It was the 'son of God', its drug was a purer form of the god's
own spermatozoa than that discoverable in any other form of living matter.
It was, in fact, God himself, manifest on earth. To the mystic it was the
divinely given means of entering heaven; God had come down in the flesh to
show the way to himself by himself." "
ERiC
(anybody who can't see Christian theology in that last paragraph needs to
read the Gospel of John!)
PS: Cathy, have you heard of this book?
[1] For anybody interested, I'd be willing to consolidate my knowledge of
what the book said by paraphrasing it to the Virus list; just ask.