John Allegro's The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross

This roundtable is dedicated to exploring the enigmatic career of John Allegro, and the reception history of his book, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (1970). A philologist with expertise in comparative Semitic dialects, Allegro made a name for himself as a translator and popularizer of the Dead Sea Scrolls; however, his academic reputation was destroyed with the publication of The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross: A Study of the Nature and Origins of Christianity within the Fertility Cults of the Ancient Near East. Bringing together scholars from the AAR and SBL, this roundtable will explore Allegro's argument that the original Christian community was a fertility cult based on the sacramental use of the psychedelic mushroom Amanita muscaria, the controversy and professional backlash generated by his thesis, and the continuing influence of his provocative thesis among academics, believers, and authors of popular fiction.