BTW, Allegro was also one of those who publicized the idea that Christianity was an offshoot of the Qumran community (this was years before his mushroom days, when he was still somewhat a ‘decent’ academic
). I quote from Geza Vermes’
(pp. 58-61).
The question of the significance of the Scrolls in the interpretation of the origins of Christianity had already arisen at the very beginnings of Qumran research and has gone on haunting the scene over the years. This was to be expected. The near-eastern archaeological and literary discoveries of the past century and a half have always produced scholars who saw in the new finds the long-awaited key capable of opening up the mystery of Jesus and the birth of the Church. We observe this phenomenon in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries apropos the Assyro-Babylonian texts which mention the dying and rising nature god Tammuz, the Oriental and Graeco-Roman mystery cults, and the worship of the Persian saviour deity, Mithras. Predictably, in the mid-twentieth century it was the turn of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
, professor of the Sorbonne in Paris and John Marco Allegro, assistant lecturer at the University of Manchester, were the first to try to argue the case. Others such as
followed (see chapter VIII, pp. 190-91). Thus the ground was prepared for rumour-mongering that the Scrolls could reveal secrets about Jesus and the early days of Christianity that the Church, first and foremorst the Vatican, would prefer at all price to keep locked away.
A clear hint at what he believed to be a major breakthrough was given in the concluding paragraph of Dupont-Sommer’s initial communication on the
as early as the session of the Académie des Inscriptions in Paris on 26 May 1950.
Renan has characterized … Essenism as a ‘foretaste of Christianity’ and Christianity as ‘an Essenism that has largely succeeded’ … Today, thanks to new texts, connections spring up from every side between the Jewish New Covenant, sealed in the blood of the Teacher of Righteousness in 63 BC and the Christian New Covenant, sealed in the blood of the Galilean Master around AD 30. Unforeseen lights are shed on the history of the Christian origins – one of the major problems of history – from where will no doubt come also the answers to many questions.
(Observations sur le commentaire d’Habacuc découvert près de la Mer Morte, Paris, Adrien, Maissoneuve, 1950, p. 29)
A few months later, Duppont-Sommer further developed his revolutionary ideas, presenting Jesus and Christianity as deeply influenced by, indeed modeled on, the Dead Sea sect and its Teacher of Righteousness.
Everything in the Jewish New Covenant [the Qumran sect] announces and prepares the Christian New Covenant. (Jesus) … appears, from many points of view, as an astonishing reincarnation of the Teacher of Righteousness … Like him, he will be the supreme Judge at the end of time … Like him, he was condemned to death and executed. Like him, he rose to heaven … Like him, he inflicted judgement on Jerusalem … All these similarities … constitute an almost hallucinating whole … Wherever the similarities demand or suggest the idea of borrowing, the borrowing was made by Christianity. On the other hand, however, the appearance of faith in Jesus … is hardly explicable without the real, historical activity of a new Prophet, a new Messiah …
(Aperçus preliminaries sur les manuscrits de la Mer Morte,
Paris, Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1950, pp. 121-2.)
With French panache, Dupont-Sommer put the agnostic cat among the Catholic pigeons of
de Vaux and his team. But in the Jerusalem ‘scrollery’ the professor of the Sorbonne found a pair of attentive ears – those of the former Methodist but by then fellow agnostic Scrolls editor, John Allegro, who was ready to shock the Christian world into what they both believed to be a bombshell concealed in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
In January 1956 Allegro gave three fifteen-minute radio talks on the BBC Northern Home Service. The two were lively and informative, but the third contained dynamite, or so Allegro believed. The Assistant Lecturer of Manchester, being an insider of the editorial team, was better informed than Sorbonne professor Dupont-Sommer, and was able to disclose in his talks what he had read or imagined he had read in the
Nahum Commentary and the
Commentary on Psalm 37 from Cave 4 (both texts belonged to his lot) and in the
Copper Scroll (which did not). He deduced from his reading that the Teacher of Righteousness, the founder of the Dead Sea sect, was captured by the ‘Wicked Priest’, the high priest Alexander Jannaeus, and was given by him into the hands of his Gentile troops to be crucified. After the executioners had departed, the disciples of the Teacher took down the broken body of their leader and guarded it, awaiting the imminent coming of the Day of Judgement. On that day they believed that the risen Teacher of Righteousness would usher his followers towards the new Jerusalem.
