John M. Allegro

John Marco Allegro (17 February 1923 – 17 February 1988) was an English archaeologist and Dead Sea Scrolls scholar.

He was a populariser of the Dead Sea Scrolls through his books and radio broadcasts.

He was the editor of some of the most famous and controversial scrolls published, the pesharim.

A number of Allegro's later books, including The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, brought him both popular fame and notoriety, and also complicated his career.

Allegro was born in 1923, son of John Allegro and Mabel (nee Perry).

Allegro went through Wallington County Grammar School in 1939.

He joined the Royal Navy, serving during World War Two.

After the war he began training for the Methodist ministry, but found that he was more interested in Hebrew and Greek, so he went to study at Manchester University with fees paid by government grant due to his military service.

He believed that it was necessary to get these works out as quickly as possible and published several preliminary editions in learned journals during the late 1950s.

Allegro received his Honours degree in Oriental Studies at the University of Manchester in 1951.

This was followed in 1952 by a master's degree under supervision of H. H. Rowley.

While engaged in further research in Hebrew dialects at Oxford under Godfrey Driver in 1953, Allegro was invited by Gerald Lankester Harding to join the team of scholars working on the Dead Sea Scrolls in Jerusalem, where he spent one year working on the scrolls.

He became a lecturer in Comparative Semitic Philology in Manchester in 1954.

It was on Allegro's recommendation in 1955 that the Copper Scroll was sent by the Jordanian government to Manchester University in order for it to be cut into sections, allowing the text to be read.

He was present during the cutting process in 1956 and later made a preliminary transcription of the text, which he soon translated, sending copies of his work back to Gerald Lankester Harding in Jordan.

Although Allegro had been first to translate the Copper Scroll, the text was assigned for editing to J.T. Milik by Roland de Vaux, the editor in chief of the scrolls.

While he was in England he made a series of radio broadcasts on BBC Radio aimed at popularising the scrolls, in which he announced that the leader discussed in the scrolls may have been crucified.

His colleagues in Jerusalem immediately responded with a letter to the Times on 16 March 1956 refuting his claim.

The letter concluded,

"It is our conviction that either he [Allegro] has misread the texts or he has built up a chain of conjectures which the materials do not support."

One result of this letter seemed to be that his appointment at Manchester was not to be renewed.

However, in July after several uneasy months the appointment was renewed.

Allegro was asked a number of times by the Jordanian Director of Antiquities if he would publish the text of the Copper Scroll.

After a few years of waiting for Milik's publication of the scroll, Allegro succumbed and set about publishing the text.

During this period Allegro also published two popular books on the Dead Sea scrolls, The Dead Sea Scrolls (1956) and The People of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1958).

He was keen to photograph the site of Qumran and various texts, providing an important source of information for posterity.

Allegro was entrusted with the publication of 4Q158–4Q186, a collection of fragments which mainly contained exemplars of a unique kind of commentary on biblical works known as pesharim.

As early as 1956 Allegro held controversial views regarding the content of the scrolls, stating in a letter to de Vaux, "It's a pity that you and your friends cannot conceive of anything written about Christianity without trying to grind some ecclesiastical or non-ecclesiastical axe."

His book, The Treasure of the Copper Scroll, was released in 1960, while the official publication had to wait another two years.

Although several of his readings in the text are acknowledged, Allegro's book was disparaged by his colleagues.

He believed that the treasure in the scroll was real—a view now held by most scholars —and led an expedition to attempt to find items mentioned in the scroll, though without success.

He told de Vaux that he could have his share of the texts ready in 1960, but due to hold ups had to wait until 1968 for his volume, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert of Jordan V: 4Q158–4Q186, to be published.

The bulk of his work on the Dead Sea Scrolls was done by 1960 and he was at odds with his scrolls colleagues.

When a conflict broke out with H.H. Rowley concerning Allegro's interpretation of the scrolls, Allegro, on the invitation of F. F. Bruce, moved from the Department of Near East Studies in the Faculty of Arts at Manchester to the Faculty of Theology.

He reworked his material in 1966 with the assistance of a Manchester colleague, Arnold Anderson, before publication.

He stated in the volume that

John Strugnell published a severe critique of the volume, "Notes en Marge du volume V des 'Discoveries in the Judean Desert of Jordan'" in Revue de Qumran.

Allegro's minimalist approach has received widespread scorn in the scholarly world, which nevertheless had the opportunity to analyse the Allegro texts for decades while waiting for other editors to publish their allotments.

He posited that the Teacher of Righteousness had been martyred and crucified by Alexander Jannaeus, and that his followers believed he would reappear at the End time as Messiah, based on Qumran document Commentary on Nahum 1.4–9 (a position that he re-iterated in 1986).

The first part of Strugnell's allotment was published in 1994.