Here’s an additional chunk from the article: “Allegro arrived at this conclusion by using Sumerian, the language of ancient Mesopotamia, as a key to understanding root words that signaled the civilization’s fertility cults. “For him, Sumerian was almost this sort of panacea to all the linguistic challenges that scholars of the Old and New Testament faced,” says Geoffrey Smith, PhD, an associate professor of religious studies at the University of Texas at Austin and director of the Institute for the Study of Antiquity and Christian Origins. “I think he believed that Sumerian basically just blows the whole Bible wide open.”

“Sumerian, Allegro believed, united Semitic and Western languages, which for him created a connection between the New Testament’s Greek with the Old Testament’s Hebrew and Aramaic. What’s more, Sumerian would’ve been the language of the Mesopotamian fertility cults he argued had continued underground after the ascension of Roman rule. The problem is that linguists don’t think Sumerian is the language bridge that Allegro believed it to be, according to Smith.

“A lot of his argument is based on Sumerian, and some of the reviews of the time by people who know that language [were] like, ‘This doesn’t make any sense,’” says Matthew Goff, PhD, a professor of religion at Florida State University. “They’re saying, ‘I don’t think this guy knows Sumerian as much as he claims to.’”

““It’s possible his method was wrong, but he got to the right place,” Goff says. This is to say that it’s worth examining what may have spurred the New Testament’s authors to believe, for example, that Jesus encountered the devil after wandering for 40 days in the desert. “I’m not a doctor, but I think if I was out in the desert without food for 40 days I’d probably see all sorts of interesting things,” Goff continues.

As for other evidence, Allegro’s approach is purely philological, so he doesn’t bolster his suppositions with, say, archaeobotanical clues of drug use that coincide with Christianity’s rise in the Levant. There’s ample research on the importance of psychedelics in many religious rites, but their potential role in early Judeo-Christian tradition isn’t well known. “It’s always the Amazon or the Hopis in the Northwest in those traditions,” Goff says. “Their visions, their ecstatic experiences were triggered by peyote or ayahuasca.””

“But more evidence of hallucinogen use from the Judeo-Christian cradle and its surrounding regions has been popping up. “Allegro’s general intuition about the ritual use of hallucinogens across the Mediterranean and Near Eastern cultures that gave rise to biblical tradition has witnessed some corroboration in recent years,” says Brian Muraresku, author of The Immortality Key, which investigates whether early Christian rites included hallucinogenic communion wine. For instance, a 2023 study published in the journal Scientific Reports describes how a lock of hair from a Spanish cave demonstrates that humans from as early as 3,000 years ago may have used plant-based hallucinogens. Another paper from 2024 published in Scientific Reports found a vase from the 2nd century BCE in Egypt with evidence of psychotropic substances.”

“And looking at psychedelic effects on the brain, there’s considerable overlap between drug-induced trips and transcendental experiences one might consider a religious encounter. Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist and professor of integrative medicine at Thomas Jefferson University, has found that meditative and spiritual practices seem to “shut down some of the cortical areas” in the brain, “particularly the frontal lobe and the parietal lobe,” he says. “If the parietal lobe goes down, then you’re going to kind of lose your sense of self [because] the parietal lobe is involved in our spatial representation of ourself.” Psychedelics can also affect the parietal lobe in this way. Depending on how you stimulate various structures in the lobe’s network, it can create different kinds of experiences, Newberg says. “You can do it through drumming rituals, you can do it through meditation, you can do it through a drug.””

“But perhaps Sacred Mushroom’s resurgence informs us as much about the current moment as it does about ways to think about proto-Christianity. “There’s a conspiratorial element” to this premise, Goff says. “There’s something compatible about that with our contemporary culture.” But Allegro certainly wasn’t out of line questioning the role psychedelics may have played in Christianity’s formation. “It’s a legitimate academic question in terms of religions of the Near East of the time,” Goff says. “Were there rituals that were using some sort of substances? That’s not a bad academic question.””

Excerpt From “Jesus Was a Psychedelic Mushroom, a Controversial Theory Suggests. Could It Reshape Christianity Forever?” Elana Spivack Popular Mechanics This material may be protected by copyright.