APn 02/22 1446 Obit-Allegro LONDON (AP) -- Dr. John Allegro, renowned for his work in

APn 02/22 1446 Obit-Allegro

   LONDON (AP)  --  Dr.    John Allegro, renowned for his work in
deciphering the Dead Sea Scrolls but ridiculed for  his  theories
that  Western  religions  were based on the worship of mushrooms,
has died.  He was 65.

   Allegro died at his home on Feb. 17, his  birthday,  according
to death  notices  and  obituaries published Monday.  No cause of
death was given.  He is to be cremated Tuesday.

   Allegro was  a  brilliant  student  of  Semitic  languages  at
Manchester  University  and  went  on to study Hebrew dialects at
Oxford University.

   In 1953, he was named  to  an  international  team  formed  to
decipher  the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were discovered in caves at
Qumran on the shores of the Dead Sea six years earlier.

   The scrolls, which spanned from about 100  B.C.  to  70  A.D.,
included  the  oldest  known  manuscripts  of  books from the Old
Testament.  Allegro's  gift  for  deciphering  minute  texts  was
crucial.  His book, "The Dead Sea Scrolls," was published in 1956
and became a bestseller.

   Allegro's   subsequent   notoriety   caused  derision  in  the
scientific community but developed a cult following in the  early
1970s.   Allegro,  in  his 1970 book "The Sacred Mushroom and the
Cross," contended that Judaism  and  Christianity  were  in  fact
products of an ancient sex-and-mushroom cult.

   He  theorized  that Jesus's last words on the cross were not a
lament to God but "a paean of praise to the god of the mushroom."

   Although trained for  the  Methodist  ministry,  he  became  a
fervent anti-Christian devoted to debunking the story of Jesus.

   Allegro  also  published  a 1966 book, "Search in the Desert,"
about an unsuccessful search  for  lost  scrolls  in  the  Judean
Desert.

	He is survived by a son and a daughter.