0:00

Hey, what's up everybody? It's the Super Sleuth

0:02

coming at you with the sponsor for this

0:04

episode, which is Cornerstone Tea. You need to

0:06

go to cornerstoneteacompany.com right now and get yourself

0:08

some of the finest handcrafted fresh teas. It's

0:10

insane, guys. Like, they have classic flavors like

0:12

this chai right here, but this chai is

0:14

cranked up to 11. It's high

0:17

caffeine, and when you open this bad boy up, it

0:20

just hits you with smells, man. You know, it's like,

0:22

it's what I would think the Garden of Eden smells

0:24

like. And guys, this is a Christian company. We should

0:27

be supporting them. I know I've been drinking this tea

0:29

while I've been sleuthing as well. The instructions

0:31

to brew this tea are right here

0:33

also on the front, which makes it

0:35

super easy for you. And when they

0:37

sent me this tea, guys, they also

0:39

gave me some awesome stickers. Who doesn't

0:41

like getting goodies? So enough about that.

0:43

Let's talk about the company. The company

0:45

is a business that seeks to keep

0:47

God's kingdom at the center of operations

0:49

through regular, cost-specific tea blends to benefit

0:51

missionaries and charities. That's right. Part of

0:53

the proceeds goes to help the kingdom

0:55

of God worldwide. Also, they have a

0:57

comprehensive approach to nationwide wholesale, where an

0:59

optional service training and innovative exclusive tea

1:01

blending come alongside this excellent product. So

1:04

don't stop with just listening to this

1:06

ad. Go to cornerstoneteacompany.com and use the

1:08

code in all caps right here. Cultish10,

1:10

no spaces either. To get 10% off

1:12

your first order. Get

1:15

yourself some tea and change the way that you've been living

1:17

your morning routine. Talk to you later, guys. My

1:23

name is Eddie, and I

1:26

was in a call. Planet

1:29

Earth, about to be recycled.

1:31

Your only chance to survive

1:34

or evacuate is

1:37

to leave with us.

1:39

Started as an effort by a charismatic creature

1:41

to build a new society, but it ended, of

1:43

course, with the tragic deaths of more than 900

1:45

people. Please, for

1:47

God's sake, let's get on with it. We've

1:49

lived. We've lived as no other people have

1:51

lived and loved. We've had as much

1:53

of this world as you're going to get. Let's just

1:55

be done with it. Let's be done with the agony

1:58

of it. The revolution is to... You're

2:01

in a

2:03

cult. I

2:11

love you and I want you out of it and

2:13

with Christ. John

2:24

Marco Allegro was a scholar who was also an

2:26

agnostic, but he was an

2:28

ordained minister. So

2:31

he became an ordained minister and they started studying

2:33

theology and eventually became agnostic, but he was a

2:36

language expert. And so he was hired to decipher the

2:38

Dead Sea Scrolls. So they did it for 14 years

2:40

he deciphered these things. They're putting together these – they

2:42

had to use DNA because they had to make sure

2:45

that the cow, the fragments were

2:47

from the same cow, which would indicate that

2:49

it was the same piece of skin because

2:51

it's literally on animal skins. They found these

2:54

ceramic vessels in Qumran hidden in the

2:56

fucking – the side of a mountain,

2:59

wild shit. So they take these down.

3:02

They realize this is the oldest version of the Bible

3:04

by far, and it's the – I think it's in

3:06

Aramaic. It's one of the only ones in Aramaic. And

3:09

at the end of this translation over 14

3:11

years, John Marco Allegro writes a book called

3:13

The Sacred Mushroom in the Cross, and

3:16

he says the entire religion was a

3:18

misunderstanding. And what it was originally about

3:21

was psychedelic mushrooms and fertility rituals, and

3:24

that that's what created this religion. These

3:26

people were taking mushrooms, and they were

3:28

experiencing God, and they were having fertility

3:30

rituals because they were trying to be

3:32

as bountiful and have as many babies

3:34

as possible. And that's what the Bible

3:36

was originally all about. Hi,

3:38

everyone. Welcome to Cultish, entering the kingdom of

3:41

the cults. My name is Jeremiah Roberts, one

3:43

of the co-hosts here. Hi,

3:45

Andrew. How are you, man? I'm

3:48

doing well. I guess Joe Rogan now has

3:50

me questioning everything I ever thought

3:52

I believed about the

3:54

Bible. Yeah. Like mushrooms hidden

3:56

in the back drawers underneath my books. Like,

3:58

should I? going on here?

4:00

I know. Are we really a podcast

4:03

about colt's host that's really about a

4:05

mushroom fertility colt? Wow.

4:07

Well that's uh so we're going to unpack that.

4:09

What you just heard there is a clip from

4:12

the great digital ariapagus of the

4:14

world, the Joe Rogan experience, where

4:17

he is articulating a book that

4:19

we are going to be talking about today.

4:22

The book is called The Sacred Mushroom and

4:24

the Cross by John Marco Lago and

4:27

we have back with us Wes Huff who's on the

4:29

podcast with us today. Glad you were

4:31

back my friend. Always a pleasure.

4:33

Thank you for having me. Absolutely. So um

4:36

yeah so John Marco Lago this is

4:39

something and I these talking points it

4:41

seems to be really kind of getting

4:43

some attention. You see people

4:45

like Joe Rogan talking about it.

4:48

There's people like Sfreedman who are

4:50

also articulating this. There's

4:52

another book The Immortality Key where

4:54

the two authors there were on

4:56

Jordan Peterson. About a year ago

4:58

really articulating these same

5:00

talking points talking about ancient

5:02

religion, the connection to psychedelics. And

5:05

man that's uh really a mouthful.

5:07

So the book Sacred Mushroom and

5:09

the Cross I binged through it

5:11

on audible at 1.7 speed

5:14

just to kind of get a grasp on

5:16

it. And my goodness um

5:18

I I just hard to even

5:20

know where to begin. So first of all let

5:23

everyone just know just a little bit about who

5:25

you are in regards to what might make you

5:28

some of a qualified person

5:30

to give some commentary on this

5:32

subject of the Sacred Mushroom and the Cross.

5:36

Yep so uh as the

5:38

listener uh might know from our previous

5:40

episodes my name is Wesley Huff. I

5:42

am a resident of Toronto Canada. I'm

5:44

a PhD candidate at the University of

5:47

Toronto in New Testament Christian Origins. I

5:50

study early Christian scribal culture

5:52

and I am also the

5:55

director the director of Central

5:58

Canada For a ministry. The

6:00

Call Apologetics Canada and so I

6:02

really my area of expertise has

6:04

to do with Christian manuscripts, early

6:06

Christian church history and a issues

6:08

related to that so a with

6:10

were taught my jaw. Marco Allegro

6:12

I mean I'm not a Dead

6:14

Sea Scrolls expert but I have

6:16

read the Sigur Mushroom and the Cross.

6:18

I've done a fair amount of

6:20

work on some of the Greek

6:22

manuscripts of the of the Dead

6:24

Sea Scrolls or which exists and

6:26

so. As. It pertains to

6:29

this issue. It's an issue that

6:31

I might not be like a

6:33

former expert on by. I deal

6:35

with a lot in terms of

6:37

the adjacent issues related to the

6:40

manuscripts that make up the history

6:42

of the biblical text and. Even.

6:44

Just in my own ministry work, I

6:46

do a lot of work on university

6:49

campuses and the seeker much of In

6:51

the Cross and. Marco. My

6:53

gross theory have been brought up

6:55

numerous times to me on university

6:57

campuses, in ministry settings. And.

6:59

Because it's euro good, Is popular? yeah

7:01

I'd I'd newsflash out of of you

7:03

know this but your of it is

7:06

a very popular podcast out there and

7:08

maybe maybe it's catching up to cultish

7:10

a little bit. It's on a cell

7:12

of asks. Yeah. He he's a companies

7:14

that are becoming podcasts are hopefully maybe why is the

7:16

i'm pretty busy one is a maybe one essays he

7:18

can be on our podcast me will give them of

7:20

and will give them a boost. But

7:23

I'm that's right. yeah yes, but I just real

7:25

quickly and and or to jump in our second.

7:27

but. The. Of the very beginning

7:29

we bleed played that clip obviously in

7:31

the middle that one Joe Rogan episode.

7:33

But what I'm how would you describe

7:35

is anyone's living on Iraq and ever

7:38

heard about the Sparks, how would you

7:40

explain it to them Because even if

7:42

they haven't read this book as pass

7:44

is very possible they might have someone

7:46

a close proximity who might. Believe.

7:48

Something similar to those are just as

7:50

varied interests and open to the idea

7:52

of utilize and psychedelic because that's can

7:54

be become a normalizes well to out

7:56

you explain the overall thesis of the

7:58

sacred Mushroom in the. Yeah

8:02

it is interesting because I think

8:04

that John Marco Allegro if it

8:06

wasn't for individuals like Joe Rogan

8:09

he he he he and his

8:11

work would really just kind of

8:13

fade into obscurity because of though

8:15

as you heard in that clip

8:17

John Marco they grow was illegitimate

8:20

scholar. He was a biblical archaeologist

8:22

and he was part of the

8:24

Dead Sea Scrolls team which did

8:26

have coal late and translate the

8:29

the original discoveries of the Dead

8:31

Sea Scrolls. A Jha

8:33

Marco Allegro and his

8:35

later work, The Seeker

8:37

Mushroom on the Cross

8:39

really kind of ostracized

8:41

him academically because what

8:43

he proposed was that

8:45

the Christian religion I'm

8:47

as kind of into

8:49

Rogan hypothesized there are

8:51

articulated there. And

8:54

the Christian religion was more

8:57

or less a misunderstanding based

8:59

from. Hallucinogenic,

9:03

Talks from a fertility colts and

9:05

so what Allegro did is in

9:07

his and most infamous work the

9:09

Tiger much more the which made

9:12

some whatever surgeons a due to

9:14

individuals like Rogan promoting it. I'm

9:17

It relates to the development of

9:19

language through etymological routes. To.

9:21

The development of miss religions

9:23

and cultic practices in world

9:25

cultures and so were this

9:28

comes into. what we're talking

9:30

about is that through those

9:32

kind of tracing of the

9:34

origins of words, that's what

9:36

Alamo etymology means. Ah,

9:39

What? A leg or did his. He'd look

9:41

the particular words in the bible that. He.

9:44

Kind of as sectioned out. And then

9:46

he came to the conclusion that. Jesus.

9:49

Did not exist. But the

9:51

Gospels were a hoax and that christianity.

9:53

Turned. Into it. As

9:56

we know it today. A via

9:58

nothing more than the misunderstood inning A

10:01

each and fertility culture in which the

10:03

object of worship was a psychedelic mushrooms

10:05

so. That's a big

10:07

claim, right? Yeah, Especially considering.

10:10

You. know ice two thousand year

10:12

later as as christians people who

10:14

claim to follow Jesus Christ. if

10:17

one is really saying is true

10:19

then we have more of down

10:21

stray in our understanding of who

10:23

Jesus was in his. Enter:

10:26

what are you were questions have already it were your

10:28

thoughts so far just with what he sang. Yeah.

10:31

So what is the context of the

10:33

secret Mushroom in the Cross? Like who

10:35

was Allegro writing to? And is it

10:38

even like a book that the typical

10:40

person is able to to pick up

10:42

and really understand some of the arguments

10:44

that he's making. Yeah.

10:53

Better a really good question I think.

10:55

It. It's it's not as clear

10:57

to me who the intended audience

11:00

is. Because at

11:02

times it's very simple and

11:04

at times he's relying on.

11:07

The. Audience to understand.

11:11

Etymology Based on ancient

11:13

Sumerian. And

11:15

ah, that's a big

11:17

ask. For. Ah,

11:20

a regular book reader. To.

11:22

Know, I mean it requires the reader

11:25

to have a working knowledge of ancient

11:27

languages like some Erin and other Ancient

11:29

Semitic language is alongside some cursory biblical

11:32

scholarship and I think that's a tall

11:34

order for anyone and expert or not.

11:36

And if you try to read the

11:39

Saker Mushroom and across. And. You

11:41

end up waiting. Throw a lot

11:43

of the jargon, jargon and linguistics

11:45

that made I mean even. Me

11:49

as someone who's interested in studies the

11:51

stuff. A little bit confused at times.

11:55

and then i would say

11:57

that it's it's actually a

11:59

pre hard to peg down the

12:02

actual audience that

12:04

Allegro is trying to

12:06

write to. And

12:13

also, let me ask you

12:15

this too. It is interesting that it came

12:17

out in the 1970s, which was a time where experimentation with

12:24

those sorts of drugs started to

12:26

become really normalized, which is interesting.

12:29

And maybe it's also explained to our audience

12:32

just because even the word etymology, you said

12:35

that's the nature of language, the nature

12:37

of words, but specifically a lot of

12:40

times the nature of language,

12:42

the nature of words is really contingent

12:44

upon your worldview. Would you

12:46

be able to explain how should a Christian

12:48

think about etymology and what are

12:50

also wrong ways too? There's

12:52

fallacies in regards to etymology as well too.

12:55

There's incorrect ways, because you maybe help our audience

12:57

kind of understand that, so that's

12:59

kind of a big part of this whole discussion

13:01

about this book. Yeah,

13:04

so etymology is an issue that I think

13:06

we as Christians should really be aware of,

13:10

because a

13:12

lot of individuals with maybe

13:15

like a first year knowledge

13:17

of biblical Greek often commit

13:19

etymological fallacies, because we

13:21

start to learn about the origins of words

13:23

and that say, you know, this part of

13:25

this word comes from this Greek or this

13:28

Latin word, and so therefore it means this,

13:30

and we can really get ourselves into trouble.

13:33

There's a lot of depth and a

13:36

lot of things that

13:38

we can learn from learning the origins of

13:41

word and learning languages like Greek and

13:43

Latin, but the

13:45

etymological fallacy is when

13:48

we use those and

13:50

make more of the words

13:53

than really is merited

13:55

by the meaning of those words

13:57

alone. So even like A

14:00

typical example you'll hear in a sermon

14:02

that's an example of an etymological fallacy

14:04

is if someone says, you

14:06

know, well, the word we translate

14:08

as church is the word ekklesia.

14:11

And ekk means out of and

14:13

kaleo means to call. And

14:16

that's the that's those two words ekkleo,

14:18

ekklesia. And so the church means the

14:20

called out ones. And

14:22

so this is a scribe some

14:24

further meaning to it. And maybe

14:27

we can even get something very encouraging edifying

14:30

from that. The problem is

14:32

that by the first century, ekklesia

14:35

did not mean the called out ones, even

14:37

if maybe that meant what it what

14:39

the original intention was. Ekklesia

14:42

is the word that's more

14:45

often translated as congregation. I mean,

14:47

we have ekklesias of Greek

14:50

officials who gathered

14:52

together. It simply means

14:54

gathering together. And so we have to

14:56

be very careful when we

14:59

talk about etymology because

15:01

etymology and tracing the

15:03

etymological roots of particular

15:05

words in the Bible or

15:08

anywhere else can can often lead to problems. And this

15:10

is one of the cruxes, I think, of something like

15:12

Marco Allegro's work and actually fellow academics within his field,

15:14

his contemporaries. They

15:25

really pointed out to him and said,

15:27

you know, this this doesn't work. This

15:30

causes a lot of problems because

15:33

if you look at the etymological roots

15:35

of any words, that's not necessarily the word

15:37

ekklesia. That's not necessarily how you

15:40

get meaning. You don't

15:42

get meaning necessarily from

15:45

just the etymological root of a

15:47

word. So even if

15:49

we assume that he's right

15:51

about the symbolic connections between various

15:53

words and ideas and concepts across

15:55

religious texts, we're stuck with this

15:57

very serious elephant in the room.

16:00

and that's the fact that Allegro based

16:03

his entire thesis on tracing the origins

16:05

of the words and you

16:08

can't do that because the etymological fallacy

16:10

which is a genetic fallacy that states

16:12

that a word or phrase is true

16:15

proper meaning is derived directly

16:17

out of the oldest meaning of said words

16:19

or the compound components of the words.

16:22

The problem with that is

16:24

that the meanings of words change over time.

16:27

So words definition at any point in time

16:30

can't be established from its origins,

16:33

its etymology, the way we

16:35

find out the true proper meaning of a

16:37

word or phrase is by looking at how

16:40

it's used within its context whether culturally or

16:42

contextually. So let me use an example that

16:44

I use actually in my YouTube video that

16:46

where I address the sacred mushroom in the

16:49

cross. Jeremiah

16:52

if I said the word awful, what

16:55

does the word awful mean? How

16:57

would you define it? Something terrible.

17:01

Usually if I taste

17:04

something in relation to food I think last

17:06

time I said awful. I remember one

17:08

time I utilized it as I tried this green

17:11

tea at this hipster coffee shop and it

17:13

just tasted like old

17:16

fermented algae and I didn't know how

17:18

do you charge four dollars for this

17:20

and so I just said this is

17:22

awful and that's how I utilized that

17:24

word in that moment. Yeah

17:26

algae coffee sounds awful.

17:28

Yes. You can even see how I was

17:30

messing up my words there. Yeah algae coffee

17:33

sounds awful. Yeah we got it right. Yeah

17:35

well etymologically if you were

17:37

to break that word apart you

17:40

would find that it means in

17:42

the English language full of awe

17:45

in that you were awe-stricken

17:48

by that coffee. It's actually

17:51

a positive and if

17:53

you go back to something like the

17:55

18th century that's the way it was

17:57

used. It was used positively to express

17:59

you know you would find writings

18:01

that would talk about the awfulness of

18:03

God, how full of awe we

18:06

are as human beings at the

18:08

concept of God. That is not

18:10

how we use the word today. And

18:13

so you would be very misled by

18:15

an etymological explanation

18:17

of the word awful. Because if

18:19

you were to tell me that

18:21

your, the tea that you

18:23

were charged $4 for that was made out of algae

18:29

was awful and I

18:32

was very academic about it and sat down and broke

18:34

apart the components of the words and thought, you know

18:37

what, Jeremiah really liked that tea. He liked that tea

18:39

so much, he was awestruck by it.

18:41

It was probably the best he's ever tasted in

18:43

his life. I would literally be

18:45

led to the opposite conclusion of what you meant. And

18:49

so that's where something like the

18:51

etymological fallacy goes really astray. And

18:53

so if Allegro or anyone

18:56

else really is hedging

18:58

their bets, if they're betting

19:01

their thesis on something

19:03

like the etymology of words, they're

19:06

not just in dangerous territory. They're

19:08

actually, they

19:12

have to be really careful that they're not

19:14

being led astray. Like I would be if

19:16

I sat down and broke apart the components

19:18

of your $4 tea

19:20

experience that was awful. Hey guys, if you

19:22

listen to this podcast, you or someone you

19:24

know has probably been a victim of spiritual

19:27

abuse. In addition to educating

19:29

us all about these harmful groups, cultish is

19:31

proud to partner with Be Emboldened, a nonprofit

19:33

dedicated to finding freedom from spiritual abuse. The

19:35

founder Naomi Wright has been a guest on

19:38

our show more than once. She shared her

19:40

own personal story with us, which is something

19:42

we really appreciate about Be Emboldened. They have

19:44

the education and the training, but they also

19:46

just get it on a personal level. It

19:49

makes the special opportunity they have for cultish

19:51

listeners today that much better. Be

19:54

Emboldened provides excellent resources and practical help

19:56

from trained professionals to walk alongside survivors,

19:58

their loved ones and church leaders

20:00

and professionals seeking to serve this very

20:03

real and growing need more effectively. They

20:05

know that the cost of professional mentoring, expert

20:07

consulting, and top-notch digital courses can be tough,

20:09

though they're excited to announce a new way

20:11

for everyone to access help, hope, and healing.

20:14

With B.M. Bolden's brand new

20:16

Plus membership, you'll gain access to

20:18

the exclusive content, expert mentoring, thought-provoking

20:20

blogs, curated content, discounts, and more.

20:23

Check out their new BE

20:25

Plus membership at beembolden.com/membership and

20:27

use the code CULTISH50 at

20:29

checkout for 50% off

20:31

your first month subscription. That's CULTISH50

20:34

for 50% off. Here's

20:36

to living out freedom. No, that definitely

20:38

makes sense. Andrew, what's on your mind? Yeah,

20:41

so one way to spot an

20:43

etymological fallacy is by, let's say

20:45

this man makes an argument, Allegro,

20:50

stating that the true meaning of the

20:52

text is actually different than

20:54

what all of the text is actually

20:56

explaining. The

20:59

text in John 1 states that Jesus Christ

21:01

has been God from eternity and

21:03

that He took on flesh. But

21:06

for some reason, He comes up with an

21:08

explanation through the totality of whatever this 14

21:11

years, that work that He did through

21:14

secret knowledge hidden in words and

21:16

roots actually contradicts

21:20

the text itself that we have in the New Testament. Is

21:22

that one way to spot a genetic etymological

21:25

fallacy? Do you see what I'm trying to say? I'm

21:27

trying to say it, but I'm not a scholar like

21:29

you are. Yeah,

21:39

I think we can take

21:41

those types of breakdowns and we can

21:43

say, oh, okay, that's interesting. But

21:48

why do all modern English

21:50

translations translate it the way

21:52

that it's translated today? Why

21:55

do we have not just one English

21:57

translation, but a plethora of English

22:00

translations? translations, all faithful English

22:02

translations that rely on

22:04

translation committees, groups of

22:07

scholars who can weed

22:10

out any one individual's

22:13

kind of bias or leaning one way

22:15

or the other. Why is

22:17

it that they translate it the way that they do? And

22:21

then we can say, okay, well, based on

22:23

that, do

22:26

we have more trust in this one scholar who's

22:28

gone off in a very different direction, or

22:31

do we have trust in basically

22:34

every modern translation?

22:37

And we have to be careful here, right? Because

22:40

I'm not trying to make the argument of majority, because

22:43

the majority of scholars make a particular

22:45

argument that it's true. I don't believe

22:48

things. I believe Jesus is God. And

22:51

that's not a majority position in New Testament scholarship.

22:54

There's an obvious and clear

22:57

outlier to this type of argumentation.

22:59

However, it's

23:02

not just that

23:04

it's a majority position. It's

23:07

every position over and against

23:09

Allegro. And even if

23:11

you look at some of the other individuals

23:13

on the Dead Sea Scroll

23:15

Committee who interacted with

23:17

Allegro, if you look at some of

23:20

their communication, which you can find

23:22

online, you have to do a little bit

23:24

of digging, but you can find it. They

23:26

all were kind of like, Allegro, you

23:28

got to calm down on this. This doesn't

23:30

really make sense. You're compromising your

23:32

academic credibility. And I

23:35

mean, Rogan on a number of his podcasts and

23:37

a couple of other people, I think more or

23:39

less because of Rogan, have promulgated the idea that

23:42

the Catholic Church bought up the rights to

23:44

the sacred mushroom and the cross and that

23:47

they suppressed it for a little

23:49

point in time. And if you look into

23:52

the history of it, the publisher dropped the

23:54

printing because it was

23:56

just not making any money. So

23:59

he just dropped it. the printing, it wasn't

24:01

brought up by the Vatican and suppressed because

24:03

the Vatican thought that this was a threat.

24:06

It was literally that they weren't selling

24:08

any copies, so they just stopped printing

24:10

them. And then at a

24:12

later point in time, it was brought back. But

24:18

I think that speaks to the

24:20

fact that this

24:22

is something that Marco

24:24

Allegro was off in the corner,

24:27

promuligating, and the

24:29

rest of the world of New Testament scholarship

24:31

and early Christianity, even secular

24:34

critical scholarship was not

24:37

on board with what he was saying. It didn't

24:39

just have to do with the fact that he

24:41

was talking about hallucinogenic

24:44

compounds, which he was, it

24:47

had to do with the fact that even if

24:49

we gave Marco Allegro the benefit of the

24:51

doubt and assumed

24:53

that his reconstruction of words

24:56

like Christ are

24:58

true, which they aren't, by the way, even

25:00

if we grant him all of that and

25:02

give him the credit, we

25:05

simply can use his methodology

25:08

and say that it's based on

25:11

the idea that the first century

25:13

Koine Greek, which is the

25:15

language that the New Testament was written

25:17

in, had a Semitic substratum,

25:20

which is what he claimed, and that

25:22

under the Semitic substratum lies the Sumerian,

25:25

which doesn't work linguistically, but let's

25:28

say it does. After that,

25:30

he's making an argument that relies

25:32

solely on the etymological fallacy, which

25:35

is kind of the cake topper to a

25:37

failed theory. So he's jumping

25:40

a number of different fields,

25:43

linguistics and

25:45

philology and etymology,

25:48

all of these ologies. Even

25:52

if we go through all

25:54

of those, he's really

25:56

not fulfilling

26:00

the criteria that would convince

26:02

any scholar in any one of those

26:04

individual fields that what

26:06

he's communicating is true. Okay. Give

26:09

us some examples of what of his

26:11

actual argumentation, what does that look like tangibly?

26:13

So when I read the book, like

26:15

I saw the differences where he is arguing

26:17

for the Greek language, the

26:19

Sumerian language, but then he would

26:22

take an example talking about like

26:24

the Lord, like New Testament, talk about the Lord's Supper,

26:27

taking the cup and how Paul

26:29

talks about if you take

26:31

the Lord's Supper improperly, you'll come up under

26:33

a stricter form of judgment. And

26:36

you'll take all these different instances in the

26:38

New Testament where

26:40

like, I think it might

26:43

have even been Jesus' baptism or just all

26:45

these instances where he's connecting it to a

26:47

mushroom and or to

26:49

a psychedelic experience. And then he utilizes

26:52

some sort of correlation with the ancient

26:54

language. And then if you look at

26:56

Old Testament, for example, he'll take Sinai

26:59

and how the Israelites and Moses, they follow

27:01

that pillar through the wilderness. And then he

27:03

would sort of utilize the same thing. And

27:05

it was just like one example

27:08

after another. Like

27:11

how would you describe like his

27:13

argumentation? Like what is it? Yeah,

27:16

from your perspective, what does it look like? Basically

27:20

what it misses is it

27:23

misses putting Jesus in his

27:25

first century socio-religious cultural setting.

27:28

So there's the old idiom, if

27:31

you hear hoofbeats, don't

27:33

think zebras, think horses. And

27:37

when we look at Jesus and

27:39

we think of the Lord's Supper

27:41

and we see that retool, we

27:45

don't need to jump to hallucinogenic

27:47

mushrooms. We can think the

27:49

Passover. We can put

27:52

it within its cultural perspective and say,

27:54

okay, there's an actual cultural religious

27:57

setting to this particular

27:59

event. In fact,

28:01

last Sunday, I just preached upon at my

28:04

home church, because I'm an elder at my church,

28:06

I preached on in Luke

28:10

and his accounting of Jesus

28:12

being betrayed by Judas. And

28:15

the idea that that was at the

28:18

Passover, that there was this

28:20

cultural context for this celebration

28:23

of the old

28:26

covenant community, the nation of

28:28

Israel, being rescued

28:30

from oppression and

28:33

rescued from slavery, and

28:35

that Jesus is taking that and really,

28:37

that's the last true Passover

28:40

meal, because then Jesus in the

28:42

New Covenant establishes that now that

28:44

takes on a broader meaning. It's

28:47

not just a rescue from slavery, but a rescue from

28:49

sin and death. And

28:52

that gives us a cultural context

28:54

for that. And

28:57

so Allegro wants to jump

28:59

to conclusions. And he

29:01

wants to start with, okay,

29:03

well, there's this background

29:05

to this that has to do with

29:09

ritualistic cults that

29:13

are based on things

29:16

like, what's

29:21

the word I'm looking for? Fertility. Yes.

29:24

They're based on on fertility. And so when

29:26

we have these compounds, and this is related

29:28

to what you were saying before, with

29:33

the immortality key, where

29:36

wine is used within these

29:38

other religious contexts in the

29:40

Greco-Roman world. But

29:44

what that ignores is that Jesus is a

29:46

first century Jew, participating

29:49

in a first century Jewish

29:51

context of the Passover meal.

29:55

And that there's

29:57

a fulfilling of that, in

29:59

that then... he's establishing that in

30:02

his own sacrifice. And

30:04

so I don't think we need to jump

30:07

to the conclusion that,

30:10

you know, let's look at

30:12

the linguistic compounds of these words and

30:14

assume that there's a Sumerian base to

30:16

it, which, by the way, Sumerian scholars

30:19

don't agree with that there's

30:22

a Semitic and then a Sumerian

30:24

base to Koene Greek. But

30:27

even aside from that, I

30:29

think we're really jumping

30:31

chasms that we're assuming

30:34

rather than we're proving when Allegro

30:38

tries to make these connections

30:40

with things like the Lord's

30:42

Supper or terms

30:44

like Christ. Yeah. And not to be

30:47

overly explicit, just because there might be

30:49

moms listening in with their little ones

30:51

and things like that. So I'll try

30:53

and be as general as I possibly

30:55

can. And you'll probably know where I'm

30:57

going, Wes, because you read the book.

30:59

But really, throughout his entire really

31:02

thesis about this Christianity being

31:05

really this sort of moving

31:07

that was based off of

31:09

this fertility cult that was involved with

31:12

psychedelics, is that he'll take

31:14

a lot of different passages from

31:17

throughout the Bible all over the place,

31:19

from Ephesians, from the Old Testament. But

31:22

he'll always sort of make some sort of

31:24

connection using male-female

31:26

anatomy one way or another

31:28

that's very sexually explicit. And

31:30

I'm listening to this trying...

31:33

I've been a

31:36

Christian for 20 somewhat years, and

31:39

I'm trying to make sense of how he

31:41

is interpreting the tabernacle

31:43

in the Old Testament, like the

31:45

covenant language and things Leviticus. And

31:49

the assumptions that he's coming to that somehow these

31:51

are all very sexually

31:53

explicit representations of these

31:55

fertility cults that got really consummated

31:57

in When the... Psychoactive

32:00

substances in the Greek world

32:02

became the are readily available

32:05

Like how. Like. The howdy

32:07

the hours he coming to these

32:09

conclusions are justifying them. Mean.

32:13

The best way can but it is very loosely. And

32:15

because what it does is it

32:17

hops over all of the contextual

32:20

understanding and the exit Jericho understanding

32:22

of what's going on. and we

32:24

bought. the New and the Old

32:26

Testament have a very clear historical

32:28

framework to them. I mean this

32:30

is one of the things that

32:32

we talked about when we went

32:34

to Egypt and did our recent

32:37

can I Trust The Bible series

32:39

was we talked about the fact

32:41

that there is a very clear

32:43

historical connection with something like the

32:45

Gospels. To the first

32:47

century. Ah, Historical

32:50

and cultural setting and of Galilee

32:53

in Judea. I'm ends one of

32:55

the things that continually stood out

32:57

to us as we you traveled

32:59

across Egypt. Was. That

33:02

the fact that there

33:04

were historical cultural connections.

33:07

With. The. Penta to

33:10

and with Egypt. You.

33:12

Know of. We. Did a

33:14

at Apologetics Canada at the Ministry i

33:16

work at my coworker and he I

33:18

sat down while we were stuck in

33:21

a a mud brick hard to in

33:23

the sandstorm. we're quite an adventure. How

33:25

did we did a podcast where we

33:27

talked about kind of the. Things.

33:30

That stood out to us

33:32

about some of the things

33:34

that we'd seen, particularly the

33:36

temple structures that had different.

33:39

Different levels to them which led

33:41

up to a Holy of Holies

33:43

and how god didn't you know

33:45

it's not the the them. The.

33:48

jesus myth assists who want to

33:50

say that everything was copied mans

33:52

that the you know they did

33:54

these stories in the bible or

33:56

actually just carbon copies copy cats

33:58

of these ancient cultures but that

34:00

God actually used the cultural framework of the

34:02

day to communicate to the Israelites in a

34:04

way that they would have understood. And

34:07

so the temple is very, very different

34:09

from any other temple that exists, but

34:12

at the exact same time, there's a

34:14

cultural reference. And linguistically,

34:16

there are a lot of

34:18

words within the Hebrew of

34:21

books like Exodus that can

34:23

be directly tied to Egyptian

34:25

society. Even the word Moses

34:28

is an Egyptian name. We have Pharaoh's

34:30

name, Thutmose. Mosse is

34:32

an Egyptian name. So

34:35

it's tied to these cultural

34:38

and historical connections. The Bible doesn't

34:40

just exist in a vacuum. We

34:42

can place it on a timeframe in

34:44

historical setting. And so what someone like

34:46

Allegro has to do is he has

34:48

to leapfrog over those and

34:50

say, you know, don't

34:53

worry about the man behind

34:55

the curtain. Don't worry about

34:58

the obvious. I want to

35:00

lead you into another direction that actually has

35:02

to do with fertility cults. And

35:04

so in that sense, his contemporaries

35:06

said, you know, you're really ignoring

35:09

vast amounts of historical

35:11

data that existed in

35:13

his day and that continue to be

35:16

drawn upon in our own day as

35:18

to the reliability of both the Old

35:21

and the New Testament as being documents

35:23

written within the time frames that they're

35:25

claiming to be written in by people

35:27

that either were there or are communicating

35:29

with people who were there. And I

35:31

think that's a real flaw within someone

35:34

like Marco Allegro was that he

35:36

uses these examples, but he's

35:38

really bypassing all

35:41

of the historical and archaeological

35:43

and legitimate

35:46

linguistic ties to

35:48

these historical settings in order to make a

35:50

thesis. Yeah. What's up, everybody? If you are

35:52

blessed by this content and you want to

35:55

support the Gospels proclamation to the cults while

35:57

equipping the church to combat deception, then come

35:59

join us. and become a Cultish All

36:01

Access member, you'll get an ad-free experience

36:03

and exclusive content like Cultish the Water

36:05

Cooler where you hang out with Jeremiah

36:07

and myself as we go live and

36:09

interact with all of our members. You'll

36:11

also get early release of episodes one

36:13

to two weeks early. On top of

36:15

all of that, there's also Cultish the

36:17

Aftermath. It's an aftershow commentary where we

36:19

get to say all of the things

36:22

that they won't let us. On top

36:24

of that, you get all of the

36:26

other training on ApologyA studios.com. Come, be

36:28

one of us, head over to thecultishow.com

36:30

or follow the link in the show notes and

36:32

click the join button. Directly

36:34

support the work of this ministry as the

36:36

mission is completely funded by you, our listener.

36:39

Andrew, you're there. Are you there, Andrew? Yeah.

36:42

Can you guys hear me loud and clear? Yeah. Go

36:44

ahead. What a question. I know we're having some Wi-Fi

36:47

issues up in your super secret headquarters, but push through

36:49

and tell me what's on your mind. What do you

36:51

think about this topic so far? Yeah.

36:54

What's interesting to me about John

36:57

Marco Allegro, he

36:59

sounds like a little mini cult leader, right? Like doing

37:01

what a lot of cult leaders do. No,

37:04

all of what has been attested to

37:06

throughout Christian history is wrong. Here's

37:09

the secret. The secret knowledge is the

37:11

sacred mushroom in the cross, right? A

37:13

fertility cult. This is what

37:15

it was all about. It just sounds so weird,

37:20

right? And I can understand that coming in

37:23

the 70s for it to

37:25

have a pull and a draw to people and

37:27

how it has the same effect today,

37:29

especially with a lot of Joe Rogan's following.

37:32

But I'll do admit as well, he does have

37:34

people on his show that also try to help

37:36

correct what John Marco

37:38

Allegro was saying and trying to

37:40

state that it's not like what

37:42

he is saying is absolutely true, which is a good

37:45

thing. He gets to say it's multiple people on the

37:48

equation in order to talk about it. But

37:50

I think it just shows a larger issue

37:52

within our culture, which is that people

37:55

are looking for any other explanation other than

37:57

Jesus Christ actually being who he says he

37:59

is. And they go so far

38:02

as to believe things that are not

38:06

historically accurate, not

38:08

empirically accurate, all the

38:10

while saying that what they believe is

38:13

the height of intellectual science. And

38:16

that's what's interesting to me. I

38:18

mean, there's historical accounts other than

38:20

the gospels that talk about Jesus

38:22

being a real person, you know? I

38:25

don't know, it's just, it's interesting. I don't

38:27

understand how John Marco Allegro would handle those

38:29

types of things, but did

38:32

he ever recant any of his lessons or did

38:34

he like double down on what he was talking

38:36

about? I

38:39

mean, he didn't recant as far as I know. But

38:42

I think related to what you're saying,

38:44

Andrew, is that people like

38:48

conspiracy. We'd

38:50

like there to be more than what's

38:52

at face value. And often reality is

38:55

kind of boring. And

38:57

there are things going behind

38:59

the scenes. So there's enough

39:02

fodder to lay credence to

39:05

things like conspiracy theories, because let's be honest, we

39:07

don't know what's going on 100% of the time.

39:10

There are things going on

39:12

behind the scenes. And as Christians, we

39:14

believe that there's a spiritual realm that

39:17

exists behind the scenes, right? So in

39:19

one sense, I can understand

39:21

a desire to want there

39:24

to be something that's bigger, that

39:27

has a greater impact that's going on.

39:31

At the exact same time as a

39:33

realist, and as a trained historian,

39:35

I can say that there

39:38

are times when the reality

39:42

is what it seems to be, that

39:44

we can use Occam's razor and we

39:46

can say, okay, what is the most

39:48

likely, and as a historian, I'm dealing

39:50

with probabilities. What is the most probable

39:53

thing that's going on here?

39:56

Is it more probable that there was

39:59

a first century Judean

40:01

rabbi who walked

40:04

the dusty streets of

40:06

first century Roman occupied Judea

40:09

and Galilee, who claimed

40:11

to be God, who predicted

40:13

his own death and resurrection, and then

40:15

I believe did it, or

40:19

that those events were actually,

40:21

despite all of the early

40:23

Christian writings, despite individuals who

40:25

claimed to actually know people

40:27

who knew Jesus, who wrote,

40:30

despite the earliest

40:32

Christians who went to their deaths

40:34

proclaiming that they heard the testimony

40:37

of the apostles, that Jesus was

40:40

God and rose from the

40:42

dead, despite all of these

40:44

things, that this was actually

40:46

a grand misunderstanding of a

40:48

hallucinogenic, ritualistic fertility

40:50

cult. Well,

40:54

let's be honest, I don't think that's

40:56

what's going on, and I don't

40:58

think that's what's going on because the preponderance

41:00

of evidence lies on one side

41:02

rather than the other, and

41:05

I know there are some historians who would argue against me

41:07

and say, well, I still believe in, you know,

41:09

Jesus turning water into wine, and

41:11

walking on water and rising from the dead,

41:14

and that the probability of that, based on

41:16

a natural materialistic framework, is pretty low, but

41:18

I don't ascribe to a natural materialistic framework.

41:20

So, on my worldview,

41:23

that is not all that low, and

41:25

I think the evidence is actually on the side for it,

41:28

but once again, we're hearing

41:30

hoofbeats, and Marco

41:33

Allegro is assuming zebras, in fact, he

41:35

might even be assuming unicorns, and

41:38

I'm saying it's horses, and in fact,

41:40

I can see the horses, I can

41:43

draw the horses and tell you what they look like, and

41:45

I might even be able to tell you what species they

41:47

are, and despite that,

41:51

but despite that evidence that

41:53

we can rely on, Marco

41:55

Allegro is drawing different conclusions based

41:58

on what I think is actually

42:00

very sensationalistic

42:03

conjecture, but

42:05

people like sensationalism. And

42:07

this is one of the things, you know, you

42:10

guys run into all the time, I run

42:12

into in my own ministry and academic

42:15

work, is that people want there to

42:17

be a more

42:19

sensationalistic explanation. It's why

42:21

the, you know, Gospel of Thomas, Gospel

42:23

of Judas, Gospel of Peter, Gospel of

42:26

Philip get

42:28

the press that they do, even though they have

42:30

no historical connection to Jesus, because

42:33

people like the sensationalistic stories. Yeah. And

42:35

as we kind of wrap up in

42:37

part one, and hopefully, I know we

42:40

had some wife issues in this episode

42:42

here, but as we're up

42:44

on part one, like, what about the people

42:46

who sort of make that conspiratorial argumentation against

42:48

just sort of the field

42:51

of scholarship or academia, or they sort

42:53

of talk about how, well, all of

42:55

academia, they're the ones who are the

42:57

controllers who's controlling information. And

42:59

so in the same way, how you mentioned,

43:02

people are making the argumentation how the Catholic

43:04

Church is buying or suppressing a legros

43:06

work, and somehow there's this deep conspiratorial

43:09

view, or sometimes people even say like,

43:12

Oh, well, this is just the Christian

43:14

approved book section, that somehow there's

43:16

this whole cabal that's deciding what you can

43:18

and can't read, or as we talked before,

43:21

what gospels are out there that you can and

43:23

can't read, you know, people articulate, as I mentioned

43:25

before that, Matthew, Mark, Luke and

43:28

John were somehow some sort of conspiratorial

43:33

grab for power by Constantine, like,

43:36

what's the argumentation against as far as like scholarship and

43:38

academia in general, because a lot of people who kind

43:40

of go down a legos route, they

43:42

kind of appeal to that level of argumentation.

43:46

Yeah, I think it's it's just to lay

43:49

out the evidence as simply and

43:51

as clearly as we can, you

43:53

know, the only stories that get us to

43:55

the timeframe of Jesus or someone who knew

43:57

Jesus are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And

44:01

they very clearly have a historical and

44:03

cultural framework in the first century. They

44:06

have internal evidence that communicates

44:09

that they are being written by

44:11

people who are there during that

44:13

timeframe and are

44:15

communicating truths about what

44:17

they actually saw. And

44:20

so we can go down the

44:22

conspiratorial framework or down

44:25

the conspiratorial pathway and we can say

44:27

that academia is just

44:29

gatekeeping. But at the exact same

44:31

time, I mean, academia is

44:34

open, at least in

44:37

historiography, the field

44:39

that I've committed my life to, we're

44:42

more than willing to admit

44:44

that we're wrong. I mean, in

44:47

my own field, in terms of manuscript

44:50

work, there was about 150 years that

44:52

believe that the Gospel of John, the

44:55

consensus was that it was written in the second

44:57

century. And all of

44:59

a sudden, we started discovering manuscripts that were written at

45:01

the beginning of the second century and

45:04

kind of blew up this idea

45:07

because the manuscripts that we're finding

45:09

were copies, they weren't originals.

45:12

And at least I was taught that

45:14

copies come after originals. And so that

45:17

meant that the copies had to

45:19

have an earlier copy

45:22

that they were copying. And so

45:24

there was a 150 year consensus

45:27

of the Gospel of John being

45:30

later that was completely blown

45:32

up. And all of the textbooks

45:34

had to be rewritten and pushed the Gospel

45:36

of John back into the first century because

45:38

of the evidence that came out based on

45:41

the dating of the manuscripts. And

45:43

so I can

45:46

say that archaeology and

45:50

academia and historians are all

45:52

gatekeeping this type of information.

45:55

But as far as I've

45:57

found, most historians are

45:59

very open to being corrected. Archaeologists

46:02

are more than willing to be

46:04

corrected. I mean, the vast majority

46:06

of constraints on archaeologists is funding.

46:09

We can blame archaeologists for not going

46:11

out and finding the information, but it's

46:13

kind of like blaming your

46:16

construction workers for

46:18

not filling in the potholes in your road

46:21

and saying that they should be the

46:23

ones that are doing the work. And

46:25

really, they're not responsible for that. They're

46:27

relying on the funding to come and

46:29

fill in the pothole. So

46:32

I think it's a rather simplistic

46:35

argument, but I

46:37

can understand it from people who don't, who

46:41

maybe mean well, but don't really have

46:43

a broader understanding of how this work

46:46

is done. There's a mountain of evidence

46:48

that sits on the side of

46:50

Jesus and the historical

46:56

reliability of the information that we find in the biblical

46:59

documents that we call the New Testament. Yeah, no, I

47:01

appreciate that, man. This is a really good. So what

47:03

we're going to do is we're going to wrap up

47:05

here. This is kind of a good way to segue. We're going to be going into part

47:10

two. We're going to be talking

47:12

more about John Marko, Allegro, and also we're going

47:14

to be talking about some of his hermeneutical justifications.

47:16

And we're even going to be talking about

47:19

Mount Sinai. Does Moses, when he encountered the

47:21

burning bush, was that actually a psychedelic experience

47:28

with that psychedelic trip? This is what you'll see is this

47:30

will be an example of a lot of the

47:33

modern day argumentation you'll see

47:35

really reiterated or just sort of regurgitated

47:37

on a lot of different

47:40

high big podcasts out there. So just be aware of that.

47:42

So all that being said, we will jump

47:45

into that with a good friend Wes Huff

47:48

in part two, where we enter into the world

47:50

of John Marko, Allegro, and all that is crazy

47:52

with the sacred mushroom and the cross. Talk to you

47:54

all soon. What's up,

47:56

everybody? The Super Sloop here letting you know that you

47:58

can go to Shon. shopcultish.com and get

48:01

all of our exclusive cultish

48:03

merch. There's the Bad Theology

48:05

Hurts People shirt. Jerry wears it all

48:08

the time. I wear it all the time. Sometimes we

48:10

wear it at the same time without even trying to

48:12

have that happen on the show and we're just like,

48:14

whoa, you're wearing the shirt? I'm wearing the shirt. You

48:16

could wear the shirt too. Go to shopcultish.com today and

48:19

get your exclusive cultish merch. Talk to you later,

48:21

guys.