<p>Many people believe faith healing to be the orphan child of mainline Christianity, adopted by bible-thumping fundamentalists and the electronic evangelists, practiced under tents and at religious road shows. In John Allegro's book, he explores the history of faith healing, finding literary richness and religious antecedants that are generally unknown to most readers.Faith healing has a long history in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Its practice was first ascribed to the Jewish Essenes, or Physicians, who believed that through powers granted them by their God they could lead men from the shadow of death to new life, both physical and spiritual. From the Essenes, faith healing took root in the emergent Christian religion, where it is found today, practiced by members of its more fundamental and evangelical sects.It is interesting to note that the split between "high" and "low" church practice also signalled the beginning of faith healing's exile from mainline church practice. However, it was very much a part of church practice during the early inception of Christianity. The Dead Sea Scrolls are the main source of this information. They illustrate the primary importance of faith healing to the early church.Today, despite dramatic advances in medical and scientific knowledge, to a significant group of people faith healing is of more interest than ever before. Faith healing seems to be twentieth century man's response to the increasing complexity of the modern world. Through exotic and often dramatic ritual, modern faith healers seek to confer to their followers the serenity the earliest faith healers sought.Physician, Heal Thyself is not an attack on the many forms faith healing has assumed today. The author stresses that no part of his study seeks to confirm or cast doubt on either the religious validity or the therapeutic efficacy of modern faith healing. Tracing the evolution of faith healing from its earliest appearances in religious literature and practice to the colorful and sometimes bizarre forms it has assumed today, John Allegro has produced an incisive work of interest to religious scholars and to students of religion.</p>

Physician, Heal Thyself

Religion & Spirituality

Allegro, John

Christian Books & Bibles

Prometheus

<p>Was Jesus of Nazareth a real historical person or a fictional character in a religious legend? What do the Dead Sea Scrolls reveal about the origins of Christianity? Has there been a conspiracy to suppress information in the Scrolls that contradicts traditional church teaching? John Allegro addresses these and many other intriguing questions in this fascinating account of what may be the most significant archaeological discovery of the twentieth century.As one of the original scholars entrusted with the task of deciphering these ancient documents, Allegro worked on some of the most important texts, including the Biblical commentaries. In 1961, King Hussein of Jordan appointed him to be honorary advisor to the Jordanian government on the Dead Sea Scrolls. In his engaging and highly readable style, Allegro conveys the excitement of the initial archaeological find and takes the reader on a journey of intellectual discovery that goes to the heart of Western culture. Allegro suggests that Christianity evolved out of the Messianic theology of the Essenes, the Jewish sect that wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls.This new edition of Allegro's book also contains an essay in which he describes the in-fighting among the scholars assigned to study the scrolls and his thirty-year battle to release all of the texts to the public. Allegro was one of the first scholars to protest the long delay in publishing the Scrolls and to criticize his colleagues for their secretive and possessive attitudes. This issue has recently been the focus of national media coverage, with the result that after forty years, open access to all of the Dead Sea Scrolls has finally been permitted.If he had lived to see it, John Allegro would have been very pleased by this resolution of the controversy. In the same spirit of free inquiry that Allegro championed, Prometheus is reissuing his book in paperback to encourage open discussion of these important ancient texts.</p>

The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth

History

World

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