Philologist , archeologist , and Dead Sea Scrolls scholar John Marco Allegro postulated that early Christian theology was derived from a fertility cult revolving around the entheogenic consumption of A. muscaria in his 1970 book The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross , but his theory have found little support by scholars outside the field of ethnomycology . The book was roundly discredited by academics and theologians , including Sir Godfrey Driver , Emeritus Professor of Semitic Philology at Oxford University , and Henry Chadwick , the Dean of Christ Church , Oxford . Christian author John C. King wrote a detailed rebuttal of Allegro 's theory in the 1970 book A Christian View of the Mushroom Myth ; he note that neither fly agarics nor their host trees are found in the Middle East , even though cedars and pines are found there , and highlight the tenuous nature of the links between biblical and Sumerian names coined by Allegro . He conclude that if the theory was true , the use of the mushroom must have been " the best kept secret in the world " as it was so well concealed for two thousand years .