Religion: Jesus as Mushroom

To some biblical scholars in Britain, the new book looked like the psychedelic ravings of a hippie cultist. To others, it was merely an outlandish hoax. One described it as reading "like a Semitic philologist's erotic nightmare."

The object of all this learned scorn was The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, which argues that Jesus was not a man but a hallucinogenic mushroom, Amanita muscaria; that the New Testament was concocted by addicts of the mushroom as a code for their mystical lore; and that the God of Jews and Christians is ultimately nothing more than a magnificent phallic symbol. Normally, such...