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JUDITH ANNE BROWN, John Marco Allegro: The Maverick of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature; Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2005). Pp. xvi + 288. $25.
Judith Anne Brown, the daughter of John Allegro, has written a fascinating account of her father's life and career, in the process shedding a welcome light on one of the more maligned of the original editors of the Dead Sea Scrolls. B. was able to draw on her father's personal papers and family archives (especially those of her mother, Joan Allegro) in constructing her account, and the result is a fuller, more personal picture than one normally expects from a scholarly biography.
Brown begins her account with Allegro's childhood in London, his career in the Royal Navy, his courtship of Joan, and his eventual decision to study for the Methodist ministry. Allegro's ministerial studies led him to a degree in Oriental Studies at Manchester University, where he studied with Harold H. Rowley. He then went on to Oxford to read for a Ph.D. with Godfrey Rolles Driver. It was Driver who recommended his student Allegro to Roland de Vaux as a member of...