I’m pretty sure FOX wouldn’t know what to do with that.Īnyway, the content of the book is more the issue–as is the case with any book–and from what I see, Aslan’s credentials would not hinder him from doing solid academic work. I would bet dollars to donuts (what an odd expression) that if Aslan had written a book with a conservative spin, his academic claims would not have come up by these same critics, at least not with the same degree of righteous indignation–and may even have been buried.įor what it’s worth, and although not the same thing, I’ve called myself in certain contexts a “theologian” even though I have a PhD in Ancient Near Eastern studies with a focus on the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and its early history of interpretation. I feel he should have been more careful, though my sense is that criticism is a bit overblown and–I may be wrong–driven by a desire to discredit a book with objectionable content. Many conservative critics have focused on how Aslan represented/misrepresented his credentials on the FOX interview. Thus far I’ve just been keeping up in the spate of interviews–least of which worth mentioning is the FOX debacle (If I may quote Lisa Simpson, “The FOX Network has sunk to a new low.”) The result is a thought-provoking, elegantly written biography with the pulse of a fast-paced novel: a singularly brilliant portrait of a man, a time and the birth of a religion.Over the last couple of days, two New Testament scholars have weighed in on Reza Aslan’s recent book, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. I’ll read the book soon enough. Zealot yields a fresh perspective on one of the greatest stories ever told even as it affirms the radical and transformative nature of Jesus of Nazareth's life and mission. And he grapples with the riddle of how Jesus understood himself, the mystery that is at the heart of all subsequent claims about his divinity. Aslan explores the reasons why the early Christian church preferred to promulgate an image of Jesus as a peaceful spiritual teacher rather than a politically conscious revolutionary. Who was the Jewish peasant who, two thousand years ago, walked across what is now Palestine to gather followers with the goal of establishing the Kingdom of God? Balancing the Jesus of the Gospels against the historical sources, Aslan describes a man full of conviction and passion, yet rife with contradiction a man of peace who exhorted his followers to arm themselves with swords an exorcist and faith healer who urged his disciples to keep his identity a secret and ultimately the seditious King of the Jews whose promise of liberation from Rome went unfulfilled in his brief lifetime.

Zealot by reza aslan summary