After talking about him on the show, I recently picked up a copy of Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan. I’m always intrigued by these kinds of books — those about the “historical Jesus” (not a fan of that phrase, actually, but it is what it is) — so the hype made me wonder. Here’s what I thought.
First off, I remember in the Fox News interview getting so much press, that Mr. Aslan constantly referred to himself as a “professor of religion” with “20 years experience”. I don’t dispute his experience, as he seems to have been studying religions for much of his life. Unfortunately it turns out that he is actually Associate Professor of Creative Writing at University of California – Riverside. Given this misrepresentation, I go into the book a little colored in my trust of his statements.
Early on, as he sets up his argument about the lack of sources about Jesus the individual. (This is true, by the way. The only reference to Jesus the person outside of the 4 canonical gospels [I’m biased against the others, namely because — outside of the 4 canonical gospels — they were were most likely written more than 100 years after Jesus’ death.] that I know of is a one-off by Josephus that isn’t actually about Jesus at all, but is about his brother James’ execution.) In this midst of this, he sets up his assumptions about the Biblical texts, in which he, somewhat unsurprisingly, takes the most aggressive stance, claiming that “with the possible exception of the gospel of Luke, none of the gospels we have were written by the person after whom they are named. That actually is true of most of the books in the New Testament” (Zealot page xxvi). This serves to continue to tell me where Aslan’s bias is; he distrusts the Biblical text. He also, rather cutely, mentions the Gnostic gospels as demonstrating “the dramatic divergence of opinion that existed over who Jesus was and what Jesus meant, even among those who claimed to walk with him, who shared his bread and ate with him, who heard his words and prayed with him” (xxviii). I’m not entirely sure how something written a century after the canonical gospels (which he does admit in passing) represents the opinions of those who walked with Jesus, though they would have been rather well-dead at the time.
Now on to the meat of the book. Long story short, it reads like a biography. It’s actually appropriate that Aslan is a professor of creative writing, because this is not a scholarly text. It’s Aslan’s take on Jesus’ life and times. It’s definitely aimed at people who know very little about Biblical scholarship; I learned almost nothing new.
That said, Aslan would be rather inflammatory toward your typical American Evangelical Christian, not that they’d ever pick up his book in the first place. It also would appeal to your typical atheist, as it disregards anything that might be supernatural about Jesus, which I expected. His basic argument is that the gospels were written in response to the failed Jewish revolt which ended in 74 CE and made Jesus the manifestation of a not-quite-vanquished god.
To Aslan, Jesus became the figurehead of unpleasant Jewish feelings toward Rome after Jews had become enemies of the Roman Empire. He was painted as a disciple of the much more popular John the Baptist to give him credibility. His narrative was carefully constructed to make him fit prophecies of the Messiah. He was a miracle worker (which, oddly enough, wasn’t that weird in those days) who worked for free (which was very weird). He stood opposed to the aristocracy of the Roman-controlled priests, ushering in a kingdom ruled by God alone.
Yet Aslan says this was also a Jesus who the early Christian church sought to distance itself from. They would never last with a central figure who advocated rebellion, so they colored Jesus to meet their needs, highlighting certain statements over others. They softened Jesus’ rebellious edge and reinterpreted things to fit with their own agenda and the demands of a decreasingly Jewish group of followers.
All in all, I was rather unimpressed with Aslan’s book. It’s only controversial if you’re already closed-minded; to anyone else there’s nothing that hasn’t been said. The best part was the discussion of the “Messianic Secret”, which I believe Aslan had already written about in the past. There’s also some neat tidbits about the history of Jewish uprisings in Roman Palestine. The most interesting thing about the book was how little of it was about Jesus. Maybe a third directly referenced him, the rest was either about other Jewish uprisings, Paul, or James — quite odd for a book supposedly about Jesus of Nazareth.
tl;dr: A boring book with mostly the same, tired arguments sprinkled with too few bits of good information.