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Book Review – Zealot: The life and times of Jesus of Nazareth
Reza Aslan's ‘Zealot: the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth’ is available at Kinokuniya in KLCC. – The Malaysian Insider pic, July 16, 2014. The outsider always pays a heavy price for upending someone's religious beliefs. In some places, doing that gets you killed. On that note, so can spending two decades writing about Jesus in ways that go against mainstream Christianity. Like Reza Aslan and "Zealot: the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth".
Jesus as failed Jewish zealot is an old thought. British scholar S.G.F. Brandon in 1967 posited such an argument. Not many followed him then; no one follows him today. In fact, even among scholars, Jesus as zealot is not a dominant portrait. So Aslan is not the first to say such a thing, but he's really skating on thin ice.
In a nutshell, Aslan reconstructs Jesus's ministry and death against the backdrop of Jewish zealot movements which were predominant at that time.
He surveys Israel's history between the Bible's two testaments using biblical data and contemporary sources. Jesus is refocused as someone who proclaims "the Kingdom of God" as the end-all to Israel's desire to end Roman dominance and a corrupt religious system. Aslan also looks at how that image became corrupted through Greek thought through Paul of Tarsus, the famed missionary, turning Jesus into the deity he is.
It goes without saying that such premises will not be held by the Christian majority. Sure, when it was released mid last year, the book made it to the New York Times bestseller list. Flip the book and you'll see praises by a few key authors, none of them recognised in the Christian world.
Aslan also grabbed headlines after he was forced to defend his right to write about Jesus in a Fox News interview. He later went on MSNBC and accused Fox News of having an inherent anti-Muslim bias.
The major criticism about Aslan's work is that many of his arguments are contentious and he cherry-picks his facts. Some don't even add up, neither does the logic of his arguments.
For example, he observes that Mark’s gospel, the earliest of the four in the New Testament, dates after 70CE. Matthew and Luke as well as the Book of Acts, an early church history source and the second part of Luke's gospel, around the 90s. And John between 100 and 120CE.
After assigning these dates, he goes on to posit that there were no available eyewitness accounts. Now, if Mark’s gospel was written around that date, the possibility of an eyewitness account is believable.
And in Luke’s gospel, the first verse states that eyewitness accounts were available during the time of writing. If this is disputed, it would mean that a historical Jesus would cease to exist, meaning Aslan's book is irrelevant.
That said, why Aslan deserves to be read now is simply because Christians are in need of literature to challenge the status quo. He certainly wins points for writing a book in a casual tone, one that many Christian scholars fail to achieve.
Also, we have here a Muslim scholar who doesn't present a Muslim reading of Jesus. Aslan affirms the crucifixion but he is doubtful of Mary's virginity and he is unconvinced that Jesus fulfilled the role of a divine saviour of sorts.
Aslan takes what many would call a liberal reading of Jesus as he believes there are only two reliable historical facts about Jesus of Nazareth: that he was a Jew who led a popular movement in Palestine and that Rome crucified him for doing so under the charge of sedition.
Aslan is a rare breed. He grew up in nominal Muslim household, had his experience with evangelical Christianity in his youth and then reverted to Islam. And yet he maintains that Jesus as a Jewish zealot is a far more interesting person than what the church has built over the years.
Well, give "Zealot" a read. Sure, he cherry-picks, but at least he tries to present a case sensibly. For a complete experience, read the New Testament, Richard Bauckham's seminal "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses" and D.A. Carson and Douglas J. Moo's "An introduction to the New Testament".
Reza Aslan's "Zealot: the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth" is priced at RM79.90 and is available at Kinokuniya in KLCC. – July 16, 2014.
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