The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth: A Biography of the Zealot

Mic Le Critique: Reza Aslan along with other writers attempting to trace the development of Jesus, the inspiration for Christianity, admits that the only sources of academic research on the man is the Bible along with a brief mention by the Roman biographer Flavius Josephus. Rather than speculate on the veracity of the accepted texts Aslan overlays these with known historical and accepted facts covering the period of his birth and death. We learn that Jesus was born in Nazareth, a small poor working class village in Galilee, Judea. He had a number of brothers and sisters who, apart from his younger brother James, are not featured in his life apart from the fact. He was uneducated and therefore could neither read and had only a basic Aramaic vocabulary. There is nothing about his early development that can be verified in the Bible or elsewhere, however when old enough he works in Sepphoris, a nearby town, as a labourer. He is baptised by John the Baptist and joins his sect and, in one of the few examples in the book of speculation, Aslan surmises that John, with his apostles, grooms Jesus the main tenants of preaching. When John is arrested by the Romans and executed Jesus picks up the mantle and...

United Kingdom on Jul 05, 2014

Cardinal Biggles: This was one of the most interesting books I read last year. Let me be clear, this is a book about a man called Jesus. It is not written as a religious book. It is not a book about faith. It is written objectively as an academic text, with an historical orientation, and little room for obtuse theologian arguments. The author has been very careful in what he has included in the text to -presumably- keep the Bible-belt dwellers and Daily Mail readers of limited breadth of vision from getting upset. To much so, perhaps as I finished the book with my interest stimulated but not fully satisfied. I wanted more.

The first section of the book deals with Jesus' early life and times, including his time with John the Baptist. The second with his surprisingly short ministry and death. The third section looks at the founding of the early church and establishing and altering the pure (Jewish) basis of the faith for a wider gentile audience.

There are huge gaps. Some are understandable - the author doesn't write where there is no evidence to discuss. However, having rationalised so much in his writing, and focussed on Jesus as a man, with human ambitions for a Jewish state governed...

United Kingdom on Feb 07, 2014

Bruce Mcleod: When I was considering buying this book I wondered how someone who came from a background of Islam and born in Iran would portray Jesus. I learned that Aslan was a scholar holding a Ph.D. in the sociology of religions from the University of California in addition to other degrees and is a writer of international fame.
Aslan was born in Iran and came from a family of as he puts it "lukewarm Muslims and exuberant atheists." The Iranian revolution made his family flee Iran and at the age of fifteen he was converted to Christianity at a summer evangelical youth camp in Northern California. He later, after much study, became convinced that: "The bedrock of evangelical Christianity, at least as it was taught to me, is the unconditional belief that every word of the Bible is God-breathed and true, literal and inerrant. The sudden realization that this belief is patently and irrefutably false, that the Bible is replete with the most blatant and obvious errors and contradictions-just as one would expect from a document written by hundreds of hands across thousands of years---left me confused and spiritually unmoored. And so, like many people in my situation, I angrily discarded my faith...

United States on Dec 02, 2013

Theatermann: Die Debatte, ob ein Muslim über Jesus schreiben darf, hat, so dumm sie ist, immerhin den Vorteil auf dieses überaus lesenswerte Buch aufmerksam gemacht zu haben. Aslans Interpretation des Gestalt des Jesus von Nazareth als gescheiterter Revolutionär, der von seinen Jüngern (insbesondere vom damals bekanntlich sehr umstrittenen Paulus) nachträglich in den Stifter der christlichen Religion verwandelt wurde, muss selbstverständlich Kontroversen hervorrufen. Wer kein Fachmann ist, kann auch nicht beurteilen, ob Aslan alle Fakten berücksichtigt hat (auch die, die seinen Thesen widersprechen würden). Allerdings kann man beurteilen, ob die Argumentation nachvollziehbar und überzeugend ist. Und das ist sie im großen Ganzen des Buches unbedingt, auch wenn einige Details allzu spekulativ scheinen. Vor allem verwundert, dass Aslan zunächst davon ausgeht, dass die Evangelien nicht als historisch getreue Darstellung des Lebens Jesu zu verstehen sind und auch nicht so gedacht waren (eine Aussage, der kaum jemand ernstlich widersprechen wollen wird), dann aber doch an diversen Stellen das Material der Evangelien verwendet, als seien diese Geschichten historisch gesichert, ohne dem...

Germany on Sep 03, 2013

Andrew Ross: Reza Aslan has performed a public service with this readable review of the life and times of Jesus the Nazarene. As a scholar of religion and a teacher of creative writing, he has managed to hit a high note in a field both swamped with demented polemics from religious cranks and overgrown with pedantic exercises in obfuscation by bookish bores, all of which has fed a forbidding forest of obstacles to writers like Aslan. His new book is about as exciting as a monograph backed by a solid list of academic references can be, and it tells the story with a spin that begs for a Hollywood movie treatment by a team that can do justice to his thoroughly modern vision.

Zealot is the story of a politically engaged Jesus in a world where religion and politics were inextricably entangled. So the tale has a striking resonance in the turmoil currently gripping the Mideast region, and Aslan as a confessed Muslim is coming from the right corner to tell it. The Jewish struggle for freedom from Roman rule two thousand years ago finds a disturbing mirror in the modern Palestinian struggle to break free of Israeli domination, and although the contrast between the two struggles is so great as to...

United Kingdom on Aug 27, 2013

Deborah H. Maccoby: My main problem with "Zealot" is that, though the whole point of his book is to depict the Jewishness of Jesus, the author seems to know so little about Judaism.

This is apparent in the Prologue, in which Aslan writes of the Holy of Holies in the Temple: "This is where the glory of God physically dwells....It is a vast empty space that serves as a conduit for the presence of God, channelling his divine spirit from the heavens, flowing it out in concentric waves across the Temple's chambers.....down into the city of Jerusalem, over the Judean countryside to Samaria and Idumea, Peraea and Galilee, through the boundless empire of mighty Rome and on to the rest of the world....." (pp.6-7). Compare this with the Biblical account of Solomon's prayer when the Temple was completed: "Behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house I have builded! Yet have thou respect unto the prayer of thy servant....that thine eyes may be open toward this house night and day, even toward the place of which thou hast said, My name shall be there; that thou mayst hearken unto the prayer which thy servant shall make toward this place...."(I Kings 8:27-29...

United Kingdom on Aug 24, 2013

mirele: I've read the book (unlike so many of the "reviewers" who gave it one star) and here are some points.

1) This is a popularization of recent (late 20th-early 21st century) reputable scholarship regarding Jesus. There's nothing in this book that would surprise a person (like myself) who has read pretty much all of the accessible scholarship on Jesus published in the last 30 or so years. Just going through the (extensive!) notes and bibliography at the end indicates to me that Aslan has done his homework.

2) Aslan takes the position that Jesus was a zealot for God and God's Temple, but (and this is repeated several times in the book) he was not a member of the Zealot Party, which wouldn't arise until over 30 years after Jesus' death. In this, Jesus was just one of a number of people who arose in the period from the reign of Herod the Great to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE and his fate was like those others. In short, Jesus was killed for his zealotry, which was perceived as a threat to the Roman authorities and particularly to the Jewish sycophants who ran the Temple (and profited nicely from it). This is not a position shared by many members of the religious...

United States on Jul 28, 2013