Reddit reviews Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

Thank you for writing Zealot, it was a joy to read. In it you argue that Luke's audience knew his nativity story was incorrect, but thought it was true nonetheless. You explain this apparent contradiction by saying that facts and truths used to be two different things. Can you expand on why we should reject the alternative explanation that people believed Luke because they weren't able to judge claims about the past accurately?

Context from Zealot:

> [Luke's] readers, still living under Roman dominion, would have known that Luke’s account of Quirinius’s census was factually inaccurate. Luke himself, writing a little more than a generation after the events he describes, knew that what he was writing was technically false. This is an extremely difficult matter for modern readers of the gospels to grasp, but Luke never meant for his story about Jesus’s birth at Bethlehem to be understood as historical fact.

My moms rationalization is that Jesus was killed by Jews and the holocaust is gods retribution. I was horrified in high school to learn that that line of thinking was actual nazi propaganda.
As an adult I read a book called Zealot which asserts that the Romans are actually to blame for crucifying Jesus but they found a way to blame the Jews because the Bible was intended for a Roman audience. To me, it makes it that much worse that the racist propaganda was based on a lie.

What the hell are you talking about? There literally was a huge circle-jerk over a book that gave massive evidence to the existence and life of a man referred to as Jesus.

http://www.amazon.com/kindle-store/dp/B00BRUQ7ZY

With the possible exception of Luke, none of the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John which constitute the majority of the new testament were actually written directly by the disciples whose name they bear. Instead, they are based on the viewpoints of those disciples and what they would've likely said about the events they depict.

Source: this book

Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth is more specifically about the key character in the New Testament. However, the perspective of examining historical veracity makes for an an excellent read.

I'm a little too late to comment, and have this be noticed... but here's the link to Amazon's kindle page for the book. It's $16, and I just purchased it...

http://www.amazon.com/Zealot-Times-Jesus-Nazareth-ebook/dp/B00BRUQ7ZY/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1375048213&sr=1-1&keywords=zealot+the+life+and+times+of+jesus+of+nazareth

Here is a link to the book on amazon: http://www.amazon.com/kindle-store/dp/B00BRUQ7ZY

I loved and hated Reza Aslan's Zealot.

I loved it because it gave me a real "you were there" historical sense of the time. I learned a lot about the politics, the religion, and the role of the Temple in Jewish life. The political dynamics between Rome and the Temple leaders were especially interesting.

What I hated was his attempt to construct Jesus from essentially nothing. I read Zealot shortly after reading On The Historicity of Jesus, Did Jesus Exist and End of an Illusion. (See my thoughts on those books here and here.)

Those books left me wondering whether Jesus even existed at all, as a historical figure, so I thought it was very interesting when Aslan said:

> In the end, there are only two hard historical facts about jesus of Nazareth upon which we can confidently rely: the first is that Jesus was a Jew who led a popular Jewish movement in Palestine at the beginning of the first century C.E.; the second is that Rome crucified him for doing so.

Given that this is a book about Jesus, I was surprised that he admitted so openly how flimsy the evidence for Jesus is and how little is known about him.

But then Aslan start piling assumption upon assumption. He claimed to know all sorts of things that weren't those two facts we know. For instance, later he says, "That he came from this tightly enclosed village of a few hundred impoverished Jews may very well be the only fact concerning jesus's childhood about which we can be fairly confident." Here's another one: "That Jesus had brothers is, despite the Catholic doctrine of his mother Mary's perpetual virginity, virtual indisputable." Still more: "By then practically every artisan and day laborer in the province would have poured into Sepphoris to take part in what was the largest restoration project of the time, and one can be fairly certain that Jesus and his brothers, who lived a short distance away in Nazareth, would have been among them."

These are just a few examples I highlighted while reading the book. The point is, the books about whether there was really a historical Jesus got me very sensitive to how little evidence we really have about Jesus. Maybe somebody with that name preached and was crucified, but almost all of the details in the bible appear to be made up decades after Jesus died. And yet Aslan builds and builds and builds on this shaky foundation to create a Jesus who — to me — seems entirely implausible. Or maybe I should say it differently. His Jesus is plausible, but not particularly likely.

That's the way people interpret it today. They are somewhat forced to do so since the obvious literal interpretation is now obviously false. But if you look closely at the texts, it's hard to read that way. Jesus said, "This generation shall not pass away before all of these things have been fulfilled." This actually created a crisis for the early church because 70 years later, when the gospels are written, that looks like a failed prophecy.

Paul too, was certain that "The appointed time has grown short." He even told slaves to remain slaves because it was all going to be sorted out in the judgment soon anyway. Even so, Paul was instrumental in reshaping the interpretation of Jesus' teachings as spiritual rather than literal. Paul is the one who claims that the Old Testament prophesied of Jesus, that he fulfilled the prophecy of the messiah and that contrary to what the Old Testament seems to say, the Messiah is not a warrior king who would rescue the Jewish people from their occupation and establish a powerful theocratic kingdom.

There was a well-documented phenomenon of apocalyptic prophets among the Jews of Jesus' time and he fits that pattern. Several scholars have done excellent work on this subject. Resa Azlan's [Zealot] (https://www.amazon.com/Zealot-Life-Times-Jesus-Nazareth-ebook/dp/B00BRUQ7ZY#nav-subnav) is excellent.

I just finished The Zealot which was a fascinating look at who the historical Jesus was. The author Reza Aslan has been studying the New Testament for about 20 years and he basically laid out a timeline for the Gospels as Mark in 70, Luke/Matthew around 90, and John between 100-120.

Interestingly enough for me, was that 1 Thessalonians was the first written work that ends up in the New Testament, and that the order of the books in the New Testament are not chronological (as I would have thought). For example, the Book of Acts is usually attributed to the writer of Luke, who was a follower (Aslan calls him a sycophant at one point) of Paul, and so everything in Acts is basically to build the bridge between the Gospels and Paul's letters, even though James, Peter, and John were upset with Paul for how he talked about Mosaic Law.

Sorry, got sidetracked.

When aspects of the Gospels are viewed from a chronological viewpoint, there appears to be a changing narrative in place. Mark talks nothing really of the birth or resurrection, and makes fleeting mention of Jesus before Pilate, but by the time you get to John, Pilate is basically pleading with the Jews to not kill Jesus (this is an overstatement on my part, but you get the idea).

What surprised me as I read this book was that even though there are errors or more fictional aspects of the Gospels (from a historic viewpoint, i.e. things that are not validated from a second source, like Jesus being born in Bethlehem or Herod killing all the first born) there were things that are more or less proven by other historical writing. For one, that Jesus healed people and drove out demons. It was common place for healers and exorcists to make the rounds during this time, and it was easy for someone to accuse them of using magic or being a magician (for which they would be killed for breaking Old Testament law), yet no one ever tried that with Jesus. He heals a blind man, and none of his "opponents" ever cried "magician!".

Oh well, now I'm just rambling. But I do encourage your friend to pick up the Zealot and look through it if he's interested in how the New Testament can be viewed historically.

Holy fuck the reviews on Amazon are blowing up today, thanks to this post I am sure. You are making it really hard for me to find bad reviews to laugh at!
For the lazy http://www.amazon.com/Zealot-Times-Jesus-Nazareth-ebook/product-reviews/B00BRUQ7ZY/ref=cm_cr_pr_top_link_1?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

Try reading the amazon reviews, it's amazing!

Check out the 1 star reviews on Amazon. Many are just like the interview...

read Reza Aslan's "Zealot" if you want to know how secular historians view Jesus of Nazareth: http://www.amazon.com/ZEALOT-Life-Times-Jesus-Nazareth-ebook/dp/B00BRUQ7ZY/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412776508&sr=1-1&keywords=zealot

yeah... its not exactly an accurate telling of history if you take religion out of it. it would be nice if religion hadnt been the motivator it was throughout all of history, but it was. even if something is a myth, if an entire legal system is structured around it, its important to acknowledge it. that being said, the existance of a man named jesus who was crucified on a cross by order of a man named pontius pilate is pretty much accepted as fact by most scholars. you should check out this book. it helps explain how jesus went from being a guy with strong religious and political convictions, to the messiah sent by god to save mankind. your assertion that he isnt real because the bible is too much of a spiritual document completely ignores the reality that myth is often based on fact. and totally ignores the fact that the bible is only those spiritual and historical texts which were found acceptable by the roman church way after jesus' death. unfortunately, untill about 400 years ago, science and myth were the same thing.