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Zealot

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1Darin_Gibby
Dez 8, 2013, 10:11 am

I just finished reading this book. First what I did like. I enjoyed reading about the historical background surrounding Christ's life, especially the influence of the Roman Empire. That context has helped me to appreciate the writings in the New Testament.

What I didn't like. At the point where the author turns to address what he calls "one nagging issue", i.e., all of the first hand accounts of the resurrection, he punts. His basic argument was something to the effect that we can't historically verify whether anyone has ever been resurrected, and since this is a scientific book, we'll just dismiss all those accounts and move on. I don't see how you can just skip the heart of Christianity like that.

Did anyone else pick up on that?

2southernbooklady
Dez 8, 2013, 10:28 am

Well, he was writing a history book, not a theology book. Specifically, a political history of Jesus. I'm not sure what else he could have done.

3streamsong
Dez 8, 2013, 10:54 am

Hi Darin--I haven't read this yet (I do have a request in at the library), but I have read very mixed opinions about it here on LT concerning the scholarship of the author.

I'm really glad you posted about here, and will look forward to what people say.

BTW--welcome to LibraryThing!

4Darin_Gibby
Dez 8, 2013, 3:59 pm

My sense is that he took the approach you just mentioned: as he indicated in his book, these are matters of faith which aren't to be addressed in the book. What I was hoping he would have done is to state that there is a historical record of people claiming to have seen Jesus after he'd died, but that there these other X historical accounts that disagree with those statements, or something like that. But to simply dismiss these as statements of faith I thought was disingenuous. I would think there must be something else in the historical record addressing this point. Perhaps there isn't, but I would have liked to have read about that as well.

5southernbooklady
Dez 8, 2013, 4:09 pm

But to simply dismiss these as statements of faith I thought was disingenuous.

But if he states outright he is limiting his purview to the political/historical Jesus how is that disingenuous? He is not assessing a faith, but a person about whom there is actually very little in the way of historical records.

My complaint with the book, by the way, is that he tends to overstate his case. His prose is littered with phrases like "The only way to interpret such and such is...." and "To think such and such is ridiculous...." etc, etc.

For example, he makes a good case for the story of the "good" Pontius Pilate pleading with the evil Jews not to condemn Jesus being a fictitious story dreamed up by the later Gospel writers to appeal to the Romans. But his tone is a little incredulous, a little "how could anyone believe this stuff?"

He would have been better off pointing out the bare facts of situation--they do an adequate job of showing the propaganda-like nature of the story.

Aslan is of course trying to set out what life might look like for a historical Jesus, and I don't really question his central premise--that Jesus was a radical "nationalist" of a type already familiar at the time, and that the "universality" of his message was overlaid later as his followers were scattered into other countries. But even he seems to get tripped up on occasion by how unusual a revolutionary Jesus was. There are a couple places where I think he reaches to keep his point. Especially with all that "Son of Man" stuff and what it might have meant.

Of course, I don't speak Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, or Latin, so I'm dependent on his translations being faithful and accurate. His repeated insistence that this or that passage can only be interpreted in one way (from a historical perspective) makes me wonder though. For a historian that seems like a dangerous habit.

But I can't fault him for not attempting to confirm or disprove the "miraculous" aspect of Jesus's life. That's beyond the purview of the historian.

6timspalding
Dez 9, 2013, 1:59 am

Have any of the "real" scholars of the historical Jesus reviewed the book? Not to insult Aslan, who might have interesting insights and is no fool, but he is by no means a specialist in the field.

7rwb24
Editado: Dez 9, 2013, 7:43 am

There is a measured NY Times review from Dale B. Martin. I have also seen more sharply negative online reviews from Anthony Le Donne (here) and Craig A. Evans (here), both of whom have published books in the field.

8nathanielcampbell
Editado: Dez 9, 2013, 8:34 am

(Caveat: I have not read the book, nor am I likely to do so any time soon, as there are many more books on the TBR pile of higher importance...)

From what I gathered when the book first appeared earlier this year, the main critique from scholars in the field is that Aslan presents the "political radical" Jesus as if it's his own revolutionary interpretation (pun intended), whereas the theory is actually a bit old-school by the standards of contemporary research -- i.e., it was cutting-edge fifty years ago, not so much today, especially since contemporary movements in studying the historical Jesus have settled into the happy medium of utilizing the findings of each successive generation's pet theories without uncritically accepting monolithic interpretations. Thus, Jesus was both political revolutionary and extraordinary pacifist; he was both a humble sage and a claimant to radically reinvented notions of messianicity.

In other words: the story is always more complex than peddlers of popular books would like to admit.

9MMcM
Editado: Dez 9, 2013, 8:36 am

Elizabeth Castelli, a scholar of the Bible in contemporary society, had one in The Nation with her take on it.

10southernbooklady
Dez 9, 2013, 8:50 am

>8 nathanielcampbell: Aslan presents the "political radical" Jesus as if it's his own revolutionary interpretation

I'd agree with that. It's written as a popular history, not scholarly text. But as to whether his scholarship is off base, I don't know. His interpretations sound plausible in many areas, but since they are interpretations--something he tends to gloss over when he's writing -- they are no doubt one of many, none of which can ever really be called definitive, if only because we lack evidence and perspective.

(I had a similar problem reading Stacy Schiff's book on Cleopatra -- she often presented things as fact that could only have been interpretation, and it bugged me throughout the whole book.)

11michigantrumpet
Editado: Dez 9, 2013, 3:08 pm

I just finished reading it, and have a few insights from my own experience with the book. First, he is pretty clear that he is discussing the historic 'Jesus the man', not 'Jesus the Christ.' The Resurrection is something which is a matter of faith. He does discuss at length the number of people who contended they had seen the risen Jesus -- even to the point of death in holding that opinion. The inference here is that, had they not believed they had seen the risen Jesus, they wouldn't have gone to their deaths taking that position.

Aslan discussed the messianic and apocalyptic expectations of the Jews in the time period leadng up to Jesus' death. According to Aslan, by then contemporary standards, Jesus' ministry was a failure in that it neither brought a return of Jewish rule in Israel nor an apolyptic end time. What made this movement so extraordinary (and brought new followers to it) was their insistence upon the risen Jesus.

I found reading the end notes to be absolutely necessary. It is there that he acknowledges that other other scholars take differing points of view on some things. He is good about giving citations to those referenced differences, while stating how he came to his own personal perspective on the dispute. The end notes and bibliography are telling as to the extent of his scholarship. He assimilates a lot of information and presents it in a very readable and accessible form for the non-academic.

I have read several reviews that have said Aslan doesn't present any new sholarship, that much of this has been written before. I've read others that have said he would nat have had the success he's had withut that fateful interview on Fox. It may very well be that his is not original scholarship. It may also be there is a certain amount of sour grapes at play over his success. I can say I enjoyed reading this book far more than many scholarly monographs with their tortuous writing. If he writes in a way that brings 'old' scholarship to the masses, is that necessarily a bad thing?

eta -- correct typos

12jbbarret
Dez 9, 2013, 3:33 pm

>4 Darin_Gibby: What I was hoping he would have done is to state that there is a historical record of people claiming to have seen Jesus after he'd died

Isn't that the big hope, the big wish, on which everything relies?

13southernbooklady
Dez 9, 2013, 7:40 pm

>11 michigantrumpet: I can say I enjoyed reading this book far more than many scholarly monographs with their tortuous writing. If he writes in a way that brings 'old' scholarship to the masses, is that necessarily a bad thing?

I think what bugs me about the comment that Aslan is "disingenuous" is that he is being faulted for not writing the book that some people wanted to read--a book that was some kind of affirmation of Jesus as Christ.

But since he's up front about his intentions, and explicit about his own imposed limits -- limits that any reputable historian would acknowledge as necessary, and completely forthright about the approach he was taking, I just don't see how he can be accused of deceit or duplicity.

14timspalding
Editado: Dez 10, 2013, 12:25 am

I just finished reading it, and have a few insights from my own experience with the book. First, he is pretty clear that he is discussing the historic 'Jesus the man', not 'Jesus the Christ.' The Resurrection is something which is a matter of faith.

I think the best formulation is that of John P. Meier, author of the A marginal Jew : rethinking the historical Jesus and its follow ons. Without quoting him, the dichotomy is between the historical Jesus and the Jesus of faith.

These are carefully drawn terms of art, not pejoratives. The distinction is not one of truth or untruth, but of method. The "historical Jesus" is the Jesus that can be discovered using the resources of history alone, doing for Jesus what one might do for Alexander, Hannibal or Mani. The "historical Jesus" is not the "real" Jesus in two ways. First, historical reconstruction is always incomplete and arrayed along a continuum of certainty. We don't have the "real" Alexander either, despite being able to say many things about him, and at certainty ranging from total to speculative. Second, the Christian believes that Jesus is alive, and that some people (you, me, the church) can know true things about him by means other than what a professional historian employs in researching Alexander.

Within that framework, you can't really address supernatural phenomena. Christ may or may not have risen. I think he did, and I think I have good reasons. But all one can say from the standpoint of historical reconstruction is that many early proponents believed he did. I think the evidence is pretty good there--it's good enough that the faithful need not worry that their belief is contradicted by history. But it won't get a rational person from unbelief to belief. There are a lot of wonderworking stories, and a lot of people who believed them.

What I was hoping he would have done is to state that there is a historical record of people claiming to have seen Jesus after he'd died

Well, there are historical records, the documents of the New Testament. Their diversity and the existence of a number of independent strands prove that this was a core belief among early Christians, not an invention of a single author or sub-movement within Christianity. The lack of wandering, disinterested historian/reporters, recording the doings in this obscure backwater is completely unsurprising. I suspect no such documents were ever written, save perhaps some official communication between Pilate and the provincial governor of Syria, if that, and almost certainly no historians' reports. But even if there were, ancient history is a "shipwreck." We haven't got 1% of what was written. We are lucky that Christians saved the writings of Josephus, who alone among ancient, non-Christian authors makes direct but brief mention of Jesus--later corrupted by Medieval scribes.

(I had a similar problem reading Stacy Schiff's book on Cleopatra -- she often presented things as fact that could only have been interpretation, and it bugged me throughout the whole book.)

Tell me about it. Hellenistic history is a total wreck. Our sources for Cleopatra are a wreck too. We can say a lot about her, but we can't write a full biography of her. We can't get under her skin. There are only a few ancient personality we can do that to—maybe Cicero, Caesar, Augustus, Julian… the list gives out quickly. We can't even do it for Alexander, and he was an absolute titan, covered by multiple contemporary sources. Anyone writing a "biography" of Cleopatra or Jesus should be upfront with the state of the evidence, and constantly attaching confidence markers to their sentences, many of them low-confidence markers. Of course, that makes for a crap popular book. Your average lay reader thinks that Churchill and Cleopatra are the same historical species.

For my part, almost a decade of Latin and Greek, and three years toward a PhD in Classics, well, I simply don't read popular ancient history, unless it's by an academic boiling down his more abstruse work, and even then he has to show his work.

15streamsong
Dez 10, 2013, 6:18 am

>11 michigantrumpet: Michigantrumpet, thanks for the comments on the endnotes. I have the audiobook requested through ILL. I use audiobooks in the car to 'read' books that I am interested in, but are light enough to split my attention a bit. But now I'm thinking perhaps I should request the hardcopy instead so I can refer to the notes.

16nathanielcampbell
Dez 10, 2013, 8:46 am

>14 timspalding:: "There are only a few ancient personality we can do that to—maybe Cicero, Caesar, Augustus, Julian… the list gives out quickly"

If I may add two: the obvious case of Socrates (for whom Peter Kreeft reserved a special category, in which fit also the Buddha and Jesus, as being ancient men whom we can get to know intimately); and the late 4th-century A.D. Senator and Prefect of the City, Symmachus.

17southernbooklady
Dez 10, 2013, 9:17 am

>14 timspalding: we can't write a full biography of her. We can't get under her skin. There are only a few ancient personality we can do that to

It's a different form of mythologizing. Not something I'm ever looking for in my history books or biographies.

18timspalding
Dez 10, 2013, 9:54 am

>16 nathanielcampbell:

Yeah, no. We have three approaches to Socrates (Plato, Xenophon and Aristophanes) but can in no way add up to a biography. Basic questions about him and what he thought are open.

Yeah, Symmachus. Be still my beating heart ;)

It's a different form of mythologizing. Not something I'm ever looking for in my history books or biographies.

Right. And this happens with Alexander—and with Jesus. Each generation produces an Alexander and Jesus to their liking.

I know, I know, the Jesus-Alexander thing is my hobby horse. But the two are remarkably similar as historiographic artifacts. Both have a 3-5 source traditions, washed through other traditions, and all heavily influenced by what they "mean" to people. Alexander's is more concrete, with straight-up histories, but also more distant because the best sources were stitched together hundreds of years later.

19southernbooklady
Dez 10, 2013, 10:17 am

>18 timspalding: and all heavily influenced by what they "mean" to people

I think the only thing you can do, as a critical reader, when tackling books about such subjects, is assess how well the author achieves his or her own stated purpose. You can't fault them for not making Alexander "gay enough," or Jesus "Christ-like" if that's not what they were intending to do. You can only decide if they made the case they wanted to make.

In Aslan's book, I thought he mostly did. My only problem, as I said, is his tendency to needlessly overstate his case.

Of course, I'm not burdened by a surfeit of classical scholarship :), so he may have floated some real howlers of interpretation that I would not have caught. But mostly I thought the picture he created of the political Jesus and Judea very plausible.

20nathanielcampbell
Dez 10, 2013, 10:43 am

>18 timspalding:: "biography"

I'm wondering if there's a difference between straight biography and character study -- we may not be able to nail down all the facts and figures for Socrates, but his character is one of the most delicious to imbibe of all ancient notables.

21timspalding
Dez 10, 2013, 10:58 am

>20 nathanielcampbell:

We're off-topic, but do you think Plato and Xenophon mesh well enough that you really think you have the measure of the man, rather than of the men?

22nathanielcampbell
Editado: Dez 10, 2013, 12:07 pm

>21 timspalding:: I was thinking more of meshing Plato and Aristophanes -- most of what I get from the latter is a sense of Socrates' bawdiness (or should we go with bodiness?), which meshes with the reports of his pot belly, etc. I can import that back into Plato to understand that Socrates was not a man with his head stuck in the clouds, but a real flesh-and-blood human being (which we see also in the Symposium).

The meeting point of the Platonic and Aristophanal Socrates is when the philosopher goes back into the cave and pecks at the slumbering horse of state like a gadfly, trying to wake it up to virtue. The Apology makes it clear that the sophistry of the The Clouds is a direct result of Aristophanes missing the point about the Socratic project -- it is to make the weaker argument the stronger, but only because what is supposed the stronger argument is in fact weak.

(And I think the Xenophonal Socrates is too much lacking that fire in the gut... but we really have gotten off topic, haven't we...?)

23thesmellofbooks
Dez 17, 2013, 12:18 am

That is not what he is saying, in my reading of it. He actually gives the accounts weight and explains why. I thought it was well handled.

24thesmellofbooks
Dez 17, 2013, 12:20 am

Isn't he? My understanding from an interview of him on CBC Tapestry is that he is a scholar in this field and has studied the subject for twenty years. It is his profession.

25timspalding
Editado: Dez 17, 2013, 12:52 am

He is a respected author and public intellectual in the field of religion, but that's a very large field. But he is by no means a specialist in this topic--he has, for example, never published any academic articles or given any academic talks on it, or anything remotely near it. His primary field is the sociology of modern Islam--his Ph.D is in sociology, and all of his prior books have been on that.

This sort of insider/outsider credential is not without merit. Major works of scholarship and--more to the point--major works of popularization have been written by writers with that sort of relationship to the topic. Aslan is a scholar, and knows what scholarship entails. But he is by no means a recognized scholar of the historical Jesus or second-temple Judaism. And, while I'm inclined to cut him some slack for what he says in television interviews, he has rather consistently overplayed his hand, casting himself not as an engaging generalist and popularizer with something to say, but as an actual scholarly expert in the field.

In case you think criticism of his bona fides is a right-wing Fox-News thing, check out this article in the Nation.

http://www.thenation.com/article/175688/reza-aslan-historian

26southernbooklady
Editado: Dez 17, 2013, 8:41 am

>In case you think criticism of his bona fides is a right-wing Fox-News thing, check out this article in the Nation

The interesting thing about that link is that the writer acknowledges Aslan's status outside academia is less important than the fact that his actual thesis has some serious gaps and is basically an "unoriginal remix" of older ideas.

I agree that the lack of footnotes is a real problem. If that was his publisher's suggestion he should have stuck to his guns in the name of transparency. The comment that he takes certain sources "at face value" seems a hazard for anyone working in the era, though.

In the end, the book is what it is. One man's overly enthusiastic interpretation of a historical figure about which there is very little primary source material or documentation.

And it isn't what it isn't: a Muslim's sneak attack on the status of Jesus as the son of God or slap in the face to all faithful Christians.

27quicksiva
Jan 5, 2014, 8:08 am

Aslan in error:

"Bedecked in robes of purple and gold, an aureate laurel resting on his head, Rome’s first Christian emperor called the council to order as though it were a Roman Senate, which is understandable, considering that every one of the nearly two thousand bishops he had gathered in Nicaea to permanently define Christianity was a Roman."
Aslan, Reza (2013-07-16). Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (Kindle Locations 3318-3320). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

=================
--Constantine put off Baptism until the moment of his death.
--The actual number was closer to 300.
--Rome played a very minor role in Nicaea. The major players were North African. The Bishop of Rome wasn't even invited.
See: Hans Kung The Catholic Church: a Short History.

28timspalding
Jan 5, 2014, 11:40 pm

>27 quicksiva:

Aslan surely meant they were Roman citizens or subjects, not that they were cultural Latins. (Such people were, as you say, a minority force.) On this, however, he is quite wrong. While most of them were from within the Roman empire--as were most Christians--there were also bishops from India, Persia, Georgia and the Goths.

Although Nicaea did indeed appear to have been run by the rules of the Senate, as Ramsay MacMullen has shown in Voting About God, that appears to have been the case from earlier, local councils.

Constantine put off Baptism until the moment of his death

Yes, but that was something people did then, for fear of committing any mortal sins after baptism. It seems fair to call him the first Christian emperor even then.

29rolandperkins
Editado: Jan 6, 2014, 12:14 am

"Constantine put off baptism... (but) it seems fair to call him the first Christian emperor."
I agree that he was, de facto,
the first# Christian emperor. And most modern historians agree. As it was presented to
us -- would-be general historians and classicists - - his being unbaptized for almost his entire life was thought to be worthy of little more than a foot note. (But I haven't, before this, heard that staying unbaptized was "something people did then".) The teacher, in my case, was Prof. Mason Hammond*

#There is a theory that Philip the Arab (reigned in the late 240s) was a Christian, but not much to base an
argument on it
for or against.

*Hammond's idea of what most people get wrong about the Roman Empire, is that "You have to LOVE" "the Roman Army of that time --- because it's impossible to LIKE them". MH said, no, the army is very worthy of respect. (He didn't convince me.)

30quicksiva
Jan 6, 2014, 11:21 am

"All the evidence suggests that Constantine viewed Christ as one of many gods in a crowded pantheon, a war god at that, who had provided him with his victory over Maxentius, and that this new Christian god could be used as a political tool to solidify his power and prestige in the empire, as well as bringing about a total homogeneity of culture to ancient Rome as witnessed by his calling of the council of Nicea in 325 C.E. to settle the Arian controversy, and also by the later solidification of the dates of Easter and Christmas, for he well knew that power and control in a complex organization depended upon common agreement in regard to the symbols that held it together. For example, in May 330 at the dedication of the new Roman capital Constantinople Constantine was "dressed in magnificent robes and wearing a diadem encrusted with jewels (another spiritual allegiance of Constantine's, to the sun, a symbol of Apollo, first known from 310 was expressed through rays coming from the diadem") (Freeman). The ancient connection to the sun as a god clearly exemplifies Constantine's adoration and admiration for such a "heavenly" deity. After his death and the later collapse of the Roman Empire, the medieval civilization that arose on the ashes of shattered Rome, in particular the Catholic Church would continue the incorporation into the Christian pantheon of religious symbols far predating the beginning of Catholicism." Charles Freeman A.D. 381

31peterlcassidy
Fev 4, 2014, 3:12 pm

Zealot is a complete fraud. Please see my review at "World" mag archives entitled " Is Jesus Being Hijacked"? Christians need to be discerning.Grace to you.

32southernbooklady
Editado: Fev 4, 2014, 3:33 pm

>31 peterlcassidy: You should perhaps provide a link to your article if you want people to find it and read it.

For those who are tempted to do so, the link is here:

http://www.worldmag.com/2013/10/is_jesus_being_hijacked

ETA: and having read through your article, I can only note that the "5 major flaws" you find in the book are all theological in nature, not historical.

33nathanielcampbell
Editado: Fev 4, 2014, 4:38 pm

>31 peterlcassidy:: It was a book written from the perspective of a religious historian, not a theologian. Thus, your "5 major flaws" are not flaws at all, but in fact mostly strengths:

1. "The first is that the author has little respect for the integrity of Scripture." Indeed -- Aslan uses the accepted findings of historical-critical research into the development of Scripture, which is not the unified monolith that you pretend it is. To ignore those findings would, in fact, be a major flaw in a book assessing history. The historian treats the various writings of scripture as historical documents, not inspired proof-texts; and thus subjects them to the same processes of historical inquiry as he does all historical documents.

2. "The second major problem is claiming that Jesus was not divine." This is not a claim that the historian can assess. Thus, it would again be a major flaw if a history book made such a claim; the most that an historian can say is that Jesus claimed to be divine or that his followers claimed that he was divine. (Would you think the historian competent who claimed that Julius Caesar was divine? For the Roman Senate declared him so, and his divinity was widely accepted for many centuries.)

3. "The third error is to present Jesus’ kingdom as earthly and political, not spiritual and inward." Although you make an important point, you also seem to have a very narrow definition of the "political". It is certainly true that Jesus does not seem to have advocated a strictly political revolution, and that the political threat that he seemed to pose to the Roman authorities arose from a partial misunderstanding of just what the "kingdom of heaven" is supposed to be. On the other hand, Jesus does quite pointedly and often emphasize the supreme sovereignty of the Father over all the world, which in the context especially of later generations of Christians would prove a direct provocation to the established sovereignty of Rome.

Moreover, Jesus does seem to have preached in favor of a particular type of society, one in which the poor and hungry and humble and enslaved are at the top of the ladder, to be blessed and treated with kindness and compassion. In Matthew 18, when Jesus takes the child and lifts him up as the model for the "greatest" in the kingdom, he is doing something radically different, for children in the ancient world had absolutely zero social or legal status. In Matthew 25, the blessed sheep at the Son of Man's right hand in judgment are bewildered when the King says to them that they are blessed because they fed him when he was hungry and visited him when he was in prison--and he responds by telling them that when they did these things to the lowest and least of society, they did them for the very Ruler of the Universe himself. This is a radically inverted and revolutionary idea of just who is considered "successful".

4. "The fourth problem, in presenting Jesus’ death as strictly political, is that what is lacking in Jesus’ crucifixion is any reference to the sacrificial and redemptive aspect of His death." Again, from the historical perspective, sacrifice and redemption are not things that can be determined. From the historical perspective, Jesus' death was political, because he posed a threat to the stability of the alliance between the Jewish high priests and the Roman governor in governing Judaea.

5. "As to the fifth error—that the proper life for Christians is to be under the Mosaic law" -- I haven't read the book, but I find it highly doubtful that Aslan actually made such a proscriptive claim. Historically (as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles), the relationship between the Christian community and the Jewish law was the first major controversy that Jesus' followers had to deal with after his death, resurrection, and ascension. Ultimately, it was decided that Christians did not need to live under the full Mosaic law--as symbolized by its most basic act, circumcision; but that decision was by no means a foregone conclusion, and many of the apostles opposed it at first.

If Aslan had written his book as theology, then I agree with you that it fails in some crucial respects. But he didn't write it as theology; he wrote it as history. There are other criticisms to be made of its historical approach (chief among them that the view of Jesus the political revolutionary had its heyday a generation ago and has largely been superseded by more integrative approaches); but to criticize a history book for not being a theology book is simply to misunderstand its intended purpose and genre.

N.B. I write this response as both a faithful Christian and a theologian. I don't want you to think that I'm simply some atheist who dismisses Christ's divinity and salvific sacrifice from the start. Indeed, I accept them deeply, in the very root of my soul.