Aslan Reza Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (review)

Abstract

Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth Peter Heinegg Back in 1906, Albert Schweitzer's Quest of the Historical Jesus argued that you can't carve a true biography of Jesus out of the Gospels, because none of the New Testament authors ever meant to write history in the modern sense. About all you could say with any certainty was that Jesus was a prophet and preacher who looked forward to a proximate, apocalyptic end of the world—which of course never happened. Any hope of validating or rejecting the many contradictory narrative and theological strands in Christian Scripture through reliable outside sources (Josephus, Tacitus, etc.) was doomed because there were so few of them (and none with any decisive data). Of course, that hasn't stopped thousands of would‐be Jesus‐historians, whether simple‐mindedly pious or degreed experts, from trying; and their work is everywhere. But it hasn't been successful, and we can see why early on in Aslan's book. A PhD in the Sociology from U.C. Santa Barbara, now somewhat incongruously teaching creative writing at U.C. Riverside, Aslan, who is Iranian‐American, found Jesus at age 15 in an Evangelical summer camp, but became a disbeliever in college, and then spent “two decades of rigorous academic research into the origins of Christianity.” Explaining his method he writes: “The only access one can have to the real Jesus comes not from the stories that were told about him after his death [i.e., every word of the Gospels, plus part of Acts 1‐2], but rather from the smatterings of facts that we can gather from his life as part of a large Jewish family of woodworkers/builders struggling to survive in the small Galilean village of Nazareth.” Actually, Aslan will go on to mine and exploit all sorts of texts from those “stories,” trusting them when they suit his purpose. But his thesis runs like this: As a poor, oppressed worker in a particularly rebellious corner of 1st‐century Palestine, Jesus MUST have shared the widespread bitter resentment at Imperial Rome's autocratic treatment of Jews, its crushing taxes, and its brutal disregard for Judaic religion and culture. Bloody revolution was in the air; Jesus breathed it in, and therefore he had to be a Zealot. Yes, Azlan has read the Bible, but he constantly plays fast and loose with it. To stress the perennially bloodthirsty mood in Judea, he points out that, “when the Jews [er, make that Israelites] first came into this land a thousand years earlier [more like 1200], God had decreed that they massacre every man, woman, and child they encountered, that they slaughter every ox, goat, and sheep they came across, that they burn every farm, every field, every crop, every living thing without exception so as to ensure that the land would belong solely to those who worshipped this one God and no other.” But, apart from the sparing of the Gibeonites (Hurrians) in Jos. 9. 3ff., it's clear from both archeological digs and texts like the opening of the Book of Judges (“the people of Israel inquired of the Lord, who shall go up first for us against the Canaanites, to fight against them”) that the genocidal wipe‐out described in Joshua was an epic myth and that for all its history Israel remained a mixed population. Every time Jesus declares himself to the Messiah (Jn 4.26 and so on), Aslan is electrified, because he translates this as, “I am the warrior‐liberator sent to rescue Israel.” Even when Jesus deliberately dodges or hides his Zealot‐identity (as in the “messianic‐secret” passages), this too proves the depth of his messianic self‐consciousness, because he knew just how explosive the claim was. But how can we sure Jesus ever said anything attributed to him in the Gospels, since we've been warned away from all “stories” written down after his death? Where to find those “smatterings of facts” we can rely on? Luke says that Jesus (atypically, no?) bade his disciples, “let him who has no sword sell his mantle and buy one” (22.36). But then, what about all the pacifistic...