Review of Reza Aslan, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

Reza Aslan, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, New York: Random House, 2013 ISBN 97814000069224

First, as a disclaimer, I am somewhat uncomfortable doing a true scholarly analysis of a book such as Reza Aslan’s. The reason is that Aslan wrote this unapologetically for popular rather than scholarly consumption. As such, a true scholarly critique would, of course, poke holes in the analysis of a book which was written to be a best seller. However, as several people have requested I analyze it, I feel obligated to do so. I should note, however, that despite the viral Fox News interview, none of this analysis will have anything to do with the fact that Aslan is a Muslim. This review is entirely about the content of the book rather than psychoanalysis of its author.

Reza Aslan’s book on the historical Jesus uses the facts about Jesus which can be proven and uses that to create a sketch of a Jesus that he feels is most likely. Second, he has a short unit which is not about the historical Jesus at all, but his discussion of why his historical Jesus was not preserved and the traditional understanding of Jesus as found in the New Testament was developed. His book is very provocatively written and is very accessible. This review will first look at his picture of the historical Jesus which is relatively standard and then his discussion of the first several centuries of Christianity which is unfortunately very poorly constructed.  

Reza Aslan’s book is a historical sketch about what can be proved about the life of Jesus. Aslan’s approach is completely historical at the beginning – he looks at the biography of Jesus and discusses what are verifiable facts about the figure who roamed Roman Palestine two thousand years ago. As it is a construction of the verifiable, provable facts (rather than things that may have happened but cannot be proven), the number of verifiable things are necessarily less than the picture presented in the New Testament.

Aslan begins his book by constructing the world of first century Roman Palestine. He focuses primarily on economic issues regarding the class divisions in Palestine. He sees the class divisions between the Romans living in Palestine in addition (and mostly) to the aristocratic priestly class who use the temple and its rituals to increase their position. Further, he constructs a positive fiscal relationship between the priestly class and Rome in order to show the division between the priestly class and the lower class of peasants who are defined by abject poverty and a complete disdain for Rome (as well as the corrupt priestly system).

From this picture, he considers several verifiable facts about Jesus’ life to be verifiable. He creates a narrative which includes Jesus being born and raised in Nazareth, having several brothers who were followers of Jesus, baptized by the prophet John the Baptist, having 12 disciples, proclaiming himself Son of Man as in the book of Daniel, being a miracle worker and exorcist, proclaiming the coming kingdom of God on earth, which he wanted kept secret but charged absolutely nothing for, driving people out of the temple, and crucified by Rome as a bandit (lestai).  

These verifiable facts about Jesus’ life are not unique to Aslan. Many historical Jesus scholars, as he quotes, trumpet these points. Some scholars would have included some other details (for instance, he says nothing about Jesus’ use of parables), but these are mostly universal. Aslan, to his discredit, does not entirely explain why it is that scholars are confident on these matters or what criteria that he uses. The standard criteria for the historical Jesus are the following: 1). The number, date, and general accuracy of the sources for the life of Jesus (with the idea that something in many different sources is more likely historical than something that is not), 2). An event in a narrative that is contrary to the theme of the narrative (with the idea that an author does not usually invent an episode in a narrative that is contrary to one’s point), and 3). Something that makes little sense to have been invented given the cultural context of the users of the texts (with the idea that the early church had common forms it usually used and those unlike those forms are more likely historical e.g. parables of Jesus). These principles are hardly foolproof and there is nearly no event in the gospels that satisfies all three criteria.

While some events are historically verifiable, this does not necessarily mean that other events did not occur – just that they cannot be historically verified. A historical analysis is attempting to describe what probably happened. It does not mean other things could not have happened – it is just a matter of likelihood. Aslan points this out for the events of the miracles of Jesus and the resurrection.[1] He sees them as completely outside of the realm of discussion (just as they cannot be proven, nor can they be disproven). He even shows that while it might be easy for an outsider to simply dismiss the resurrection out of hand, the evidence of so many people independently citing the resurrection as a fact shows its historical ambiguity.[2]

Aslan, like all historical Jesus scholars, is not satisfied with simply listing the verifiable facts about Jesus. He uses these facts to reconstruct a full historical character. To do so, he attempts to square what we can verify about Jesus with his construction of Roman Palestine (as seen above). Further, he places Jesus in the wide range of Messianic figures in the Galilee in the centuries surrounding Jesus. The idea behind this is that the most likely figure who would arise is someone who meets the needs of his day. Again, this does not necessarily prove anything (as Jesus could well have been something people did not expect), but the study of the historical Jesus attempts to present something plausible.

Given discussion about the priestly system in Roman Palestine, it is not surprising that Aslan sees Jesus’ activity in the temple as challenging this system to be the main focus of Jesus’ ministry. He argues that Jesus is responding to the classed situation of Roman Palestine and challenging it by overturning the tables of vendors, money-changes, and buyers. He then drives out those who want to offer sacrifices and attacks the temple cult for being totally corrupt.  Aslan finds support for this idea by noting that there were several Jewish groups who expressed such zeal for the law (hence the title of the book) that they acted in similar ways (such as the Qumran community).[3]  

Aslan sees this temple scene as so significant, that he builds his character of the historical Jesus on this one aspect. Aslan explains his hermeneutic in the following quotation:

But look closely at Jesus’s words and actions in the Temple in Jerusalem – the episode that undoubtedly precipitated his arrest and execution – and this one fact becomes difficult to deny: Jesus was crucified by Rome because his messianic aspirations threatened the occupation of Palestine, and his zealotry endangered the Temple authorities. That singular fact should color everything we read in the gospels about the messiah known as Jesus of Nazareth – from the details of his death on a cross in Golgotha to the launch of his public ministry on the banks of the Jordan River.[4]

Aslan, then makes his view quite clear – Jesus was primarily a social reformer who challenged the priestly class as he fit in the temple. All other facts about Jesus known through the text will then be interpreted in this light.

While Aslan does have support in the scholarly world for some of his views, he even pushes this agenda too far by citing Jesus was arguing for an armed rebellion against Rome. Throughout the text, Aslan depends greatly upon the ideas of John Dominic Crossan and John Meier.[5] Crossan has become a pseudo-celebrity for his view of the historical Jesus as, primarily, an ethical reformer and sees Jesus’ activity in the temple as a ritual destruction of the temple and its function. Further, Crossan would agree with Aslan that Jesus’s message, while being fully religious, is also fully political. However, Aslan stands alone when he suggests that Jesus looked forward to the use of force in his ethical reformation of Israelite society.[6] This statement is particularly surprising given that he admits just two pages earlier that there is no evidence that Jesus truly supported the use of force.[7]

The second major position which Aslan holds in isolation for the historical Jesus is the way in which he argues that Jesus considered himself “son of man.” Aslan, along with plenty of historical Jesus scholars, argues that Jesus used the term son of man as his primary designation in his own life. He even agrees with many scholars that this term is built, in this context, from the eschatological book of Daniel being the heavenly being who was to come in the future to restore the kingdom of God on earth.[8] However, he argues that for Daniel this figure is a human figure that is appointed by God. He is willing to admit that the Similitudes (found in I Enoch) and 4 Ezra consider a being designated from the beginning of time who is very close to, if not actually divine, he argues that these texts are of no significance because they were written 60 years after the fact.[9] This type of simple dependence is something that surprising at best and poor scholarship at worst. He seems to think that we have most all of the texts that were available during the time period, so if we do not have a text that is from the exact same time as Jesus, then the ideas were not present. Such a view might be very reasonable for children’s video games wherein the game presents the player with all the information one needs, but not a reasonable statement for a historian who is trying to reconstruct a world which we can only see through shards.

The real support for this violent uprising is based upon another of his most important categories – how other messianic figures functioned in Palestine. Aslan wants to see Jesus as likely as possible and in so doing has to reconstruct the world of Roman Palestine. He does this by discussing other figures who claimed to be messiah and attempted some of the same reforms that he sees Jesus accomplishing.[10] This type of “one size fits all” logic leads to some of these wild conclusions hitherto unknown in the world of historical scholarship.

Aslan develops these ideas through a relatively uncritical reading of the historian Josephus. He sees all of the messiahs rising up to deal with one central issue – the spiritually amalgamated rule of either King Herod or the union of the high priest Caiaphas with Pontius Pilate. He argues that the jurisdiction of both brought about the improper temple priesthood (as it was compromised by association with Rome) and the increase of class divisions – creating a new class of Jewish aristocracy (centered around the priesthood). To do this, he depends heavily on nearly the only source for this time period – the works of Flavius Josephus. However, he does not appear to consider Josephus’s history very critically. Josephus, it has long been known, has a consistent theme throughout his text – the power and influence of Rome. Therefore, to say that Caiaphas was in the pocket of Pilate, could emphasize an inappropriate relationship between the high priest and the governor, but more likely is the explanation by Josephus as to why Caiaphas – a rather important political and social figure in Judaea while not being Roman – was able to remain in power for nearly two decades. Josephus’s solution is that he was actually in collaboration with Rome the entire time. The problem with Aslan’s book is not this one episode, but that he argues so aggressively for the critical reading of one of the sources about the historical Jesus – the gospels, but does not do the same for his other main source – Josephus.

Finally, Aslan develops many of these ideas based upon a psychoanalysis of Jesus being a disenfranchised tekton (manual laborer) who saw the class disparity first hand while working as a laborer in the rebuilding of the city of Sepphoris as a young man. He goes into some depth about the archaeological remains at Sepphoris, the rebellion that caused its destruction and rebuilding at the time of Jesus’ youth, and the higher class who paid for it.[11] However, he fails to mention that Sepphors is not mentioned once in any of the sources about the life of Jesus. This is not to say that Jesus could not have worked there before his ministry, but for someone who is attempting to reveal the facts from the sources, this psychoanalysis is highly speculative and is seemingly only accepted because it suggests Jesus getting involved with this class struggle he sees as so central.

Reconstruction of the decades after Jesus’ death

While Aslan’s discussion of the historical Jesus has some weaknesses (see above), for the most part, his discussion is a relatively common presentation which has been stated for over twenty years. However, his discussion about the generations after Jesus’ death in which he attempts to explain why the picture of the historical Jesus he reconstructs were lost is rife with inaccuracy and lack of understanding.

First, Aslan shows he does not understand many of the issues in the book of Acts and Paul’s letters by making many rather amateur mistakes. First, he falls into the common trap of thinking that Paul had a radical conversion and at that time changed his name from Saul to Paul.[12] This is completely unsubstantiated in the text and a casual reader of the book of Acts will notice that his name is not changed when Jesus appears to him on the road, but rather begins to be used when he leaves the general area of Palestine and enters into other areas of the Roman empire. Second, he seems to fail to understand the use of scriptural citation used in the New Testament. He touts that no scriptural passage supports the messiah dying and rising again as the Gospel of Luke suggests.[13] While this is technically true, the way he presents it makes it sound as if every other citation in the gospel included footnotes and direct citation. Most of the references in the Gospels to the Hebrew Bible are more typologies and cloaked references rather than clear citations (something he himself admits in his discussion about the prophesies about Jesus in the first half of the book). Third, he argues that Paul considered himself an apostle but the Jerusalem church considered, but denied him this title.[14] He says this despite the fact that neither Acts nor Paul suggest any type of discussion about this. Further, he does not mention that Acts has a very specific restriction on who is qualified to be an apostle – one who followed Jesus during his whole lifetime (see Acts 1-2). Paul automatically is disqualified. Further, Paul uses the term much more loosely as anyone who “has been sent” by Christ directly. He even is willing to use the term for a woman, Junia, in Romans 16. Therefore, to suggest that Paul wanted the title but that the Jerusalem church denied him is simply a lack of understanding.

Another glaring error in the book is his discussion about the way in which the gospels attempted to solve the problem of Jesus’ failed messianic dream. He argues that the gospels, in an attempt to avoid the embarrassment that the kingdom of God did not come when Jesus lived and died, created the concept that the kingdom of God was in the celestial, rather than earthly sphere.[15] While this might be somewhat true of the Gospel of John – which famously avoids the language of “kingdom of God” altogether (though serious question can be asked whether the discussion of “sphere” is even relevant for the Gospel of John – it is certainly not true of any of the synoptic gospels. The synoptic gospels all discuss a future coming of the kingdom of God on earth (though the Gospel of Luke does amend it saying that a portion of it is already here among the community). However, the concept of the celestial sphere for the kingdom of God is simply not present.

Another glaring mistake in order to prove his point is found in his argument for the lack of continuity between the Jerusalem church and Paul. He argues that they never agreed on the nature of Christ which came out in their relation to Judaism. Aslan argues that the Jerusalem church preserved the true historical Jesus while Paul created the heavenly Christ. He cites, as evidence, the Jerusalem council found in Acts 15 and Galatians 2. He suggests that Acts has whitewashed the conflict to make it sound like the two came to agreement whereas Paul shows us that they never agreed and were two separate entities.[16] While I do not disagree that the Book of Acts probably has whitewashed the event, Aslan fails to quote Paul in stating that after a seeming problem at first, “They gave to Barnabas and me the right hand of fellowship, agreeing that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.”[17] While it is true that this continued to be a struggle throughout the career of Paul, it hardly suggests that Paul was so different that they could not even converse.

Finally, Aslan’s depiction of Paul’s attitude toward the Torah is outdated and leads to a radical separation from Judaism that is not necessary in Paul’s work. He bases his argument that there was a major disagreement between James and Paul that can be seen in the works ascribed to Paul and the work ascribed to James (not mentioning that there is serious question whether the brother of Jesus was the author of the book of James).[18] He argues that Paul argues for the radical abandonment of the Torah covenant and all things related to Judaism thereby stripping Jesus of his messianic revolutionary spirit. He further argues that James writes as a corrective to Paul arguing that Torah was important and that the main issue that needed to be dealt with were class divisions (considering the rich and poor in James).[19]

The problem with Aslan’s declaration is that it does not show careful understanding of Paul or James. The New Perspective on Paul (however one thinks of their conclusions about Judaism) has shown that Paul did not argue for the radical abandonment of the Torah and all things legal.[20] Rather, Paul is merely making the argument that it is not necessary for Gentiles to become full proselyte Jews in order to join the Jesus movement. Rather than abandoning the privilege and value of Israel, instead, he goes to great lengths to prove that through adoption, the gentiles are now part of Israel and the promised people.[21]

Second, Aslan does not understand the book of James very well either. He bases much of his argument on the fact that James is interested in rich and poor (which the book certainly is) but also on the fact that it values “the law of liberty” which he uncritically reads as the Torah. However, he does not mention that recent scholarship have shown that while the term “law of liberty” was not found to be a description of the Torah in any known Jewish work prior to the book of James, it was a relatively common trope about the logos (which one will find directly before this discussion in James) in Stoic philosophy.[22] Further research considering James finds more and more stoic philosophy rather than Jewish understandings of Torah in the text (it should be noted that there still is plenty of room for Jewish understanding of Torah in the text – just through a stoic lens. However, for the purposes of this argument, neither would be arguing for a literal dependence upon the ideas of strictly following the Torah in a legalistic sense which Aslan seems to be suggesting the book of James is arguing to oppose Paul).

What is most troubling about this second half of the book is that the pitfalls that Aslan falls into are not so much disagreements with scholars as much as popular opinions one who does not truly study the field might find. The first half of his book could be disagreed with in a scholarly discussion while the second half is simply poor characterization of the decades following Jesus’ death given relatively uncritical readings of the texts at hand.

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[1] Aslan, Zealot, 104 and 174.

[2] Ibid., 175.

[3] Ibid., 73-79.

[4] Ibid., 79.

[5] See John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (New York: Harper Collins, 1992) and John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. 4 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991-2009).

[6] Aslan, Zealot, 122.

[7] Ibid., 120.

[8] Ibid., 139.

[9] Ibid., 140.

[10] For his reconstruction of the background of Jesus’ life see pages 3-70.

[11] Ibid., 38-39.

[12] Ibid., 170.

[13] Ibid., 172.

[14] Ibid., 188.

[15] Ibid., 178.

[16] Ibid., 188.

[17] Galatians 2:9b.

[18] Aslan, Zealot, 193.

[19] Ibid., 197-212.

[20] See E.P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism.

[21] See Catherine Hodge, If Sons then Heirs: A Study of Kinship and Ethnicity in the Letters of Paul (Oxford: OUP, 2007).

[22] See Matt Jackson-McCabe, Logos and Law in the Letter of James: The Law of Nature, the Law of Moses, and the Law of Freedom (Leiden: Brill, 2000).