Reza Aslan. Zealot. Random House, 2013.
This is not a review as much as it is a note to a friend who suggested this book to me. He especially wanted me to read chapter 10, so this is focused on that chapter.
I have read chapter 10 of Zealot, along with some other chapters as well. I do not understand the author’s scholarship. If there is a verse in the Bible or something he does not like, he dismisses it as inauthentic. He makes some blanket statements about Jesus and about the Scriptures that anyone familiar with them knows are simply not true.
Jesus spoke of eternal life many times, and even his opponents knew that. Jesus was challenged in his own ministry about a belief in the afterlife. Some Sadducees, the priestly party of the Jews who did not believe in the afterlife, told Him about a woman who had outlived seven husbands in succession. Which man will she marry in the afterlife? They asked the question to mock him, but he treated them with respect. Jesus then quoted the book of Exodus to show that there is an afterlife. (The Sadducees only accepted the first five books of the Bible and claimed that they said nothing about an afterlife.) See Mark 12:18-27.
At one point the author Reza Aslan says that Jesus only mentioned the afterlife once when He said “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). Aslan then asserts, without any evidence, that Jesus really did not say those words. Ironically, that is one saying of His that near contemporary secular history quotes.
Towards the end of the first century the Emperor Domitian began a persecution of Christians. He did this because he was told that Christians were claiming that Jesus was the rightful king, not the emperor. He had two of Jesus’ grand nephews arrested (grandsons of Jesus’ half-brother Jude). He questioned them and they replied that their uncle’s kingdom was not of this world. Domitian could see from their appearance and what was reported that they were farmers and posed no threat to the empire. Not only did he release them, but he no longer persecuted Christians for the rest of his reign. They were harmless. It is interesting that first century secular history apart from the Bible notes those specific words of Jesus!
If you read the Gospels, Jesus refers to the afterlife, heaven, hell, and eternity many times. It is hard to dismiss all those passages as inauthentic.
Aslan’s overall thesis is one that has been repeated in some form over the centuries. He claims Jesus was a political zealot who really wanted to conquer Rome and help Jews rule the Gentiles but who was killed before his plans succeeded. That is precisely what Muslims teach. The world had to wait for Mohammad to come along and finish Jesus’ task and begin to conquer the world. That is Muslim theology (jihad and all that). Even today we recognize that Islam is both religious and political.
Other groups have made similar arguments. In our lifetime the Unification Church made a similar claim that Jesus did not do what he had come to do and Rev. Moon had come along to complete the mission. The Mormon argument is similar: that the Bible was not the complete scripture God wanted to share, and Joseph Smith came along with the Book of Mormon to finish God’s job.
The reason I responded originally to what you wrote and sent you The Case for Heaven was that you had made an appeal about the Gospel. The Gospel is summed up by saying God sent his son Jesus to suffer for the sins of humanity, and God will save those who accept this truth from His judgment. Since you used the Gospel to appeal to me, I assumed you understood that. Aslan and the Muslims in general have no gospel. Zealot has no gospel. The primary evidence that proves Jesus was speaking the truth about God and life and death was that he was publicly and brutally killed and yet rose from the dead.
Aslan dismisses the resurrection, of course. He presents a common theory from the last two hundred years or so that Jesus was really just an itinerant rabbi who died young, but his followers, especially Peter and Paul, made up the story of the resurrection and spiritualized Jesus’ movement.
Aslan claims that Paul corrupted Jesus’ political movement into something else. The Muslims are here to reclaim that political conquest. Aslan also claims that Jesus only cared about Jews, yet the Bible tells us of Gentiles he healed and ministered to and that He directed his followers to teach “all nations” (Matthew 28:19) and go into “all the world” (Mark 16:15). In fact, Paul devoted his work to the Gentiles, and Peter ended up in Rome among the Gentiles, too.
In chapter 10 Aslan implies typical Muslim anti-Semitism, namely that the Jews like Jesus really are zealots who want to rule the world. If they cannot do it through conquest, they’ll do it by controlling the monetary system.
Hitler was influenced by similar thinking except that he was no Muslim. He saw Jesus as a prophet who was reconnecting the world with the nature-based religions like the Norse beliefs. One of his heroes was Julian the Apostate. Hitler blamed Paul and other Jews for corrupting the “natural religion,” what we would today call neo-paganism. That was one of his ideological reasons for the Final Solution.
All I can say, my friend, is that Zealot presented nothing new. There is no gospel in it. The evidence presented is weak or non-existent. Ask God to show you. He has promised, “If you seek me, you will find me” (Jeremiah 29:13). Jesus Himself said, “Seek and you will find” (Matthew 7:7). Ask Him. You will have to accept His terms, but He is happy to reveal Himself to those who are honestly looking.