Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

Author: Reza Aslan

Rating: ⭐ 4/5

Date Read: 2013/11/06

Pages: 296

Although Reza Aslan titled his book Zealot, it could just as easily have been called “A Tale of Two Jesuses.” The first Jesus is the one that many Americans are familiar with; I first learned about him during Catholic Catechism. He’s the literal son of God, born of a literal virgin, which is why he gets to walk around with that glowing crown of gold around his head. He’s all about doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, and all that. He looks like this:



Historical Jesus is pretty freaking different from Catholic Jesus. First of all, he’s never considers himself the literal son of God, nor does he even refer to himself as the Messiah. He’s not some divine being sent to earth to bring us salvation in another life. Instead, historical Jesus wanted to bring the Jewish people prosperity during his own time.

Consider this “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth. I have not come to bring peace, but the sword” (Matthew 10:34, Luke 12:51).

I definitely prefer historical Jesus to Catholic Jesus. Historical Jesus was an iconoclast who devoted his life to overturning an unjust social order during one of the most tumultuous periods in history. Historical Jesus was a complete badass. I imagine that Historical Jesus looked something like this:



Zealot is a short book, but it outlined quite a bit about the historical context that totally blew my mind. For example, purification acts performed at the temple in Jerusalem were a major source of income for Rome, so when Jesus cured lepers he was actively taking away this income. Also, Jesus wasn’t the only potential messiah running around. In reality, he had a fair amount of competition.

There are some places where this book gets weird, like the part where Aslan doesn’t dismiss out of hand the idea that Jesus performed miracles. Instead, he just talks about how some people said that Jesus was performing miracles, and others said that it was magic. Um, okay? David Blaine performs “magic” too, but his tricks have physical (as opposed to metaphysical) explanations, because we live in a world governed by the laws of physics. Unfortunately, magic isn’t real (there are tons of kids who didn’t get a letter from Hogwarts on their 13th birthday, who also didn’t wake up levitating on their 16th birthday, who will attest to this fact). Miracles don’t exist either, unless we’re talking about magnets. The historical record might suggest that Jesus was particularly good at sleight of hand tricks, which made it appear that he performed magicles, but that doesn’t mean he actually did. Occam’s Razor, etc. It’s kind of silly to boil that all down to a question of semantics. A true historian would be appropriately incredulous.

The book is also short and ends abruptly, far before I felt like I was finished with it, almost as if

Still, I do recommend this book, to religious and non-religious people alike. I came out of it with a greater appreciation for Jesus, the man. Where I stand on the position of the Jesus, the Christ, remains unchanged. I pity the fool who tries to convert me by appealing to Jesus, the ethereal archetype. I’ve now got some pretty persuasive arguments against that particular viewpoint.