- Used Book in Good Condition.
Q&A with Reza Aslan
-----------------------
Q. Why did you title your biography of Jesus of Nazareth Zealot?
A. In Jesus' world, zealot referred to those Jews who adhered to
a widely accepted biblical doctrine called zeal. These “zealous”
Jews were strict nationalists who preached the sole sovereignty
of God. They wanted to throw off the yoke of Roman occupation and
cleanse the Promised Land of all foreign elements. Some zealots
resorted to extreme acts of violence against both the Roman
authorities and the Jewish ‘collaborators,” by which they meant
the wealthy Temple priests and the Jewish aristocracy. Others
refrained from violence but were no less adamant about
establishing the reign of God on earth. There is no evidence that
Jesus of Nazareth was himself a violent revolutionary (though his
views on the use of violence were more complex than it is often
assumed). However, Jesus’ actions and his teachings about the
Kingdom of God clearly indicate that he was a follower of the
zealot doctrine, which is why he, like so many zealots before and
after him, was ultimately executed by Rome for the crime of
sedition.
Q. Yours is one of the few popular biographies of Jesus of
Nazareth that does not rely on the gospels as your primary source
of information for uncovering Jesus’ life. Why is that? What are
your primary sources?
A. I certainly rely on the gospels to provide a narrative
outline to my biography of Jesus of Nazareth, but my primary
source in recreating Jesus’ life are historical writings about
first century Palestine, like the Jewish historian Flavius
Josephus, as well as Roman documents of the time. The gospels are
incredible texts that provide Christians with a profound
framework for living a life in imitation of Christ. The problem,
however, is that the gospels are not, nor were they ever meant to
be, historical documentations of Jesus’ life. These are not
eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ words and deeds. They are
testimonies of faith composed by communities of faith written
many years after the events they describe. In other words, the
gospels tell us about Jesus the Christ, not Jesus the man. The
gospels are of course extremely useful in revealing how the early
Christians viewed Jesus. But they do not tell us much about how
Jesus viewed himself. To get to the bottom of that mystery, which
is what I try to do in the book, one must sift through the gospel
stories to analyze their cls about Jesus in light of the
historical facts we know about the time and world in which Jesus
lived. Indeed, I believe that if we place Jesus firmly within the
social, religious, and political context of the era in which he
lived, then, in some ways, his biography writes itself.
Q. You write in the book that you became an evangelical
Christian in High School, but that after a few years, you
abandoned Christianity and returned to the faith of your
forehers: Islam. Why did you decide to make this change and
how did it affect how you understood the life and work of Jesus
of Nazareth.
A. When I was fifteen years old I heard the gospel story for the
first time and immediately accepted Jesus into my heart. I had
what Christians refer to as “an encounter with Christ.” I spent
the next five years as an evangelical Christian, and even spent
some time traveling around the United States spreading the gospel
message. But the more I read the Bible – especially in college,
where I began my formal study of the New Testament – the more I
uncovered a wide chasm between the Jesus of history and the Jesus
I learned about in church. At that same time, through the
encouragement of one of my professors, I began to reexamine the
faith and traditions of my forehers and returned to Islam. But
the irony is that once I detached my academic study of Jesus from
my faith in Christ, I became an even more fervent follower of
Jesus of Nazareth. What I mean to say is that I live my life
according to the social teachings preached by Jesus two thousand
years ago. I take his actions against the powers of his time and
his defense of the poor and the weak as a model of behavior for
myself. I pray, as a Muslim, alongside my Christian wife, and
together we teach our children the values I believe Jesus
represents. The man who defied the will of the most powerful
empire the world had ever known – and lost – is so much more real
to me than the Jesus I knew as a Christian. So in a way, this
book is my attempt to spread the good news of Jesus the man with
the same passion that I once applied to spreading the good news
of Jesus the Christ.
Q. What do you hope readers, especially religious readers, take
away from your book?
A. My hope is that this book provides readers with a more
complete sense of the world in which Jesus lived. We cannot truly
understand Jesus’ words and deeds if we separate them from the
religious and political context of his time. Regardless of
whether you think of Jesus as a prophet, a teacher, or God
incarnate, it is important to remember that he did not live in a
vacuum. Whatever else Jesus was, he was, without question, a man
of his time. This is true for all of us. The key to understanding
who Jesus was and what Jesus meant lies in understanding the
times in which he lived. That’s what this book does. It drops you
in the middle of Jesus’ world and helps you understand the
context out of which he arose and in which preached.