Zealot

Title: Zealot – The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

Author: Reza Aslan

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2013 (First)

ISBN: 9789351360766

Pages: 296

Few other characters have influenced human minds over the ages more than that of Jesus Christ. He is the veritable god incarnate for nearly half of the world population, and a revolutionary preacher for others who are swayed more by rational thought. Where does the truth lie? The New Testament includes conflicting versions of narratives that dwells on Jesus as Christ, the messiah, the divine and as the man from Nazareth in his human form. Reza Aslan, who is an internationally acclaimed writer and scholar of religions, has written this excellent book by critically examining biblical passages to sift the actual happenings from mere conjectures. His vast scholarship of the books that made into the Bible and those who were rejected as apocrypha helps him to reconstruct a plausible sequence of events and the logic followed by the early church fathers in finalizing the creed of Christianity. Aslan is basically an Iranian Muslim, whose family escaped from the country in the wake of Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution in 1979. Reaching the U.S., and tired of Islam on account of the harrowing experience his family had to endure in Iran, Aslan was deeply attracted to Jesus Christ and the Christian religion. After an exhaustive study of the Bible, Aslan began to have doubts on blindly believing what is written. This prodded him into dedicating himself into research on the origins and development of Semitic religions. He has published many books on religion and now lives in Los Angeles. This book is a delight to read on account of its extensive coverage of events and the author’s pleasant style of telling a story.

The history of Israel/Palestine wrought its societal mind in the first millennium BCE in the way things eventually evolved. Aslan writes a beautifully crafted synopsis of it, which amply illustrates why the Israelites were waiting for a savior (messiah) at around Jesus’ birth. Jewish dominance on the land was practically cemented with the reign of David on the region conquered from subject peoples after great violence sanctioned by the one true god. The Jewish kingdom was supplanted in 586 BCE by the Babylonians and its subjects taken into captivity. They were released from slavery and their lands restored when the Persians overran Babylon. Israel was politically only a backwater as far as the Persians were concerned. Jewish rule continued for a few more centuries before contending princes sought the help of the Roman emperor, who had gained great strength by then. A vassal kingdom was established in Judaea under King Herod, who was a Jew in all but name. Herod accepted Roman hegemony and allowed Hellenization to proceed in the social sphere. His sops to devout Jews like the re-establishment of the Temple and a priestly class of administrators of it – though they were servile to him – did not endear the monarch to the ordinary faithful, because of his hefty taxes, rich tribute to his Roman overlords, establishment of Roman insignia in Jewish places of worship and the merciless suppression of rebel Jewish movements. After Judaea became a Roman protectorate in 63 BCE, several revolutionaries had turned up in the meantime to offer hope to the populace. They were inflamed by the zeal of god’s work and hence called zealots, without the negative connotation we usually assign to the word now. The authorities were also vigilant. Uttering the words “kingdom of god is near” was seditious as it might mean wresting Judaea away from the control of Rome and keep it separated from people believing in pagan religions as the Romans did. Herod died in 4 BCE and the thousands of labourers and peasants he had commandeered in Jerusalem for his lavish building projects had to return home jobless. This seething population meant trouble for the rulers.

Part 2 of the book covers the life and times of Jesus. This was a period rife with revolutionaries and insurrectionists. Hezekiah, Simon of Peraea, Athronges the shepherd boy, and Judas the Galilean came before Jesus, while Theudas came after him. Many of them claimed to be messiahs. All of them met the standard penalty reserved for sedition – death on the cross. Jesus’ Galilee was a restive province from the beginning, subject only to a tenuous control from Jerusalem. Aslan argues that Jesus was a disciple of John the Baptist and rose to prominence after his master’s incarceration by Herod Antipas. Jesus professed his ministry in the rustic towns and villages of Galilee, carefully leaving out cities like Sepphoris and Tiberias where Roman garrisons were stationed. A lot of miracles and healings were performed in this period. This is not something extraordinary as evidenced by the list furnished by the author. Honi the Circle-Drawer, Abba Hilqiah, Hanan the Hidden, Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa and Apollonius of Tiyana are said to have performed the same feats as Jesus. After testing out the suburbs, Jesus and his disciples entered Jerusalem on a donkey at the head of a great procession fit for a king. He drove out the moneychangers and released sacrificial animals from the Court of Gentiles in the sacred Temple of Jerusalem. Jewish priests and elders who were already tired of Jesus’ revolutionary program of reversing the social order in the coming Kingdom of God couldn’t tolerate this blatant assault on one of the holiest places of Jewish worship. He was brought before the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate, who, against his inner voice and submitting to popular frenzy ordered him to be crucified. This biblical story is challenged by the author. Pilate was a very cruel official having no regard to his Jewish subjects. It is unlikely that he would tend to show mercy on a rebel who had threatened to upset the order and hoisted the banner of sedition against Roman rule of Israel. A novel theory is suggested to account for the beneficial light in which Pilate, the Roman governor is portrayed in the gospels. They were written many decades after the crucifixion. In the meantime, Jews rose up in armed revolt against Rome in 66 CE. After a brutal reprisal, Rome reasserted control in 70 CE. The retaliation was horrific. In addition to destroying the temple, Jews were massacred en masse and scattered the living ones to the four corners of the empire. The early Christian evangelists had the Roman intelligentsia in mind as the target for conversions. This explains the haste to absolve Pilate for all wrongdoing, at the same time setting in motion anti-Semitism among Christians which continues to this day.

Aslan identifies two distinct currents in post-crucifixion Christian theology. Apostles and Jewish elders continued to treat Jesus as a Jewish messiah, even though he couldn’t fulfill the promises expected of one – the end of days didn’t come, God didn’t liberate Jews from bondage, the twelve tribes of Israel were not reconstituted and the kingdom of god never arrived. There was a mother assembly in Jerusalem under the leadership of James the Just, who was Jesus’ own brother. Peter, Simon and John, who were the foremost among apostles, were also a part of the assembly. They were observant Jews who didn’t violate scriptures – just like Jesus. They considered Jesus as a man, the messiah, who died on the cross but resurrected on the third day. Early Christianity was a sect of Judaism. If a gentile wanted to become a Christian, he had to first become a Jew by circumcision and other rituals. The divergence of Christians from mainline Jews was perhaps initiated by the martyrdom of Stephen in around 35 CE at Jerusalem. Stephen was a Christian and refused to recant that Jesus was the messiah. He was stoned by the populace. The last trace of the historical person known as Jesus of Nazareth was buried with this death, which was occasioned by the devotee’s suggestion that he saw Jesus sitting on the right side of God. Jesus movement obtained traction among Diaspora Jews.  The movement was divided into Hebrews (those inhabiting Israel) and Hellenists (who were Greek-speaking and domiciled in foreign lands). The Hebrews were mainly farmers and fishermen, while the latter were more sophisticated and urbane. Paul, who was a converted Pharisee, evangelized the Diaspora and gentiles. He wavered from Mosaic Law and welcomed even uncircumcised gentiles into his fold. He was reprimanded for this breach of custom by the church elders, especially James. They nominated another missionary of their own to spread the holy word in Paul’s congregations. Paul’s resentment knew no bounds. He introduced a new liturgy in which he introduced Jesus as Christ, the divine, who existed along with God. When Jerusalem was burnt down in 70 CE and the inhabitants slaughtered after the insurrection, the Jerusalem assembly disappeared from the world, paving the way for a Romanized version of Pauline Christianity that quickly unshackled itself from Jewish precepts and inaugurated itself as a new religion. The rest is history.

The book is very easy to read and comprehend. Aslan’s erudition is impressive, as evidenced by the numerous references not only to books in the two testaments, but also to apocryphal texts. The Notes section covers almost a quarter of the book. Bibliography is extensive and the Index is excellent. Even with all this, the author’s selective assignment of suspicion on uncomfortable Biblical verses that don’t tally with his argument should have been avoided. Altogether, the book is a commendable introduction into Christology.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star