Zealot

When I committed myself to speaking about Reza Aslan's controversial book 'Zealot - the Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth' at the 6:00pm service last night I was not aware that it was going to be a 38 degree day. Because I, therefore, tried to keep things as brief as possible so that people didn't have to suffer for too long, I undertook to publish what I had to say on this blog so that if anyone was interested they could read it for themselves. I have included some of the references for anyone who wishes to follow them up. I would be very happy to enter into correspondence.

"A couple of years ago I found the autobiography of James Frey on the Biography shelf of the Library. It’s called ‘A Million Little Pieces’. It is a great story and I read it voraciously over a few days. I was within 40 pages of the end when I had a conversation about it with our son. He said “’A Million Little Pieces ‘, that has been outed as a con. The author’s friends revealed that it is entirely a work of fiction”. Needless to say, the last 40 pages were very heavy going after that. It would have been a very good read if only the author had not tried to pass it off as autobiography.

‘Zealot – the Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth”’ is not a con in the same sense as ‘A Million Little Pieces’. At least, I don’t think it is. From my reading of it, it is a serious attempt to understand who Jesus was and what happened among the movement of his followers after his crucifixion and resurrection. But then again, I am easily taken in! I looked for the book on the recommendation of one of my grumpy old friends. He claims now that he hadn’t read the book but only the reviews and listened to some of the interviews with Reza Aslan, the author. It wasn’t at St Mark’s Library but I found it at the Canberra Public Library. I was number 21 on the reserve list so I had to cool my heels for 5 months before it came my way. In the meantime I read the Guardian Review which basically said don’t waste your time. Read ‘Christian Beginnings’ by Geza Vermes. Vermes was the great Dead Sea Scrolls scholar, and this was his last book before his death in 2013.    

So what I want to do in this short time is to deal with three issues that come to mind when reading Zealot. Each of these issues will help us to unpack the controversy that has surrounded the book since its publication in 2013. The three issues are – What is a person with a PhD in Sociology of Religion doing publishing on early church history? Secondly, why is a book about the early church a number one best seller on the New York Times list? Thirdly, what is the explanation for the rise of Jesus of Nazareth, a peasant reformer from the Galilee region to be recognized as the long expected Christ and the founder of the most prominent worldwide religions? Clearly, there is not sufficient time to deal with these issues in depth so I recommend is that you get hold of the book and make up your own mind on what it has to say.

What is a person with a PhD in Sociology of Religion doing writing on early church history? Aslan claims that he is equally qualified in Early Church History which places him in an appropriate place to be writing on the subject. It is true that understanding the social forces that were at work in the early church are important for understanding why it is that the community of the church acts the way that it does today.  Aslan claims that in understanding who Jesus of Nazareth was, the early church was presented with two quite different options. On the one hand the church could understand the nature of Jesus’ ministry as being that of a gifted miracle worker – one of many who plied their trade in first century Palestine. On the other hand Jesus could be seen as a radical political revolutionary who was seeking to overthrow the repressive Roman regime that was so despised among the common people. Aslan suggests that as the early Christian Church reached out into the Roman Empire, eventually becoming the official religion of the state, the role of Jesus as a political revolutionary was diminished and the role of Pontius Pilate in the brutal execution of Jesus for his revolutionary actions, downplayed to make the Church acceptable in the Roman world. As a result, the image of Jesus as a gifted healer and exorcist gained ascendency and has coloured the church’s thinking about who Jesus was ever since.

Of course, such an understanding of Jesus’ ministry is simplistic. Jesus’ ministry was about bringing the Kingdom of God into being. In my opinion the Kingdom of God does not come into being through signs and wonders nor does it come into being through earthly political revolution. The Kingdom of God is an ever present reality in the lives and hearts of those who follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, those who take up their cross daily, regardless of the consequences.

Why is it that a book about the life of Jesus and the history of the early church should reach number 1 on the New York Times bestseller list and also number 1 on the Amazon best seller list? Clearly ‘Zealot’ is popular! It is very well written and hard to put down. Aslan has confined theological arguments and references to 70 pages at the end of the book which means that the book can be read as a continuous narrative rather than interrupting the flow of the work with the need to follow up numerous references. Of course, this does make it difficult to test the strength of his hypotheses. The references are strong, including some of the world’s leading progressive New Testament scholars. They include our own Professor John Painter, a world authority on James the Just, the brother of Jesus. None of this explains why it is so popular. It was already at Number 4 on the best seller lists before the infamous ‘most embarrassing television interview ever’ as the reviewers call it. In an interview on Fox News, Aslan is forced to defend the right of a Muslim to write about Jesus and to defend his qualifications. It is not a pretty interview. Immediately after the interview the popularity of the book rose significantly, which only goes to show that any publicity is good publicity. Personally, I don’t care who writes about Jesus of Nazareth, so long as they get it right. One thing that the popularity of the book demonstrates is that while interest in the church is declining worldwide, the interest of ordinary people in who Jesus was has not declined at all. The book does raise a whole raft of issues that are important for us all to grapple with. If, from this debate we achieve a better understanding of who Jesus was and the nature of the church, the debate that the book generates will be worthwhile. How much ‘Zealot’ itself contributes to the debate is an open question.

Finally, how was it that Jesus of Nazareth came to be Jesus the Christ of the early church and Christ the King who we worship and celebrate today? Jesus was, after all, a radical peasant leader of a small band of followers from an outer region of a small country on the outer edge of the Roman Empire. In terms of the political reality of his time, he was a nobody, an outcaste. How could such a person, after his death, be transformed by the ever expanding community of his followers to the messianic figure of the early church, the Christ, the long expected one? Aslan claims that it was all down to Saint Paul and the tragic conflict between him and the Jerusalem Church under the leadership of James the Just.

He claims that Paul had no contact whatever with Jesus during Jesus earthly ministry but that Paul’s ministry was solely informed by the Damascus Road revelation. Personally, the more that I have studied and thought about this issue over the years, the less I am convinced that this is true. He further claims that after his conversion Paul had no contact at all with the Jerusalem Church for 3 years but rather set off on his own ministry among the Jewish Community of the diaspora and inevitably among the Gentile believers of those communities. In the meantime the Jerusalem Church under James’ leadership continued to participate in the worship and life of the Temple and to all intents and purposes continued as a sect of the temple cult. Aslan suggests that the conflict between James and Paul was strong. It was about the fundamentals of the faith, whether salvation was restricted to the Jews and whether converts had to comply with the law in all respects. Paul and James were both martyred in the mid 50’s of the first century. After that, the Jerusalem Church continued to operate within the confines of the Temple following the precepts of the Mosaic Law, in isolation, he suggests, from much of the missionary work which was occurring throughout the Roman Empire and beyond. The Jerusalem Church was obliterated along with everything else in Jerusalem in the Roman siege and invasion of 73 CE. With the end of the Jerusalem Church the only guidance available to the young Christian communities were the Epistles of Paul with their particular Greco-Roman Philosophical bent. It was Paul who turned Jesus of Nazareth into Jesus the Christ and that, he claims, is the reason that we worship him as Christ the King today.

There are many flaws in Aslan’s thesis. Firstly, his thoughts are not original and as the reviews point out, he barely acknowledges his source. In my opinion he places much too great an emphasis on the writings of Luke and particularly on the Acts of the Apostles. He seems unaware of the seminal work of Gunther Bornkamm, the great New Testament scholar who, in his 1969 work ‘Paul’ states that Acts is unreliable as an historic record of the work, life and ministry of Paul. His claim that the Gospel of Luke is the only Gospel written by the person who bears the name of the Gospel is speculation and his dating of all of the Gospels is much later than any dating I have previously come across. The critics also note that Aslan’s theory about how the early church reached the conclusion that Jesus was the messiah is one of a number and should not be given greater weight than any other.

For me the biggest challenge of this work is that he throws up again the question of the influence of Paul in the development of Christian thinking throughout history. I believe that in our Christian journey we follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, not in the footsteps of St Paul, though, of course, Paul’s writings have had a huge influence in the life of the church throughout the centuries. Our experience shows that when we follow in the footsteps of Jesus the Kingdom of God is present among us, bringing new life to all."

References:

‘Zealot – the Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth’, Reza Aslan, The Westbourne Press. 2013.

 ‘Christian Beginnings – From Nazareth to Galilee’ Geza Vermes, The Penguin Book Ltd, London 2013.

‘Paul’ Gunther Bornkamm, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1971.

‘The Guardian’, ‘New York Times’ and ‘Washington Post’ reviews of ‘Zealot’ are assessable on line as are numerous interviews with Reza Aslan.