Some Preliminary Thoughts on Zealot By Reza Aslan

Some Preliminary Thoughts on Aslan’s Jesus Book

Some of you are beginning to read Reza Aslan’s book Zealot for our Sunday morning adult education sessions.  I too have been reading it, and I gave you some preliminary warnings about it last Sunday morning.  I told you that Aslan makes statements about the facts concerning New Testament figures, especially John the Baptist and Jesus, that I’ve certainly never heard before without giving any citation of authority for those statements.  I said that when you hear him saying something you’ve never heard before, don’t immediately conclude that you’ve learned something new about John or Jesus.  What you’ve learned is only that Aslan makes a certain statement about them.  Examples include his claim that John had the people he baptized cross the Jordan river from east to west, reenacting the action of Joshua, this time as the new Israel and his claim that after his baptism by John Jesus went into the wilderness not to be tempted as the Synoptic Gospels say but to spend time studying with John and his followers.  Those things may be historically plausible, but I know of no original source that establishes that they are historically true.  Please keep all of this in mind as you read the book.

As I have read more of the book I have become more concerned about what Aslan’s doing here.  I am very concerned about his claim that the God Jesus believed in and taught is the particular God that we can find in the Old Testament who orders the Hebrews to kill all of the non-Hebrews living in Canaan.  His only argument for his claim that that was Jesus’ God is that Jesus was a Jew; but of course the Old Testament contains many different views of God, not just that one.  It seems perfectly clear to me that Jesus picked up not that view of God from his scriptures but the view of the eighth century prophets who said that what God demands from us is not extirpation of our enemies but justice for the poor and the vulnerable.  Aslan clearly has not read Walter Wink on the phrase “turn the other cheek,” which Aslan says Jesus intended to apply only to relations between Jews, not between Jews and others.  He mentions the Parable of the Good Samaritan, but then he says that Jesus intended the phrase “love your neighbor” to apply only between Jews.  How he so quickly forgot the Samaritan I do not understand.

I am becoming convinced that the only reason to read this book is because it is so popular and has gotten so much press.  We need to know what it says, but I am becoming more and more convinced that what it says is an accurate representation neither of the Jesus Christ of the Gospels nor of the historical person Jesus of Nazareth.  This may be wrong, but it is starting to sound to me like Aslan, a Muslim, is turning Jesus into an former day Muhammad.  Muhammad was, in addition to being a prophet and the founder of a great religious tradition, a fighter.  Muhammad lead men in battle.  Muhammad used military force to defeat the forces of Mecca.  Islam may place limits on the use of violence, and those limits may have been moral progress in seventh century Arabia; but Muhammad never rejected violence outright.  Jesus did, but Aslan is going way out of his way to deny that truth about Jesus.  He wants to limit Jesus’ sayings on nonviolence only to actions between Jews and wants them not to apply to Jews’ actions toward anyone else.  Yes, the phrase “love your neighbor” comes from Leviticus; and yes, in Leviticus it clearly applies only between Jews.  But in Luke Jesus illustrates the saying by telling a story, the Parable of the Good Samaritan that I’ve already mentioned, in which Jewish leaders are the bad guys and a non-Jew, the Samaritan, is the good guy.  So how does love your neighbor apply only between Jews?  Aslan is simply misreading Jesus here.

Jesus doesn’t parrot the worst passages in the Old Testament, no matter how hard Aslan tries to make out that he does.  He rediscovers and lifts up some of the best insights of the Old Testament, insights about justice and care for those in need.  He adds to those insights a radical teaching of nonviolence.  That’s the Jesus we find in the Gospels.  That is Jesus the Christ.  It is the historical person Jesus of Nazareth.  Aslan has gotten Jesus all wrong, as nearly as I can tell.  So read the book so you will know about what Aslan says and so we can have some good discussions, not so that you will know something you didn’t know about Jesus.  The book will probably tell you some interesting things you may not have known about the history of Jesus’ time, about ancient Rome, and about the functioning of the Jerusalem temple and its authorities.  I don’t think it will give you much accurate, new information about Jesus.