in the history of religions" have been challenged, those familiar with the contents and claims of Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth say Aslan has presented nothing new, although his meticulous research is evident.Īmong some of the claims in Zealot, a biography in the top five of The New York Times Best Seller list and the leading book in a few Amazon categories, is that: Jesus was a revolutionary and a zealot who advocated the use of violence as a devout Jew Jesus would have rejected the idea of an incarnate God Jesus was crucified for sedition against the Roman Empire and not for the world's sins. While his claims to being a "scholar of religions" and an "expert with a Ph.D. "It's not as if I'm just some Muslim writing about Jesus. "And so, like many people in my situation, I angrily discarded my faith as if it were a costly forgery I had been duped into buying."īut Aslan remained in admiration of Jesus of Nazareth, while rejecting Jesus the Christ, "the celestial spirit whom many Christians believe sacrificed himself for our sins."Ĭharged in his Fox New interview that his personal faith journey somehow overshadowed his academic objectivity, Aslan insisted: "Well, to be clear, I am a scholar of religions with four degrees, including one in the New Testament, and fluency in biblical Greek, who has been studying the origins of Christianity for two decades, who also just happens to be a Muslim."
"In college, where I began my formal study of the history of religions, that initial discomfort soon ballooned into full-blown doubts. "The more I probed the Bible to arm myself against the doubts of unbelievers, the more distance I discovered between the Jesus of the Gospels and the Jesus of history – between Jesus the Christ and Jesus of Nazareth," Aslan wrote.
But those familiar with the Harvard graduate and former Christian's work say Zealot is re-hashed scholarship that ignores much of what the New Testament actually says about Jesus.Īslan has written an account of how he "found" Jesus as a teen at an evangelical youth camp but years later returned to Islam after his studies led him to doubt the veracity of the Christian Scriptures, which he says are "replete with the most blatant and obvious errors and contradictions." Reza Aslan, "an internationally acclaimed writer and scholar of religions," according to his online biography, has gotten a boost in sales and popularity from his "embarrassing" interview with a Fox News anchor about his new book, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.
0 kommentar(er)
