Reviews (as contained in the above article on 2014-08-06):
Dale Martin writes in The New York Times that although Aslan is not a scholar of ancient Christianity and does not present “innovative or original scholarship”, the book is entertaining and “a serious presentation of one plausible portrait of the life of Jesus of Nazareth”. He faults Aslan for presenting early Christianity as being simply divided into a Hellenistic, Pauline form on the one hand, and a Jewish, Jamesian form on the other. Martin says that this repeats 19th-century German scholarship which now is mostly rejected. He also says that recent scholarship has dismissed Aslan’s view that it would be implausible that any man like Jesus in his time and place would be unmarried, or could be presented as a “divine messiah”. Despite these faults, Martin praises Zealot for maintaining good pacing, simple explanations for complicated issues, and notes for checking sources.
Elizabeth Castelli, writing in The Nation, finds that Aslan largely ignores the findings in textual studies of the New Testament, and relies too heavily on a selection of texts, like Josephus ; taking them more or less at face value (which no scholar of the period would do). Near her dismissive conclusion, she writes: “Zealot is a cultural production of its particular historical moment—a remix of existing scholarship, sampled and reframed to make a culturally relevant intervention in the early twenty-first-century world where religion, violence and politics overlap in complex ways. In this sense, the book is simply one more example in a long line of efforts by theologians, historians and other interested cultural workers.”
Craig A. Evans, writing in Christianity Today, finds Aslan made many basic errors in geography, history and New Testament interpretation. He finds it “relies on an outdated and discredited thesis”, consistently fails to engage the relevant historical scholarship and is “rife with questionable assertions”.
My brief summary:
- … not a scholar of ancient Christianity
- and does not present “innovative or original scholarship”,
- the book is entertaining
- and “a serious presentation of one plausible portrait of the life of Jesus of Nazareth”.
- … presenting early Christianity as being simply divided
- into a Hellenistic, Pauline form on the one hand,
- and a Jewish, Jamesian form on the other.
- … this repeats 19th-century German scholarship which now is mostly rejected. …
Actually when I read Paul’s writings (resp. what is regarded as such) like 30 years ago, my impression was rather similar to Aslan’s ones, but then I (as a frankly confessing agnostic) don’t attempt keeping my pace WRT this matter up to speed with current serious academical research.