{"id":4135,"date":"2014-08-06T10:23:57","date_gmt":"2014-08-06T08:23:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.b.shuttle.de\/hayek\/hayek\/jochen\/wp\/blog-en\/?p=4135"},"modified":"2014-08-06T10:23:57","modified_gmt":"2014-08-06T08:23:57","slug":"the-wikipedia-on-zealot-the-life-and-times-of-jesus-of-nazareth-by-reza-aslan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/2014\/08\/06\/the-wikipedia-on-zealot-the-life-and-times-of-jesus-of-nazareth-by-reza-aslan\/","title":{"rendered":"the Wikipedia on &#8220;Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth&#8221; by Reza Aslan"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Zealot:_The_Life_and_Times_of_Jesus_of_Nazareth\">https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Zealot:_The_Life_and_Times_of_Jesus_of_Nazareth<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Reviews (as contained in the above article on 2014-08-06):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Dale Martin writes in The New York Times that although Aslan is not a scholar of ancient Christianity and does not present &#8220;innovative or original scholarship&#8221;, the book is entertaining and &#8220;a serious presentation of one plausible portrait of the life of Jesus of Nazareth&#8221;. 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&#8217;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 &#8220;divine messiah&#8221;. Despite these faults, Martin praises Zealot for maintaining good pacing, simple explanations for complicated issues, and notes for checking sources.<\/p>\n<p>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: &#8220;Zealot is a cultural production of its particular historical moment\u2014a 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.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Craig A. Evans, writing in Christianity Today, finds Aslan made many basic errors in geography, history and New Testament interpretation. He finds it &#8220;relies on an outdated and discredited thesis&#8221;, consistently fails to engage the relevant historical scholarship and is &#8220;rife with questionable assertions&#8221;.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>My brief summary:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u2026 not a scholar of ancient Christianity<\/li>\n<li>and does not present &#8220;innovative or original scholarship&#8221;,<\/li>\n<li>the book is entertaining<\/li>\n<li>and &#8220;a serious presentation of one plausible portrait of the life of Jesus of Nazareth&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>\u2026\u00a0presenting early Christianity as being simply divided<\/li>\n<li>into a Hellenistic, Pauline form on the one hand,<\/li>\n<li>and a Jewish, Jamesian form on the other.<\/li>\n<li>\u2026\u00a0this repeats 19th-century German scholarship which now is mostly rejected. \u2026<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Actually when I read Paul&#8217;s writings (resp. what is regarded as such) like 30 years ago, my impression was rather similar to Aslan&#8217;s ones, but then I (as a frankly confessing agnostic) don&#8217;t attempt keeping my pace WRT this matter up to speed with current serious academical research.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Zealot:_The_Life_and_Times_of_Jesus_of_Nazareth 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 &#8220;innovative or original scholarship&#8221;, the book is entertaining and &#8220;a serious presentation of one plausible portrait of the life of Jesus of Nazareth&#8221;. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[666],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paO0kP-14H","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}