The great Christian theologian Rudolf Bultmann liked to say that the quest for the historical Jesus is ultimately an internal quest. The task is somewhat akin to putting together a massive puzzle with only a few of the pieces in hand one has no choice but to fill in the rest of the puzzle based on the best, most educated guess of what the completed image should look like. Writing a biography of Jesus of Nazareth is not like writing a biography of Napoleon Bonaparte.

One line of response is to note the subjectivity which he himself attributes to it. So Aslan’s view is neither original nor dominant, even among those who doubt the portrait of Jesus given in the gospels.ġ0) How might one respond to Aslan’s claims? But there is little scholarly agreement on a single portrait, or the methods needed to construct it. The mainstream profiles in the third quest may be grouped together based on their primary theme as apocalyptic prophet, charismatic healer, Cynic philosopher, Jewish Messiah and prophet of social change. There are rival conceptions in the present or “third” Quest for the Historical Jesus. In fact, among the skeptical scholars who try to discern the truth about “the historical Jesus” (as opposed to “the Christ of faith”), the Jesus-as-failed-political-revolutionary view is not the dominant one. It’s certainly been proposed before, but it is far from the only view out there. 100 and 120!)Īt these late dates, Aslan informs us, Christians wanted to de-couple their religion from the failed political messianism that resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem, and so the gospels falsify their depiction of Jesus and make him a non-revolutionary.ĩ) How widely received is this view in the scholarly community?

(He dates Matthew and Luke to between A.D. However, they are apparently reliable whenever they say something that he can use to support his thesis.Īccording to Aslan, all of the Gospels were written after the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. The claim is that Jesus was just one of the many zealot-like revolutionaries of the time.Īslan then cherry-picks the evidence of the gospels, accepting whatever agrees with his thesis and discarding everything that doesn’t.Ĩ) How does he explain the fact that the gospels do not depict Jesus as a political revolutionary?Īccording to Aslan, the gospels were written long after the fact and are unreliable on these points. This is where the book gets its title- Zealot.

Zealot by reza aslan