Reza Aslan’s Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth – A Deeper Look at Paul

Posted on March 30, 2015 by virgowriter

Reza Aslan’s Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth – A Deeper Look at Paulindex

Before reading the New Testament, I knew very little about Paul. I quickly realized that he was rather important to the Church, given the amount of space and content devoted to him and his story. As I read the Bible, I learned that he was born Saul and, after taking it upon himself to hunt down early followers of the Christian faith, he encounters the spirit of Jesus on the road to Damascus. There, he sees the light, so to speak—which literally takes his sight, until he reaches his destination and is cured (see: Acts).

Then I reached Romans, which contains the New Testament’s most explicit denouncement of homosexuality. As I mentioned in a post devoted to Romans in 2013:

In setting up his case that people have strayed from God’s path, Paul states that people have caved to sexual “impurity” (1:24). In so doing, “they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator” (1:25). What having sex has to do with worshipping other Gods is unclear. Perhaps these “impure” acts were integral to the rituals associated with other Gods. If that’s so, then perhaps the issue is with the worshipping, not the act itself.

But before people indulge any doubt in Paul’s message here, he clarifies: Because God was pissed at this thumbing of noses to him, he allowed people to embrace this “shameful” lust. These people abandoned “natural” relations with the opposite sex and then women had sex with other women (1:26), men had sex with other men. Both “received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion” (1:27). This then lead people down a sinful slippery slope, where they became evil, wicked, greedy, and full of “envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice” (1:29).

So I’m no fan of Paul, in part because I didn’t follow his logic. I was curious to see what, if anything, Aslan has to say about this important figure. In Zealot, he says plenty.

In the chapter he devotes entirely to a discussion of Paul’s role in the early Church, Aslan points out that Paul believed Jesus gave him special instructions, ones that trumped anything the 12 Apostles knew or understood. As such, he felt above them, the ones who actually walked with the flesh and blood Jesus (185). This proved problematic for a number of reasons, according to Aslan. The worst of which was his aversion to the Law of Moses, which he deemed a “ministry of death” (186). This is a problem, for the actual Jesus—whom Paul claimed to champion—actually believed that he had arrived to fulfill this very law.

As Aslan states, although Jesus tweaked some of these laws (such as working on the Sabbath), he never rejected them (187). This is perhaps why Paul never quoted Jesus in his Epistles. He does, as Aslan points out, however, often misquote him. For example, he claimed that Jesus said that every man who calls upon the lord will be saved” (Aslan 187; Romans 10:13). Jesus, in fact said that NOT everyone who did would enter heaven (Aslan 187; Matthew 7:21). He even went so far as to boast about his lack of knowledge of the real Jesus. In Galatians, he talks about verifying what Jesus said or did, to which he says, “I did not confer with anyone, nor did I go up to Jerusalem [to ask permission of] the Apostles before me” (Aslan 187-8; Galatians 1:15-17).

Aslan keeps going and suggests that much of what Paul preached not only troubled the people who were in charge of the early Church—and knew what Jesus ACTUALLY said—but also Jews in general, who took issue with his lack of knowledge.

Reading this chapter, I was waiting for Aslan to say: so we can throw out, or at least discount, all of Paul’s material. He doesn’t. He seems to be most concerned about what Paul’s presence in the early movement did and how he cast a long shadow within the faith. My problem is that what he preached was not actually what Jesus stood for. And if he’s afforded such a respected position within the Church, this causes people to follow the inaccurate message.

I take issue with Paul, namely because of how Romans in particular has been cited so often in anti-gay rhetoric. I’m not saying throw out the Bible, but I would suggest that people take a closer look at the material. I would argue that Jesus is more important than Paul—a point with which I think many Christians would agree. And if he’s speaking for Jesus—who speaks for himself plenty in the Gospels—and was called out for misrepresenting this man’s ideals back in the day, why don’t we do the same now?

Next up: Aslan takes a closer look at Jesus’ brother James

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Reza Aslan’s Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth – Understanding Your (Jewish) Audience

Posted on March 23, 2015 by virgowriter

Reza Aslan’s Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth – Understanding Your index(Jewish) Audience

One of the oldest and most important pieces of advice you tell a writer is that you need to know your audience. This knowledge dictates how you frame your ideas, the words you choose, the type and number of details you provide, and the analogies/metaphors marshaled to develop your thoughts. These choices say a lot about the audience but also say a lot about the author, for they demonstrate what he or she thinks of who is reading or listening.

As far as Aslan is concerned in Zealot, this understanding is critical to reading how the New Testament discusses the life of Jesus. These Bible book authors were not writing for a Jewish audience; instead, they were writing for a Christian audience, and this audience was not equipped to challenge a number of holes in the details. For Aslan, this partly explains why the New Testament mis-represents facts or constructs patently false situations, which a Jewish audience would have recognized as false.

To illustrate his point, he discusses the famous scene of Jesus being brought before Pontius Pilate. During this “trial,” Jesus is asked to answer for his crimes. Later, when bringing Jesus before the public, Pilate asks the gathered crowd of Jews who they would like to have set free, as the described Passover custom dictates. The crowd votes against Jesus. First Aslan points out that Pilate despised Jews and was responsible for sending thousands to their deaths for a variety of serious transgressions. So why would he have been bothered with this “troublesome” Jew? Aslan says he would not have been. Furthermore, Aslan mentions that there is not a “shred” of documentation that discusses this supposed Passover tradition (148-9). Basically, this entire scene is fabricated. But its drama helps build a case for how persecuted Jesus was.

He devotes an entire chapter to this topic and it’s an interesting read on how the real Jesus was adapted by the early Christian church to better fit their new political “situation” (149).

So why put these type of fabricated details in the New Testament? Easy, a Jewish crowd would have dismissed them out of hand for being false; therefore, for Aslan, these details demonstrate that the intended audience was Christian, for they wouldn’t have known. Furthermore, Aslan points out that the above scenario with Jesus and Pilate demonstrates the early evangelists’ “extremely poor grasp of Jewish law and Sanhedrin practice” (157).

His point is not to use these factual gaffes to discredit Jesus specifically and the New Testament in general; no, he’s making a point that there was a conscious effort on behalf of the early church to shape Jesus’ story in a way that presented a particular picture of Jesus that suited their religious (i.e. political) purpose.

I would say that this means, basically, they’re lying, or if not lying, at least not being completely honest. And if they’ve misrepresented these details, what else have they misrepresented? What other scenes, ideas, and thoughts have they attributed—inaccurately—to Jesus? I wouldn’t say that the content that Aslan analyzes means we should care about Jesus. In general, the ministry of Jesus appears to carry a lot of useful, positive thought behind it. He cared about people and appeared to do unselfishly. There’s much good that comes from this attitude.

That said, a very miniscule part of what he preached—one line, actually—addresses sexuality in general, and not even homosexuality specifically. Yet this line is often seized upon as evidence that gays are wrong for living a “gay lifestyle.” Perhaps people who devote so much negative energy to advocating against the LGBT community—whether actively or passively, through their voting—need to investigate how valid the book they support is. That doesn’t mean throw it out or stop caring. I don’t think they should. I am saying that if they’re going to adhere to a flicker of an idea, that’s wrong. That doesn’t honor the spirit of the Jesus in the New Testament. Furthermore, what if they’re honoring something the man himself never believed.

Next up: Aslan takes a closer look at Paul’s place in the early Church.

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Reza Aslan’s Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth – Jesus’ Use of Force

Posted on March 16, 2015 by virgowriter

Reza Aslan’s Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth – Jesus’ Use of Forceindex

On this blog, I’ve often referred to Mike Huckabee’s comment that, when confronted with the modern news of various states allowing gay marriage, Jesus would have “wept.” This characterization of Jesus as anti-gay is fairly common among those who use the Bible to support Anti-gay stances. This is strange, for Jesus never mentions homosexuality. Ever. Period. He does mention avoiding sexual immorality, but what this means is up for debate—cheating on your spouse, for example.

Also common—as I mentioned last post—is the prevailing image of Jesus as a peace-loving figure. Well, as people who promote such an image likely know, the New Testament provides a much more complex image of Jesus—he’s wasn’t all peace and love all the time. In fact, he had a mean streak, as the twice-repeated fig tree story in the Gospels demonstrates. Among other things, this story caused me to question the image of Jesus employed by people for their own needs—they were being selective in the Jesus they represented.

In Zealot, Aslan deepens the complexity of Jesus’ character by exploring his use of force. Leading his people, he sought a revolution for the kingdom God had been establishing through the Jews (in the Old Testament), and he wasn’t concerned about being nice in the process. As Aslan states, “The Jesus of history had a far more complex attitude toward violence” (120). As Matthew states, Jesus came to Earth to bring the sword (10:34), which forms the basis of the aggressive image of Jesus in the Bible. The manner in which Aslan develops this impression is interesting.

This aggressive image of Jesus was, according to Aslan, a problem, for it represented the revolutionaries who, exhibiting Jewish nationalism, contributed to the Jewish Revolt and ultimate destruction of Jerusalem. Wanting to distance Jesus from this type of association, “phrases such as love thy neighbor…were deliberately cleansed of their Jewish context” (121) so that they applied to everyone. But Aslan emphasizes: Jesus was Jewish, not a Christian. His mission was concerned with Jewish lives; therefore, when he said love thy neighbor, he meant love thy JEWISH neighbor (121). He advocated staying AWAY from gentiles (Mathew 10:5-6)—not so lovey dovey after all. He also was not afraid to take up arms in order to defend the Jews from outside influence. And of course, when he arrived at the Temple in Jerusalem, he didn’t call a meeting to discuss issues, he went and forcibly cleaned house.

Furthermore, Jesus, as a practicing Jew, was following the letter of the law (for the most part), which meant Old Testament/Torah. Now, that God was violent and had zero qualms about wiping the enemies of Israel from the Earth—no mediation, no hug it out, etc. As Aslan discusses, as the son of this God, Jesus was also a follower, and the only God he worshipped was THIS God (122). Exodus is filled with warnings about the non-Jews occupying the chosen people’s land and what bad things are coming their way.

Given this lineage, why would Jesus have believed in turning the other cheek? Why wouldn’t he have resorted to violent means in order to save and protect his people? So Aslan points out, by preaching the word of God, what he was really advocating was a radical new Jewish world order, one that would only be achieved through violent means. This is why he was crucified, for during that era, crucifixion was a punishment for sedition. Aslan emphasizes that this fact supports why it should not be understood as a symbol of self-abnegation (124).

So does this information denigrate Jesus? I don’t think so. After all, he did bring about change. I would say that the issue is that once he died, he became a symbol—perhaps the ultimate symbol—and in so doing, he was shaped to embody and represent what the people in charge wanted him to represent. His violent, aggressive side was scrubbed, leaving a more peaceful figure. He seems to work well as this, and the idea of him in this role apparently brings a lot of comfort to millions of people. This is great. My problem is when this incomplete impression is presented as complete and then this new version is credited with saying things he did not say and represented in ways that are not completely accurate. When the LGBT community is shunned as a result, that’s a problem.

 

Next up: Understanding Jesus’ true audience. It dictated what he was really saying.

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