Reza Aslan's new book on Jesus as a zealot. where are the Catholic-Christian rebuttals?

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The most out spoken anti-Christians are separated Christians who hold some form of resentment against their faith. It may be due to something as mere as a general resentment toward authority including the Church, or their own ego being challenged, or to the more critical - a catastrophic event such as the loss of a loved one who they blame God as being responsible. Ironically you will rarely if ever hear anyone blame satan for the bad that occurs in their life.

The fact remains, the more boisterous they are the less they knew or understood about their Christian faith and heritage and sadly that ignorance is what makes room for their opposition. Yet, had they given as much time to growing in their Christian faith as they did in seeking a replacement faith, they would be of the Catholic faith. It is the depth of that knowledge that guides one to, not away from the Catholic Church.
 
steve53 said:
I read down until I hit the part about the fifteenth year of Tiberius’ reign being A.D. 29.

An expert would know that the fifteenth year of his reign was actually A.D. 28.

Post the other reasons, maybe in a new thread, if you want a discussion.
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It seems a pretty complicated subject, but if it was 28 A.D., doesn’t that do even more damage to Hagan’s argument by moving the execution even further back from 37 A.D.?

If Hagan’s wrong about that date, then there’s no reason to address any of the rest of his argument.
 
cornbread_r2 said:
It seems a pretty complicated subject, but if it was 28 A.D., doesn’t that do even more damage to Hagan’s argument by moving the execution even further back from 37 A.D.?

If Hagan’s wrong about that date, then there’s no reason to address any of the rest of his argument.
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No. This is pretty basic stuff for any investigator.

Your “expert” was clearly wrong, so his other conclusions should be questioned. And I think he just borrowed from another source.

Others have run the numbers using lunar phases and eclipses and have come up with an A.D. 34 date. And people have made cases for any number of years from A.D. 30-A.D. 36.

The fact is that data presented internally in the Gospels is contentious, and 700,000 days have passed since that era, with many civilizations coming and going in the interim. Error could have crept in for any number of reasons.

You can’t have a conclusion that is more accurate than the data upon which it relies.

Hagan uses Roman politics and the secular histories available to trace secondary and tertiary characters in NT accounts who also show up in Josephus, Tacitus, and other ancient works.

The whole first book is dedicated to the derivation of the A.D. 36 date, so it is hard to summarize here.

Suffice it to say that the near-revolution against Tiberius in A.D. 31, and the subsequent actions of Herod Antipas, Herod Philip, Herodias, and the future Agrippa I play key roles.

But even Hagan admits that all this is speculation to a degree.

And the Catholic church itself has never adopted an official date for Jesus’ crucifixion.

Why are you so defensive of the A.D. 33 date?
 
steve53 said:
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Why are you so defensive of the A.D. 33 date?
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I wasn’t defending that date. I just pointed out that a respected Catholic apologist made a scripturally-based argument that disagreed with Hagan’s conclusion. I will acknowledge though that Akin’s argument apparently rests on two assumptions (as perhaps does Hagan’s): that Jesus began his ministry about age 30 and that he was born in the year 0. While the former assumption seems to have some scriptural support, the latter is widely disputed.
 
I recently purchased this book, but as a catholic I am now apprehensive about reading it. I initially wasn’t aware of its content, nor its disagreement of many of the things that we as Catholics and Christians believe in.
My question is “Should I read this book?”. I don’t want to introduce any doubts or questionable thoughts into my head.

Yours in Christ

Jim
 
jimdupont said:
I recently purchased this book, but as a catholic I am now apprehensive about reading it. I initially wasn’t aware of its content, nor its disagreement of many of the things that we as Catholics and Christians believe in.
My question is “Should I read this book?”. I don’t want to introduce any doubts or questionable thoughts into my head.

Yours in Christ

Jim
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Well it depends how well grounded you are in your faith, if it is shacky then I would avoid reading material that will seed doubt in you.
I have read Dan Brown’s “novels” with the firm conviction that they are NOT true, he uses part history part fiction to make an interesting “story” much like a Ian Flemming book. If you can relate to actual facts and events it draws you in.
However when authors try to pass their “novels” as Historical “fact” that’s when I have issue with them.

The guy that wrote this book is a muslim, a religion that has a very distorted view of God and of Jesus. One that also denies flatly Jesus’s divinity.
Therefore whatever he has to say, unless it is backed up, with 100% steel clad proof that can be verified and peer reviewed is just rubbish.
A real waste of trees IMHO.

YMMVOC - just my :twocents:

Peace 👍
 
I think it’s cute that when Salman Rushdie does something similar there are riots and calls for his death.

Or when Robert Spencer does something similar he is labeled an “islamophobe” and banned from speaking in the UK.

…food for thought
 
Jimmy Akin now has a rebuttal to the book. I’m sure more will be coming in time from other Apologists.

jimmyakin.com/2013/07/14-things-you-need-to-know-about-the-new-book-zealot.html

Christianity survived, “The God delusion”, Dan Brown and his obsession with my Catholic brothers, and it will survive the fallacies in this book.

It is interesting that Reza Aslan states one of the things we can be certain of is Christ’s crucifixion. This is contrary to Islamic beliefs.
 
dronald said:
It is interesting that Reza Aslan states one of the things we can be certain of is Christ’s crucifixion. This is contrary to Islamic beliefs.
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According to the interview I heard, he grew up in a nominally Muslim home but at the time (1980s) was not a good time to be an openly Muslim Iranian in the US (even though most of the Iranians in the US were refugees from the revolution) so his parents really downplayed it. He then had a conversion experience and spent a good deal of time as an evangelical Christian. He also attended Santa Clara university (a Jesuit university), and then went off to divinity school to study the New Testament, and at some point reverted to Islam. I didn’t hear that part of the interview but my wife heard it, and said he came to that reversion through long discussions with his (Jesuit) spiritual director. However I don’t know whether he ever identified himself as a Catholic, or whether his Christian experience was entirely as an evangelical. But anyway, perhaps he hangs on to that part of the Christian message despite his reversion to Islam. The sense that I got is that his upbringing in Islam was the opposite of fundamentalist, and perhaps now as a scholar he feels more free to pick and choose what he believes from his religion. At some point along the way (and partly because of his witness) his mother became a Christian, and she remains a Christian despite his return to Islam.
 
While I haven’t read the book, and might even disagree with some of it, I think you guys are going too far by saying he’s doing this to destroy Christianity. He’s just a scholar giving his scholarly opinion. He also opposes things taught by the Qur’an, like that Jesus wasn’t crucified.
 
There’s an editorial in today’s NY TImes that makes some good points. Jesus as seen in the Gospels is an incredibly complex portrait - earthy, supernatural, wise, suffering, loving, compassionate, bold. There are no similarly complex fictional characters in the ancient literature, which (for me) has always been an argument for the truthfulness of scripture. When modern writers try to focus on a single aspect of His nature and exclude others, to suit their own notions and preconceptions - Zealot revolutionary, proto-feminist, pacifist, Stoic sage, etc. - we lose the complexity of the description we have been given and we wind up with a Christ that is as insipid and false as two-dimensional cardboard stand-up. Such a flat character bears little relationship to the true Revelation of the Word, and as little value as Thomas Jefferson’s editing of the Gospels to create a secular “Jesus” that aligned more closely with his own prejudices and values.

Good editorial:

nytimes.com/2013/08/04/opinion/sunday/douthat-return-of-the-jesus-wars.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0
 
jimdupont said:
I recently purchased this book, but as a catholic I am now apprehensive about reading it. I initially wasn’t aware of its content, nor its disagreement of many of the things that we as Catholics and Christians believe in.
My question is “Should I read this book?”. I don’t want to introduce any doubts or questionable thoughts into my head.

Yours in Christ

Jim
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Yes, please do read it and let’s discuss it. I got it from the libarary and am about half finished. Much of it I find acceptable but significant aspects not quite believable.

For example, he says Mark’s Gospel was written in Rome for Romans and so seeks to exonerate the Romans for the death of Jesus. So Pilate washes his hands and it is the Jews who demand his death (later they stone Stephen. Why not just stone Jesus). But Matthew was writing for Jews and yet continues to portray Pilate as sumpathetic to Jesus. If so much is fabricated why not fabricate there?

And as I said, I am only half finished. But if Jesus beleived himself to be a zealot, king bringing in a new earthly kingdom what sense does his expectation of death make?

I am enjoying the book but would also appreciate someoen to discuss it with. The questions it raises. It has not caused a crisis of faith for me but has helped me to better understand the political situation at that time.

One book I would say Do Not read is
The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin

Pure speculation pportraying Mary as a biter alientated woman.
Interesting short read but spurious fiction.
 
Jesus had a Disciple called Simon the Zealot.

if Jesus was a Zealot, he would have been so identified.

Lots of people followed Jesus, and for many different reasons.
 
steve53 said:
Jesus had a Disciple called Simon the Zealot.

if Jesus was a Zealot, he would have been so identified.
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Another thing: the word ‘zealot’ (Greek zēlōtēs) simply meant “zealous,” so it is really uncertain whether Simon was a ‘Zealot’ in the Josephan sense (the violent armed ‘bandits’ that were aplenty in Palestine around forty years later, that is) or just a really devout person.
 
JerryZ said:
The guy that wrote this book is a muslim, a religion that has a very distorted view of God and of Jesus. One that also denies flatly Jesus’s divinity.
Therefore whatever he has to say, unless it is backed up, with 100% steel clad proof that can be verified and peer reviewed is just rubbish.
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That is pretty harsh. How about this:

Then something extraordinary happened. What exactly that something was is impossible to know. Jesus’s resurrection is an exceedingly difficult topic for historians to discuss, not least because it falls beyond the scope of any examinations of the historical Jesus. Obviously, the notion of a man dying a gruesome death and returning to life three days later defies all logic, reason, and sense. One could simply stop the argument there, dismiss the resurrection as a lie, and declare belief in the risen Jesus to be the product of a deludable mind.

However, there is this nagging fact to consider: one after another of those who claimed to have witnessed the risen Jesus went to their own gruesome deaths refusing to recant their testimony. That is not, in itself, unusual. Many zealot Jews died horribly for refusing to deny their beliefs. But these first followers of Jesus were not being asked to reject the matters of faith based on events that took place centuries, if not millennia, before. They were being asked to deny something they themselves personally, directly encountered.

The disciples themselves were fugitives in Jerusalem, complicit in the sedition that led to Jesus’s crucifixion. They were repeatedly arrested and abused for their preaching; …They were beaten, whipped, stoned, and crucified, yet they would not cease proclaiming the risen Jesus. And it worked! Perhaps the most obvious reason not to dismiss the disciples resurrection experience out of hand is that, among all the other failed messiahs who came before and after him, Jesus alone is still called the messiah. It was precisely the fervor with which the followers of Jesus believed in his resurrection that transformed this tiny Jewish sect into the largest religion in the world. p.174-5
 
Michael_Mayo said:
Then something extraordinary happened. What exactly that something was is impossible to know. Jesus’s resurrection is an exceedingly difficult topic for historians to discuss, not least because it falls beyond the scope of any examinations of the historical Jesus. Obviously, the notion of a man dying a gruesome death and returning to life three days later defies all logic, reason, and sense. One could simply stop the argument there, dismiss the resurrection as a lie, and declare belief in the risen Jesus to be the product of a deludable mind.

However, there is this nagging fact to consider: one after another of those who claimed to have witnessed the risen Jesus went to their own gruesome deaths refusing to recant their testimony. That is not, in itself, unusual. Many zealot Jews died horribly for refusing to deny their beliefs. But these first followers of Jesus were not being asked to reject the matters of faith based on events that took place centuries, if not millennia, before. They were being asked to deny something they themselves personally, directly encountered.

The disciples themselves were fugitives in Jerusalem, complicit in the sedition that led to Jesus’s crucifixion. They were repeatedly arrested and abused for their preaching; …They were beaten, whipped, stoned, and crucified, yet they would not cease proclaiming the risen Jesus. And it worked! Perhaps the most obvious reason not to dismiss the disciples resurrection experience out of hand is that, among all the other failed messiahs who came before and after him, Jesus alone is still called the messiah. It was precisely the fervor with which the followers of Jesus believed in his resurrection that transformed this tiny Jewish sect into the largest religion in the world. p.174-5
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Is this from the book? It seems like it’s completely in favour of Christianity, and I feel like copying and pasting it onto my facebook.
 
dronald said:
Is this from the book? It seems like it’s completely in favour of Christianity, and I feel like copying and pasting it onto my facebook.
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Yes it is. Now he discards a lot of other things like virgin birth but I think it is all still worth the read. Especially about the relationship betwee Paul and the Hellenist Christians and James and the Hebrew Christians.
 
Aizensama said:
While I haven’t read the book, and might even disagree with some of it, I think you guys are going too far by saying he’s doing this to destroy Christianity. He’s just a scholar giving his scholarly opinion. He also opposes things taught by the Qur’an, like that Jesus wasn’t crucified.
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He’s like a ‘scholar’ of American History saying that Lincoln was a vampire hunter 😃

His conclusions are hardly ‘scholarly’, have very little historical base.

His book is more a historical fiction than anything else.
 
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