Sunday, July 14, 2013

Zealot: The Life & Times of Jesus

If you teach World Religions, you might want to check out this new book about Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan. Aslan is also the author of No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam.

NPR interviews Aslan in the nine minute clip below. Aslan concentrates on the tumultuous and apocalyptic period in which Jesus lived. He relies largely on Roman sources about Palestine in the first century and uses the Bible to fill in some gaps. He sees the Bible as sacred history, which reveals certain truths, "...the facts that they reveal are not as valuable as the truths are." The book has gotten great advance reviews and you can pre-order it now.

In addition, here's a great article Reza Aslan wrote for the Washington Post today (7/15/2013) called "What can we know about Jesus."   He writes: "It is a miracle that we know anything at all about the man called Jesus of Nazareth. The itinerant preacher wandering from village to village clamoring about the end of the world, a band of ragged followers trailing behind, was a common sight in Jesus’ time—so common, in fact, that it had become a kind of caricature among the Roman elite."

Finally, here are several other links:

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