The first chapter of Reza Aslan’s Zealot immerses the reader in the sights, sounds, and smells of that temple, which was destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E. In Judea during the early years of the Roman Empire, the money trail led directly to the Temple in Jerusalem. Money leads to power, and power leads to attempts to subvert power, often by individuals who don’t have much power or, nearly always, much money. Visit megaphone.When I teach and tutor students in history, I often start each unit by advising students to “follow the money.” I didn’t coin that phrase, I know, but it’s a surprisingly simple and effective way to get one’s bearings in a time and place that one is trying to understand. Support our show by becoming a premium member! We talk to him about growing up Iranian, while pretending to be Mexican, in the United States during the 1980s, about graduate school, about Fox News and Islamophobia, and about writing for a popular audience, being a public intellectual, and the challenges involved with such endeavors. We also talk to Reza about his earlier books, No god but God and How to Win a Cosmic War, as well as his two edited collections, Tablet & Pen and Muslims and Jews in America. Zealot has shot to the best seller lists in recent weeks, partly due to a controversial interview Reza Aslan gave to Fox News during which he was questioned about why a Muslim would be interested in writing a book about the founder of Christianity. Rather, Aslan’s book attempts to grapple with how Jesus understood himself and his role during a volatile period in history. Indeed it is not even a book about Christianity. It is not a book about the Jesus of the Gospels.
Aslan argues that Jesus’ time was one awash in a fervent nationalism that is important for understanding the man as well as his message. Reza Aslan, in his highly popular and beautifully written new book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (Random House, 2013), approaches Jesus by first taking the context in which he lived – first-century Palestine – quite seriously.
Christians in the United States and around the world have varying images of Jesus, from one who turns the other cheek to one who brings the sword.
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