Attack on Religion Scholar Puts Jesus Book in the Spotlight
Not every scholarly study of early Christianity rockets to best-seller status thanks to an attack by a belligerent cable-network reporter. But that became the fate last week of Reza Aslan's Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, just out from Random House in the United States while, in Britain, the Westbourne Press is rushing the book forward from its original August 18 publication date.
The fortunes of Zealot offer a cautionary tale for scholars who publish on touchy subjects—or perhaps a primer on how to provoke conservative-media hostility, and then to capitalize on it, even if you're no religious or intellectual radical. "You're a Muslim, so why did you write a book about the founder of Christianity?" Lauren Green demanded of Mr. Aslan on "Spirited Debate," a FoxNews.com online program. Mr. Aslan, an associate professor of creative writing at the University of California at Riverside, struggled to divert the interview to the content of his book.
When Ms. Green persisted with her line of questioning, he resorted to responding: "I'm a scholar of religions with four degrees, including one in the New Testament, and fluency in Biblical Greek, who has been studying the origins of Christianity for two decades, who just happens to be a Muslim." Ms. Green reiterated: "It still begs the question: Why would you be interested in the founder of Christianity?" Her implication was clear: To write from that standpoint was presumption bordering on Islamist subversion.
"Because it's my job as an academic," retorted Mr.Aslan.
He has parlayed his three degrees in religion, including a master's degree from Harvard University and a doctorate in the sociology of religions from the University of California at Santa Barbara, into a variety of activities, including current- and foreign-affairs commentary, Middle East entertainment programming, and fiction—he also has an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. In 2005 he publishedNo God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam (Random House), which sold very well in the United States and abroad, has been translated into 13 languages, and was praised by reviewers as wise, passionate, incisive, and thoroughly engaging.
Soon after the Fox interview, Mr. Aslan said on a CNN talk show that he was uneasy about his handling of Ms. Green's barrage: "There's nothing more embarrassing than an academic having to trot out his credentials. I mean, you really come off as a jerk."
A World of Many Messiahs
Still, the exchange, however uncomfortable for the interviewee, rapidly proved a book publicist's dream come to life. Almost overnight, a link to the interview on Buzzfeed attracted five million views. Zealot shot to a No. 1 sales ranking on Amazon.com, and was climbing toward the top of The New York Times's best-seller list. In an odd sense, "historical Jesus" studies had hit the headlines.
Mr. Aslan writes in the book that he wishes to present "the most accurate and reasonable argument, based on my two decades of scholarly research into the New Testament and early Christian history."
What is that argument? That Jesus of Nazareth little resembles the figure embraced by Christianity (or, for that matter, Islam) since its earliest days. He was probably a man who reflected the chaos of his time and place, where Jews sought to rid their land of Roman rulers—one of many claiming to be a messiah and making apocalyptic proclamations. "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," Mr. Aslan writes.
That much of his thesis meets little opposition among historical-Jesus scholars. More debated is Mr. Aslan's contention that Jesus' message was not just spiritual but profoundly political. That is evident, for Mr. Aslan, in statements like the one from the Gospel of Matthew that he uses as the epigraph of Zealot: "Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth. I have not come to bring peace, but the sword.".. read more:
