[Fr. Robert Barron]
[Comments on] [Reza Aslan "Zealot"]
Reza Aslan's book, “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth,”
has risen to number one on the New York Times best seller list
and has become a bit of a national phenomenon and is,
I have to confess to you, a bit disappointing and disconcerting
because the reductionist and debunking approach that he uses
has been used by hundreds of scholars over the past,
let’s say, three hundred years.
But you find that the serious scholars of the historical Jesus
always end up debunking the debunkers.
How does this method work? This “debunking method.”
Well, you take one aspect of Jesus, you find all the passages in the Gospel
that emphasize that aspect, and you declare them historically reliable.
Everything else is made up by the later tradition,
made up by the early Christian communities.
So, according to this method, Jesus the Prophet of the Kingdom,
Jesus the declarer of timeless spiritual truth, Jesus the wonder worker,
Jesus the magician, Jesus the cynic philosopher, etc., etc.
have all been proposed. And the same method employed:
just find everything that supports those and indeed you can find things
in the Gospels supporting all those readings.
You find those and then you dismiss everything else as musings of the later tradition.
What they all miss, of course, is what I would call “Jesus-in-full” which is
this richly complex, beguiling, strange, wonderful figure that the Gospels,
in their entirety, produce.
So what is Reza Aslan’s proposal?
Well, it’s Jesus the “Zealot,” as his title indicates.
Jesus, the first century insurrectionist who is taking on
the Temple establishment in Jerusalem and then, behind the Temple establishment,
the roman political/military power.
So He was like a lot of other figures around that time.
Think of Menahem, who was the great hero of Masada,
that stood against the Romans.
Think of Judas the Galilean. Think, most famously, of Simon bar Kokhba.
All Jewish insurrectionists proclaiming a Kingdom of God,
stirring up the opposition to the Romans, and then being done to death.
What is Aslan’s argument for this?
Well, that Jesus did in fact proclaim a kingdom which
would have been threatening to the Romans, that people like these insurrectionists
were very thick on the ground and Jesus used some of that same language and,
above all, that he was done to death
in the way that was typically meted out to opponents of Rome.
So taking all that evidence, he says that’s who Jesus was:
a failed, first century Jewish insurrectionist.
Was he killed by the Romans? Yes, indeed, Aslan says.
Did he rise from the dead? No, of course not. His body was probably
left on the cross like those of other insurrectionists
and the birds of the air and the dogs consumed His body.
So that is, historically speaking, what happened. Everything else is made up,
concocted, and as a matter of faith (subtext: obviously, irrational faith)
of Christian people.
Having read a book like this, questions immediately crowd the mind.
First of all, what do you do with all of these key texts?
Think of the Sermon on the Mount, that emphasized nonviolence, enemy love,
resist not evil, turn the other cheek, etc.?
Not exactly the stern stuff that you’d expect of a ruthless insurrectionist.
All that’s made up, of course, by the later tradition
trying to curry favor with the Romans.
What about Jesus’ explicit claim in the Gospel of John that,
“My Kingdom is not of this world?”
All that was placed on the lips of Jesus, of course, by the later community.
What about His almost constant stress on prayer, the spiritual life, trusting in God’s providence,
things having little to do with a program of insurrection
made up by the later community?
What about all the outreach, I mean, to the woman at the well,
the man born blind, the rising of Lazarus, the rising of the daughter of Jairus, etc. etc.?
You know the answer by now: It doesn’t fit the paradigm,
so it’s made up by the later community.
Here’s the problem, if I put it in kind of a nutshell:
If Jesus simply were one of these failed, first century Jewish insurrectionists
like the rest of them - Simon bar Kochba and company –
why are they remembered only by a handful of specialist historians?
And why is Jesus remembered by everybody? If He’s simply one of these characters,
wouldn’t he have been forgotten as thoroughly and readily as they were forgotten?
So here´s the thing that I think is most compelling from a historical standpoint.
Christianity emerged in its earliest days as a Messianic movement.
It declared Jesus the Messiah, Yeshua Ha-Maschiach.
Paul translates that, more familiar to us, as Christus Iesus: Christ Jesus.
Jesus the Messiah.
The clearest indication possible that you were not the Messiah of Israel
would be your death at the hands of Israel’s enemies because
the Messiah was expected to deal with the enemies of Israel and now
to reign as their triumphant King.
Therefore, if Jesus simply were failed, poor slob, a failed insurrectionist
who died on the Cross and stayed in His grave or His body consumed by the birds,
the claim that He was the Messiah would have been ludicrous as it was
in the case of these other figures who were also in their lifetime
referred to as the “Messiah.”
But the minute they were killed by the Romans,
their movements died away and they were forgotten.
Why was Jesus remembered? Why did His movement endure?
I agree with N.T. Wright here, on strictly historical grounds,
the best explanation for the emergence and endurance of Christianity is
- wait for it –
The Resurrection of Jesus from the dead as a real historical event.
Only that makes sense of this extraordinary claim they made
to the Messiahship of Jesus.
By the way, they all went to their deaths defending it.
To write Him off, in a debunking way, as simply one more Simon bar Kochba figure,
it seems to me, flies directly in the face of all that extraordinary evidence.
I want to say a word before I close about this question
of historicity and historical reliability.
You read a book like Aslan’s, and there are many others like it,
and they will kill you with the assertion that:
“Look! The Gospels were written decades after the events.”
Let’s say Mark’s Gospel, there’s kind of a consensus that
it was written around the year 70,
so let’s say 40 years after the events of Jesus.
Clearly, therefore, it’s largely made up out of whole cloth.
Clearly, therefore, it’s largely the invention of the traditions, the communities, and so on.
Well, this is so much nonsense.
Would you automatically reject, out of hand, as just wild fantasy a book written
about JFK assassination, let’s say in 2003?
So, a book written about the JFK assassination 40 years after it took place.
Would you automatically say: “Oh, that book is utterly unreliable.
That book is just a fantastic invention of the author.”
No. You’d assume that author has consulted lots of records,
talked to lots of people, including many who were there
on November 22nd 1963, talked to eyewitnesses.
See, what strikes me when you read a book like Aslan’s, again, many like it.
It is as though Jesus disappeared from the scene and, along with Him,
everyone that knew Him.
Just disappeared. They all evanesced and then 40 years elapsed and suddenly,
ex nihilo, people like Mark make up this wild story.
In fact, the people that knew Jesus - that touched Him and talked to Him
and heard Him and watched what He did - didn’t disappear.
They were thick on the ground among the early Christian communities.
Mark represents this first attempt, that we know of anyway,
to bring together much of this witness including, much from eyewitnesses.
And let me stress Mark again for a second. There’s a very ancient tradition,
and there’s no serious reason to doubt it, that Mark was a companion of Saint Peter.
When Saint Peter left the Holy Land and ended up in Rome,
he had with him a young man, Mark, who was companion, translator, etc.
Again, no serious reason to doubt this ancient tradition.
Mark would have heard him, listened to him,
heard him preach, heard his stories, probably over and over again.
Many say the Gospel of Mark represents
sort of even the rhythm of Peter’s storytelling and preaching.
Well, one step removed from an eyewitness with Mark,
the author of the first Gospel. One step removed.
This fantasy that: “Oh, there’s this huge gap of time and there’s no connection
to anyone that knew what went on!” - is so much nonsense.
There are a lot better accounts of historical Jesus than this one.
I’d mention E.P. Sanders, James D.G. Dunn, Richard Bauckham,
who wrote a great book called, “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses,”
making the point that I just made, Ben Witherington III,
and my favorite N.T. Wright, whom I’ve referenced already.
What these people show you is that the real Jesus, the "Jesus-in-full",
is far more compelling than this superficial caricature offered by Reza Aslan.