spring wife's
joining us now is Raza ass line he is
a religion scholar journalist
and author the very important new book
oz zealot Raza how you doing thanks for joining us
out great it's great to be here so
res I right off the bat arm gotta get to this book but I
we I think most of us have probably seen this interview that happen on Fox I
I just feel like we need to get this out of the way are you a Muslim
yeah I I am
what you would call a secret moslem you know
who think we heard about it I understand
you know all the kind of craziness about that a and I get it you know I
understand why there are people who are
a nervous or afraid about the book but the truth of the matter is that anybody
who's read the book
can tell you that there's really nothing in there that an attack on Christianity
and nothing could be further from the truth I mean
the book deals with Jesus as a historical figure
on in I think what can only be described as a
is you know not just a pathetic but in a devotion away really
yes a let's I'll I'm just gonna say parent that ically that
people like frank gaffney would warn us and say look at how savvy
the secret Muslim agents are but I i'm not gonna dole's myself well
I did about it and that you but let's get to the book
on so this book is fascinating what you're doing really is your taking the
not only not the religious view the book from any perspective but you're really
trying to work textually
I historically in present who this guy actually was and i think im interesting
way that you frame the book I is your own story if your relationship with
Jesus which actually
surprise me it began with a conversion experience when you're a teenager so
could you talk about your
the kinda evolution is your relationship with Jesus yes so
you my family came to the United States from Iran in 1979 we were
you know essentially musulman the way that a lot of Iranians are just kinda
ethnically or culturally Muslim we didn't really
have that much above a religious life back in Iran but
certainly in the United States we kinda scrubbed our lives have any kind of him
to have
other mom at a time in which anti-muslim sentiment was you know
pretty high with the all the Iran hostage crisis and everything
right I don't really go out with much religious instruction though I was
even deeply hungry for for kind of offensive spiritualism and I
and high school found that a spiritualism when I
went to a an evangelical youth camp and heard the gospel for the first time
remarkable story about got coming down in the form of a man
and dying for for the sins of humanity I
completely absorbed that message converted to evangelical Christianity
spent the next few years
you know preaching that gospel message to
to pretty much everyone that that I encountered in college I went to a
Jesuit Catholic University and decided to begin
studying the New Testament formally and it was then that I
sort of noticed a distance between the Christ I had been introduced to
in church and this historical person Jesus have natural who walked the earth
two thousand years ago an animal and that the Romans
would call palestine and so in for me
in this weird way he even though I began to kind of move away from the Christian
Church in by no means my Christian any longer in fact I
with the encouragement up my Jesuit priest
at Santa Clara University went back to the faith to buy
my forefathers it's mama while but at the same time
I became far more interested in Jesus nah to rate this
this person than I ever was up Jesus the Christ and that was kinda the impetus
for this book
which you know twenty years later is now finally
a out that's fastening so what
does sell it mean in this context
because it seems to me that you know you've obviously chose that word for a
reason and that gets to the heart
I love white your historical claim
about Jesus is that he he was in a very specific
are really political context %ah
and had a kind of Nationals liberation message
well sell it to them was a widespread
biblical a doctrine in first-century Palestine
I mean for the majority of jews
who we feared the great heroes in profits and
King the Hebrew Bible these these men were all refer to as being
jealous for the Lord with veal implies
was and uncompromising devotion to the torah
the law of Moses a a refusal to serve
any master except the master of the universe
I and any commitment to a
the this sole sovereignty of God in other words
that you know the Hebrew Bible commands the Jews to when
the Holy Land all foreign presence and two dedicated
solely to the chosen people and it was
the jealous warriors a God who who defeated the can tonight in the
Amalekites in the job you site and all those other tribes
to create the land of Israel to begin with so
sell it to them in in the first century became a very important
ideology because of course this is a time in which the Romans were living
under the boot
they pay get Imperial power
they were under director roman occupation and
this concept is deal was used by a number I revolutionaries messiahs
preachers profits bandits
to rally the Jews to to fight back against
wrong to cleanse the Holy Land to remove the yoke a bakkie patient
from the Jews and by the way in 66
speeded actually finally worked the Jews rose up in revolt and managed to kick
their the Romans
out of jerusalem and keep them at bay for about three or four years before
they returned and
pretty much slaughtered everyone and burn the city to the ground
the argument at the book is that back sentiment
that I that idea love the zeal for the Lord and
and the the desire to raided the Land
a the Roman occupation is
deeply a part %uh Jesus's teachings and actions it's a it's a framework for
understanding
not just who he was but what he was trying to do
and and connected with that arms
that Jesus was this this political figures such Lee
that's what you're saying and that in terms of how we identified Jesus in a
modern context
that its it's very appropriate to see him
I on the side
very unequivocally not just even like in a charitable
all he cared about the poor and the downtrodden because he was so
compassionate sense
but that no this was literally the
ideology that he was a part love
%uh an acting and creating in that time and that was his message fundamentally
well to be clear in jesus's time there was no difference between religion and
politics table 1
and the same kinda simple divisions that we understand today did not exist
for Jesus so simply saying the phrase
I am The Messiah was not just a religious statement he was also
profoundly political statement
messiah means the Anointed One the principal task the Messiah to recreate
the kingdom of David
a so if you're claiming to be the one sent by God to usher in god's kingdom on
earth
then what you're also saying is that you're here to are sure out
the kingdom Cesar they were there they would seen those statements
as one and the same so its
not so much in argument that Jesus was quote a political figure not a religious
one
it's a reminder to modern readers that
the contact in which Jesus lived the is actions his words his teachings
were such that everything he said
would have been profoundly political its fat and then just the kind of one
another think important pieces this is that the image that we have
love Jesus om that is more in the popular
minute the imagination and traditional theology
I is dat a product %uh Saint Paul
or Roman figures in Christianity almost like
rebranding this figure in a way that would be more
appealing for a kinda rome-based
cosmopolitan religion is that where the kinda makeover happens
well I think it's a great way of putting it I mean we have to remember
that the followers I love Jesus the men and women who walked with him and talked
with him
who a you know eight with him who shared his bread who would
with their when he's began his movement who were there when he was arrested nm
crucified
were like cheeses mostly
literate uneducated peasant farmers
fishermen day labourers I and so
as a result these were people who would not have the ability to
either read or write about Jesus and their experiences
or for that matter to you even you know espouse
complex theological doctrines
about him and what he meant and what his
you know ideology stood for that task actually fell to
a second and third generation of Christians who
unlike jesus's Aramaic speaking peasant followers
were mostly Greek speaking a
jus who did not live in the holy land but instead lived in the Diaspora
in these deeply Helen eyes romanized cosmopolitan
urban cities like Antioch and how exam trio Roman
and fell apart and Korean tech cetera these
were Jews who were deep in Greek and Roman
traditions and culture and when they began to
right about Jesus to talk about Jesus to spread the message of Jesus
they did so I with it with a deeply hella mystic
influence end more importantly they did so increasingly
address to a non-jewish audience to a gentile
audiences step to Roman audience and frankly
this Roman audience was much more familiar with the kind of Jesus that
they were talking about this
Sourav romanized demi god this
detached celestial spirit with no concerns about the cares of this world
then the Jews who lived with him and talk with him
recognized themselves and so you write what we kind of know about Jesus what we
know about Christianity
was and was serve launched
by people who did actually know Jesus while he was alive