Zealot : The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

from Big_Bang_Gorilla

Being an account of first century Christianity and Jewish nationalism which aspires to link the two into a fairly new, if such a thing can be imagined, picture of the ministry of Christ. The critics' main takeaway from this book seems to be that Aslan is saying that Jesus was a zealot, which conc...

from lschiff

A very interesting, surprisingly fast read, Aslan presents an incredibly concise yet readable synthesis of his original research. My knowledge of this period in history was deepened and extended, a few misconceptions picked up in high school and that had crept in from common culture were correcte...

from NielsenGW

There is a curious line in Josephus' The Antiquities of the Jews. It reads: "...so he [Ananus, high priest of Judea] assembled the sanhedrim of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others..." This is one of the few non-Biblica...

from jcbrunner

There isn't that much new information in this biography if you paid attention in church history and had a somewhat enlightened teacher. Aslan naturally could not uncover more information about the historical man than the few basic morsels already known. The value of the biography lies in showing ...

from Opinionated

A fascinating outline of the life and times of the historical Jesus. Rest assured, you don't need to be a Christian or be religious (I am neither) to enjoy this. Also, you shouldn't expect any discussion of the tenets of Christian faith such as the Resurrection. Aslan shrugs his shoulders at thes...