My new book, Bridging the Testaments, will be published in October 2023. You can find some brief details by clicking here or on the cover image below.
The book is also available for preorder on Amazon US, Amazon Australia, and Amazon UK.
My friend and fellow Sydneysider, historian John Dickson (Centre for Public Christianity), has written a review of Reza Aslan’s controversial recent book, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (New York: Random House, 2013). In short, John isn’t a fan of Aslan’s method, content, or conclusions. Here’s a sprinkling of comments from John’s review:
John Dickson
The mismatch between Aslan’s grandiose claims and his limited credentials in history is glaring on almost every page.
In order to move from the bleeding obvious (that some Jews were freedom-fighters) to the utterly implausible (that Jesus was one of them), Aslan takes several false steps, all of which involve as much creativity as history.
…there is the exaggerated depiction of Jesus’s homeland as a place brimming with insurrection and crazed prophets of doom. Scholarship over the last four decades, ever since Martin Hengel’s seminal work, has concluded that “zealotry” in Palestine was a limited, if contiguous, set of movements through the first half of the first century.
…countless scholars from within the relevant disciplines are amply satisfied that there are straightforward explanations of the fact that Jesus of Nazareth ended up on a Roman cross. And none of them involves trampling on the range of evidence in our possession that Jesus eschewed violence on behalf of the kingdom of God.
Finally, the list of exaggerations and plain errors in Zealot bear testimony to Aslan’s carelessness with concrete history.
The review was published by the ABC, and can be accessed HERE.
With Meagre Powers 