Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

That is how, on a bald hill covered in crosses, beset by the cries and moans of agony from hundreds of dying criminals, as a murder of crows circled eagerly over his head waiting for him to breathe his last, the messiah known as Jesus of Nazareth would have met the same ignominious end as every other messiah who came before or after him.

One can say that it was not only Stephen who died that day outside the gates of Jerusalem. Buried with him under the rubble of stones is the last trace of the historical person known as Jesus of Nazareth. The story of the zealous Galilean peasant and Jewish nationalist who donned the mantle of messiah and launched a foolhardy rebellion against the corrupt Temple priesthood and the vicious Roman occupation comes to an abrupt end, not with his death on the cross, nor with the empty tomb, but at the first moment one of his followers dares suggest he is God.

To answer this question we must first recognize that almost every gospel story written about the life and mission of Jesus of Nazareth was composed after this Jewish rebellion against Rome of 66 C.E, after the destruction.

The spiritual trauma faced by the Jews in the wake of that catastrophic event is hard to imagine. Exiled from the land promised them by God, forced to live as outcasts among the pagans of the Roman Empire, the rabbis of the second century gradually and deliberately divorced Judaism from the radical messianic nationalism that had launched the ill-fated war with Rome. The Torah replaced the Temple in the center of Jewish life, and rabbinic Judaism emerged.

The Christians, too, felt the need to distance themselves from the revolutionary zeal that had led to the sacking of Jerusalem, not only because it allowed the early church to ward off the wrath of a deeply vengeful Rome, but also because, with the Jewish religion having become pariah, the Romans had become the primary target of the church’s evangelism. Thus began the long process of transforming Jesus from a revolutionary Jewish nationalist into a peaceful spiritual leader with no interest in any earthly matter. That was a Jesus the Romans could accept, and in fact did accept three centuries later, and what we now recognize as orthodox Christianity was born.

With Jerusalem despoiled, the early Christians could either maintain their cultic connections to their parent religion and thus share in Rome’s enmity (Rome’s enmity toward Christians would peak much later), or they could divorce themselves from Judaism and transform their messiah from a fierce Jewish nationalist into a pacifistic preacher of good works whose kingdom was not of this world. Also, Christianity was no longer a tiny Jewish sect. After 70 C.E., the center of the Christian movement shifted from Jewish Jerusalem to the Graeco-Roman cities of the Mediterranean: Alexandria, Corinth, Ephesus, Damascus, Antioch, Rome. A generation after Jesus’s crucifixion, his non-Jewish followers outnumbered and overshadowed the Jewish ones. By the end of the first century, when the bulk of the gospels were being written, Rome—in particular the Roman intellectual elite—had become the primary target of Christian evangelism.

Two thousand years later, the Christ of Paul’s creation has utterly subsumed the Jesus of history. The memory of the revolutionary zealot who walked across Galilee gathering an army of disciples with the goal of establishing the Kingdom of God on earth, the magnetic preacher who defied the authority of the Temple priesthood in Jerusalem, the radical Jewish nationalist who challenged the Roman occupation and lost, has been almost completely lost to history.

Yet if one wants to uncover what Jesus himself truly believed, one must never lose sight of this fundamental fact: Jesus of Nazareth was first and finally a Jew.

If one knew nothing else about Jesus of Nazareth save that he was crucified by Rome, one would know practically all that was needed to uncover who he was, what he was, and why he ended up nailed to a cross. His offense, in the eyes of Rome, is self-evident. It was etched upon a plaque and placed above his head for all to see: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. His crime was daring to assume kingly ambitions.

In Jerusalem, a holy man named Jesus son of Ananias suddenly appeared, prophesying the destruction of the city and the imminent return of the messiah. (p. 53, over halfway through Chapter 5)

...the gospels are not, not were they ever intended to be, a historical documentation of Jesus's life. These are not eyewitness accounts of of Jesus's words and deeds recorded by people who knew him. They are testimonies of faith composed by communities of faith and written many years after the events they describe.

Actually, Paul sometimes directly contradicts Jesus. Compare what Paul writes in his epistle to the Romans with what Jesus says in the gospel of Matthew....(P. 187, Chapter 13)

Q: As a historian and scholar, as you read all this, how can you still believe any of these religions?

A: I don't believe in a religion, I believe in God. The only reason that I call myself a Muslim is because the symbols and metaphors that Islam uses to talk about God are ones that I like, the ones that make sense to me. It's not that Islam is more true than Christianity, or Christianity is more true than Judaism, they are all equally true equally valid ways of expressing what is absolutely inexpressible. If you believe there is something beyond the material world, that there is something truly transcendent, then you need some kind of language to talk about it, to make sense of it, that's all that religion is. Anyone who says "I believe in Christianity" or "I believe in Islam" misses the point. Christianity and Islam are not things to believe, they are signposts to God. They are a means to an end, not an end in themselves.

...

It's a simple proposition. You either believe there's something beyond the material world, or you do not. If you do not, fine. If you do, then do you want to actually experience it? Commune with it? Or do you not? If you do not, fine. If you do, then you need some help. You need a way to express what is fundamentally undefinable. And that's all religion does, it gives you a language to express it. Anything more than that and you're missing the point of what religion is. The great Christian mystic Meister Eckhart once said "If you focus too narrowly on a single path to God, all you will ever find is the path."

[when a] group of bishops gathered ... to canonize what would become known as the New Testament, they chose to include in the Christian scruptures one letter from James, the brother and successor of Jesus, two letters from Peter, the chief apostle and first among the Twelve, three letters from John, the beloved disciple and pillar of the church, and fourteen letters from Paul, the deviant and outcast who was rejected and scorned by the leaders in Jerusalem. In fact more than half of the twenty-seven books that now make up the New Testament are either by or about Paul.

For every well-attested, heavily researched, and eminently authoritative argument made about the historical Jesus, there is an equally well-attested, equally researched, and equally authoritative argument opposing it.

Granted, writing a biography of Jesus of Nazareth is not like writing a biography of Napoleon Bonaparte. The task is somewhat akin to putting together a massive puzzle with only a few of the pieces in hand; one has no choice but to fill in the rest of the puzzle based on the best, most educated guess of what the completed image should look like. The great Christian theologian Rudolf Bultmann liked to say that the quest for the historical Jesus is ultimately an internal quest. Scholars tend to see the Jesus they want to see. Too often they see themselves—their own reflection—in the image of Jesus they have constructed.

That explains why Jesus went to such lengths to hide the truth about the Kingdom of God from all but his disciples. Jesus recognized that the new world order he envisioned was so radical, so dangerous, so revolutionary, that Rome’s only conceivable response to it would be to arrest and execute them all for sedition. He therefore consciously chose to veil the Kingdom of God in abstruse and enigmatic parables that are nearly impossible to understand. “The secret of the Kingdom of God has been given to you to know,” Jesus tells his disciples. “But to outsiders, everything is said in parables so that they may see and not perceive, they may hear and not understand." (Mark 4:11-12)

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters—yes even his life—he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26 | Matthew 10:37).

اصلان به‌ طور همزمان، هم اناجیل را تحقیر و هم در تحقیقش به آن‌ها تکیه می‌کند. اگر آیه‌‌ای با ایده او هماهنگ باشد، از آن استفاده می‌کند و اگر با نظریه اش در تقابل باشد، آن را دلیلی بر غیرقابل اطمینان‌ بودن متن می‌گیرد. وقتی او به صدق آرای پولس، مخالف سرسخت سابق مسیحیت نیاز دارد، نظرات او را صادق درنظر می‌گیرد؛ زمانی که او به کذب آرای پولس نیاز دارد، سخنان وی "آن‌قدر جدلی هستند که او نمی‌تواند آن‌ها را جدی بگیرد". او واقعا متون را نمی‌خواند، بلکه آن‌ها را غربال می‌کند و باعث می‌شود داستان کم‌ اهمیت تر از جزئیات شود.

اناجیل تاریخ نیستند. این ایده که آن‌ ها فرم کاملا جدیدی از ادبیات هستند، ممکن است فی نفسه دلیلی کافی برای ما باشد تا آن‌ها را با دقت، ظرافت و نکته‌‌سنجی بیشتری بخوانیم. اصلان به انجیل مرقس به‌عنوان متنی اشاره می‌کند که به یونانیِ ابتدایی و زمخت نوشته شده و با این وجود برای یهودیان یونانی‌شده اهل فرهنگ و هنر بیش از جلیلیان بی‌سواد جذاب است. ممکن است کسی به‌صورت مشابه استدلال کند که سبک نوشتاری متفاوت ایروین ولش و دیوید هیوم ثابت می‌کند که ولش اهل اسکاتلند نبوده است. شاید مرقس همچون کسنوفون نمی‌نوشت، اما این ایده که او مخاطبان دیگری را در نظر داشته، به این معنا نیست که او با مهارت‌‌های ادبی آشنا نبوده است؛ مهارت‌های او متنوع‌ تر و ضمنی‌‌تر بودند. مرقس فاقد روایت‌های آغاز راه لوقا و داستان‌های رستاخیز متی است؛ چرا که آن‌ها از پیش شناخته شده بودند. امور هنگامی که از حافظه می‌گذرند نوشته می‌شوند. اما مرقس، همچون اناجیل موجز دیگر و انجیل یوحنا، ویژگی‌ای دارد که من آن را کمدی الهی می‌نامم و نوشته‌های دیگران در آن دوره را فاقد چنین چیزی می‌دانم