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Peter Paul Markin comment:
When we were young, meaning those of
us who were militant leftist baby-boomers from what I now call the “Generation
Of ‘68”, we would chuckle/gasp/shriek in horror when some Old Leftists tried to
tell us a few of the ABCs of radical politics. Those scorned old leftists,
mainly old Stalinist Communist Party hangers-on or moribund Trotskyist
Socialist Workers Party members who had come of political age in the 1930s and
1940s had nothing to tell us young stalwart in-your-face- rebels who were going
to re-invent the world, re-invent it without the hurts and sorrows accumulated
from millennia of previous struggles to push the rock up the hill of human
progress.
Well, we fell significantly short of
that aim, had that Promethean rock come speeding down over our heads. Today I
am still not sure whether in retrospect those scorned Old Leftists of old had
anything going but all I know is we are now cast in somewhat the same light. We
are now the Old New Leftists. Problem is that unlike our 1960s generation,
warts and all, there is no sizable younger crowd of young stalwart
in-your-face-rebels to thumb their noses up at us. And there should be. That
has not stopped many old radicals, many who have not succumbed to old age and
hubris, from trying to be heard. And the place they have congregated, for
better or worse, at least from what I can see is at this site.
So I find this The Rag Blog website very useful to monitor for the latest in what
is happening with past tense radical activists and activities. Anybody, with
some kind of name, and who is still around from the 1960s has found a home
here. The remembrances and recollections are helpful for today’s activists.
Strangely the politics are almost non-existent, as least any that would
help today, except to kind of retroactively “bless” those old-time new left
politics that did nothing (well, almost nothing) but get us on the losing end
of the class (and cultural) wars of the last forty plus years. Still this
is a must read blog for today’s left-wing militants.
A Markin disclaimer:
I place some material in this space which may be of interest
to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Sometimes
I will comment on my disagreements and sometimes I will just let the
author/writer shoot him or herself in the foot without note. Off hand, as I
have mentioned before in other contexts, I think it would be easier, infinitely
easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the
“remedies” provided by the commentators in the entries on this website. But
part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real”
stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our
efforts. Read on.
*******
spiral
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Aslan’s portrayal of Jesus as revolutionary zealot is fanciful history
Mistakes in ‘Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth,’ show that Reza Aslan lacks the necessary background to write a historical work about the period and Jesus’s place in it.
Jesus drives money changers from the temple. Image from SF Gate.
Just over 78% of adults in the U.S. report that they are Christian, according to the latest Pew Research findings. The thesis of a relatively new book by Reza Aslan should interest them. In Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, Aslan portrays Jesus as a revolutionary zealot intent on the overthrow of the Romans in order to drive them from the land of Israel — land promised to the Jews by God.
It is not a new thesis. I remember Christians and others in the 1960s who viewed Jesus as a revolutionary for other reasons — mainly as a figure who wanted to create a society of equality that was closer to communism than to corporate capitalism.
The best critique of Aslan’s book — and by any standard, the longest — has been made by Bart Ehrman on his Bart’s Blog, in a series of 13 comments made over a three-week period earlier this year. Ehrman, a New Testament Biblical scholar and the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, blogs five or six times a week to raise money for charitable purposes.
Aslan claims that his book is based on real history, not conjecture.
Aslan claims that his book is based on real history, not conjecture, but Ehrman suggests otherwise. Ehrman finds fault with Aslan’s basic thesis “that Jesus was a politically motivated zealot who believed in the violent overthrow of the Roman empire, or at least believed that the Romans should be driven out of the Promised Land, as did so many others in his time and place.”Ehrman suggests that the deficiencies in Aslan’s thesis arise from his lack of expertise in “the critical study of the New Testament, the history of early Christianity,” and several related fields encompassing the history of the Roman empire at that time and the study of the historical Jesus. In short, Aslan is not a scholar in any of these subjects and has written a book that requires — to be accurate — deep knowledge of all of them.
No one, and especially not Ehrman, has questioned that Aslan’s book is beautifully written. Aslan is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California–Riverside, a Research Associate at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, and a contributing editor for The Daily Beast. He has a Ph.D. in the sociology of religion, but that field does not encompass the areas of scholarship that Ehrman has identified as critical to support any thesis about the nature and character of Jesus.
Both Aslan and Ehrman agree that the Gospels are not reliable historical texts. As Ehrman describes them, they “are meant to be proclamations of the superiority of Jesus as the Son of God. They are not meant to be objective descriptions of political events.” To use them to describe historical events requires that the theological claims of the writings be sorted through with the tools of the historian — the historical criteria that can be used to determine what can plausibly be said to have happened over 2,000 years ago.
Ehrman points to the need to find out from historical sources from first-century Palestine what went on, looking for “independent attestation” of the events described. Other criteria that should be used include the “criterion of embarrassment” (that is, an account embarrassing to the author or the author’s belief or thesis is presumed to be true because the author would have no reason to invent an embarrassing account) and the “criterion of dissimilarity” (for example, if a saying attributed to Jesus is dissimilar to the Jewish traditions of his time and also from the beliefs of early Christians, it is likely to be authentic).
Such criteria help assess what has been made up or added by later storytellers. But Aslan never reveals his criteria to readers; therefore, readers cannot evaluate whether Aslan has arrived at valid conclusions on matters of historical importance.
For Bart Ehrman, a crucial matter — perhaps the crucial matter — is to explain why the Romans crucified Jesus.
For Ehrman, a crucial matter — perhaps the crucial matter — is to explain why the Romans crucified Jesus. If the basis for that “most certain historical datum about Jesus” (that “he was crucified under Pontius Pilate for calling himself the King of the Jews”) does not stand up to scrutiny, Aslan’s thesis is highly suspect. That thesis, as restated by Ehrman, is that “Jesus was killed for making a political claim that amounted to insurgency because he was a politically motivated Jew who believed in insurgency.” For Ehrman, the evidence points in another direction.Ehrman finds glaring historical errors throughout Aslan’s book, but I will mention only a few. They mostly concern what Ehrman terms the “overarching themes about the political situation in Jerusalem that Jesus found himself in – a central feature of the book.” The false claims are important to Aslan’s view that the political situation explains the life, ministry, and death of Jesus.
One historical error is Aslan’s claim that, in Ehrman’s words, “Legions of Roman troops were stationed throughout Judea.” Aslan seems to see an occupied Judea. But Ehrman says that Jews in those days were not regularly confronted by Roman soldiers. There were soldiers with the governor in Caesarea, but Roman soldiers were not everywhere in Judea.
Aslan also misunderstands Jewish beliefs. Aslan’s claim that “Belief in a divine messiah would have been anathema to everything Judaism represents” is simply not true. Ehrman points to passages in Psalm 2:110, Psalm 45:6-7; and Isaiah 9:6-7 that suggest that “the messiah was to be the descendant of the kings, himself the ‘Son of God.’” The Book of Enoch, which is a sourcebook for ancient Judaism, refers to an understanding among Jews “that the messiah would be the divine Son of Man come from heaven,” in Ehrman’s words.
Aslan also claims that for a 30-year old Jewish man, as Jesus was at the beginning of his ministry, not to have a wife is “almost unthinkable.” But Ehrman finds no historical basis for such a claim, explaining that during Jesus’ time, “men outnumbered women by a good margin, since so many women died in childbirth.” This made it impossible for all Jewish men to marry. Further, apocalyptic Jews (such as Jesus) who believed the end of the world was coming soon intentionally did not marry because of their beliefs.
One topographical/geographical claim by Aslan — that it was a day’s walk from Nazareth to the capital city Sepphoris — is easily refuted by Ehrman, who calculates that it would take perhaps one and a half hours to walk the distance. Other sources indicate that is was about five miles between the two towns.
Aslan seems intent, too, on exaggerating the Roman presence in Jerusalem.
Aslan seems intent, too, on exaggerating the Roman presence in Jerusalem. He claims that Pilate marched “through Jerusalem’s gates trailed by a legion of Roman soldiers carrying standards bearing the Emperor’s image,” but, as Ehrman explains, a primary historian of the time, Josephus, wrote that Pilate’s entry into Jerusalem with soldiers was stealthy, done at night, with soldiers spread around the city, creating an unwelcome surprise for the inhabitants when they awoke the next day.Aslan also claims that the Romans, in essence, declared war on the Jews, leading to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 CE. But Ehrman explains that there is no historical evidence for this. The only uprising that concerned the Romans was in Palestine:
The vast majority of Jews did not live in Jerusalem, or in Judea, or even throughout Palestine. Much like today, there were far, far more Jews living outside the national boundaries of Israel than within it. And remarkably, and strikingly, Romans did not punish other Jews outside of Palestine for the uprising within Palestine.Another mistake about Roman Jewish history that Aslan got wrong is a claim that “Rome expelled every surviving Jew from Jerusalem and its surrounding environs [after 70 CE].”
Jews were allowed to continue to worship God as they always had (except, of course, in the Temple, which no longer existed). Jews were not declared the enemies of Rome. Far from it. In most places, Jews had a privileged status in relationship to Romans (they were not required to participate in public sacrifices to the Roman gods, for example). The Jewish uprising in Palestine had nothing to do with that.
Ehrman explains that Jews were not expelled from the city after 70 CE, but continued to thrive there for more than 60 years. It was another revolt in 132-35 CE that led to Jewish expulsion from Jerusalem, along with the re-naming of the city by the Romans.
Aslan also makes incorrect claims about the religious views of John the Baptist, the execution of “thousands and thousands” of Jews by Pilate, the crucifixion of Jesus in the presence of hundreds of dying criminals, that those crucified were “savagely scourged” as was “the custom for all those sentenced to the cross,” that Jesus’ disciples were all martyred for their belief in the resurrection, that Peter and Paul were similarly martyred by Nero in 66 CE for the same belief, that Christians ceased to convert Jews after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, that there was a great debate at the Council of Nicea about whether Jesus was divine or human, and many other historical claims.
Ehrman explains that no historical records or sources generally accepted as reliable by scholars of the period support any of the above claims. But such representations do spice up Aslan’s claim that the events are based on actual history of the period. However, history is not Aslan’s only weakness. Other mistakes related in his book about the New Testament provide even more evidence that Aslan simply doesn’t have the necessary background to write a historical work about the period and Jesus’s place in it.
In next week’s column, I will finish outlining Bart Ehrman’s critique of Aslan’s book. Those interested in the New Testament and the early history of Christianity will find Ehrman’s blog one of the most fascinating sites on the web. Limited information from the site is free, but to read all of Ehrman’s thoughts on numerous topics related to his 30 years of scholarship in his field, the reader must pay $24.95 a year, all of which goes directly to charity. It is Ehrman’s way of doing good while sharing information based on his research. You can find his website here.
Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.
[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins.]
For a different perspective, see Paul Buhle’s “Reza Aslan’s ‘Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.’” on The Rag Blog.
This entry was posted in RagBlog and tagged Bart Ehrman, Biblical Scholarship, Books, Christian History, Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, Jewish History, Lamar W. Hankins, Rag Bloggers, Religious History, Reza Aslan, Zealot, Zealot Series. Bookmark the permalink.
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