One of my favorite tracks on
The Bells of Dublin album by the Chieftains
is “The Rebel Jesus” performed with Jackson Browne, the composer of the song. The
song doesn’t celebrate the usual pieties of Christmas: the Prince of Peace, our
Savior Sweet and Mild. Instead, it celebrates a different view of Jesus, one
that the Gospel accounts hint at but don’t explicate. Jesus was a radical in
politics, economics, and religion. I thought of this song as I read Reza Aslan’s
Zealot. The song could serve as the
theme song for the book. (Too bad only movies get theme songs; it could prove an interesting exercise for books.)
Aslan’s thesis is
straightforward: Jesus was out to overturn the Roman rule of Palestine and to
overturn those Jews—primarily those in the cities and the priestly class—who corroborated
with the Romans. Aslan begins by providing a detailed description of the
political economy of Palestine around the time of Jesus. The picture is not a
pretty one. The Romans ruled Palestine (Judea, Galilee, and the surrounding
lands) with sword, fire, and crucifixion. They did so through the corroboration
of those who controlled the Temple in Jerusalem. The result is one of the oldest
and most common stories in history: the wealthy elites in the cities extract
wealth from the countryside by force. As the countryside becomes impoverished,
increasingly destitute peasants flood into the cities, desperate and poor. Those
who lived in a small village like Nazareth in Galilee would have felt the weight
of oppression imposed upon them by “the rich”. It was from this milieu that
Jesus—and many other would-be messiahs and rebels—emerged. No one succeeded in
overthrowing the Romans, and finally the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 C.E.,
when a Jewish rebellion went too far in Roman eyes.
Aslan’s thesis is not new or
especially unique. He’s not a Biblical scholar, but he has done his homework.
He especially acknowledges the work of John Meir (Catholic priest and Biblical
scholar), whose four-volume work, A
Marginal Jew, explores the world of Jesus and the nature of his mission as best as
history can reconstruct it. And this is the problem: the writers of the four canonical
Gospels did not write history. They wrote to establish grounds for faith well
after Jesus’ death. Those seeking to look behind the curtain, starting back in
the nineteenth century, have had to search other sources and speculate (as
logically and coherently as possible) about the history (not Good News) of
Jesus. Aslan brings this search up to date in a readily accessible work that
assumes no Biblical scholarship on the part of the reader.
The book was a pleasant
surprise for me. I thought that historical scholarship focused on the idea that
Jesus was primarily concerned with the end time, the eschatological vision
inherited primarily from the Book of Daniel and reflected in the Gospels and
other NT works. Aslan argues instead that Jesus’ mission, as Jesus experienced
it, was primarily one of earthly concerns, such as bringing "the Kingdom of God" into the
world in which he lived and walked. Terms like “the Kingdom of God” and “the Son of
Man” were as enigmatic then as they are now. What did Jesus mean by these terms?
That still isn’t clear, but Aslan argues that these terms didn’t address the
end of the world in the physical sense, but they intended to signal a
restoration of the Jewish people to their political independence and to their dedication
to God.
Aslan also enlightened me
about the conflict between Paul and the Apostles in Jerusalem, Peter, John, and
James, the brother of Jesus (and known as “the Just” for his considerate
treatment of the poor). The Roman destruction of Jerusalem destroyed this apostolic
contingent as well as the city itself and its inhabitants. That catastrophic
event allowed Paul’s view—a very different view of Jesus and his calling from
that held by the Peter, James, and John—to dominate the NT corpus and the
theology of the nascent Church. Indeed, the destruction of Jerusalem had a
profound effect on both the new Christian movement as well as the whole of
Judaism.
I really enjoyed Aslan’s
book. It gave me fresh insights into the most important and enigmatic person in
Western Civilization. I assume that I’m not the only person who’s pondered the
conflicting visions of Jesus found in the Gospels and the remainder of the NT. Did
Jesus come to bring peace or a sword? Why did he create such a ruckus in the
Temple? And what was the Temple all about with its High Priests and such? Was
he against the family? Do we have to sell everything and give it to the poor? I
could go on and on. I now know that in the NT we have a collection of writings
from different times and places with different perspectives, even different
perspectives within what we might otherwise think of as a single work (say a
Gospel). It’s not neat and tidy; in fact, as the Jesus Movement becomes Christianity,
the story only becomes messier. In the end, we’re far, far away from whatever
Jesus said, did, and intended some 2000 years ago. But that’s true of any
figure: Socrates, Mohammad, Buddha—take your pick. In the end, I believe that it’s
what we do with any legacy—how we apply it now—that really counts. Yet better
understanding of how these stories came to be—and how they’ve changed—gives us
a new depth that should help guide us. Aslan’s book helps greatly in our quest
to better understand the figure of Jesus of Nazareth.
N.B. Aslan goes to all of the right places: UI Writers Workshop, Hamburg Inn, and the Jaipur Lit Festival. He knows how to pick-em! Looking forward to seeing him again in Jaipur.
N.B. Aslan goes to all of the right places: UI Writers Workshop, Hamburg Inn, and the Jaipur Lit Festival. He knows how to pick-em! Looking forward to seeing him again in Jaipur.
