Reza Aslan

[Minimalist]

May be a jerk about islam...but he has the jesus freaks down pat.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/11/reza-...th-errors/

Reza Aslan trashes biblical literalism: The gospels are absolutely replete with errors

Aslan said during a February address to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council that people mistakenly believed Christians had always interpreted the Bible as historical fact. The idea of biblical literalism is actually only about a century old, he explained.

“Let me just say that one more time: in the 2,000 year history in which the gospels have existed, the idea that what you are reading in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John is literal and inerrant is a little more than 100 years old. It was the result of a very interesting movement, a backlash to Christian liberalism and the Scientific Revolution at the end of the 19th century by a group of American Protestants who began a movement that was launched by a series of tracts that were written called ‘The Fundamentals’ and that is where we get the term ‘fundamentalism’ from. It’s a very new phenomenon.”

[Exian]

Have you read Zealot? If Jesus existed as a single man (not a collection a stories of many men, or a piece of fiction), the way he's described in that book I find is the most likely.

[YoungCapitalist]

Theres no such thing as being a "jerk to islam". Islam is a fucking disgrace.

[Exian]

Theres no such thing as being a "jerk to islam". Islam is a fucking disgrace.

jerk about islam.

[Minimalist]

No, I have not read it but I have read reviews. Offhand, it suffers from the same problem as all the other attempts to downgrade the godboy. That is, we have only one story: Gospel of mark. All the others are derivatives of it with additional plots invented by later authors. Mark tells a story of a miracle working son of a bit...um, god. Aslan...as well as Ehrman and many others are trying to write their own gospel by removing the stuff which seems too dumb for modern tastes and creating their own figure to meet the legends.

It does not work. You can't take the dumb out of the gospels. If you do there is little left.

[Exian]

I can't remember what made me buy the book (I think it was a "people who bought this also bought this" suggestion), but I had never heard of Reza. When I began reading Zealot, my first impression was that Reza must be an atheist.

I think the strongest points in Zealot are Reza's ability to recreate the contemporary times surrounding Jesus and the retelling of the life of Jesus to better suit the Roman and the Diaspora audiences by Paul. Assuming any of those characters actually existed.

I would add to your point that not only is Reza removing the hard to believe stuff, he's inserting a lot of damning details about the myth of Jesus. I'm no biblical or historical scholar- ever since I read that book I've been looking to pick somebody's brain who is more knowledgable on the subject.

ETA: Still not knowing who Reza Aslan was, I also read No God but God hoping to see him tear Islam apart, only to find him sucking Mo's dick. I don't know what reputation he has as a religious scholar, but he seemed to give a pretty standard historical retelling of Islam, starting with Mo and moving on through the years with the emergence of the different caliphates and sects. He does tear down a lot of the subsequent Islamic leaders, but in doing so, he does a lot of Mo blowing. All in all, a snoozer of a book. So many names get thrown around to only be relevant for a page or two. You'd have to take notes to keep track.