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I really enjoyed this book on the topic: “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth is a book by Iranian-American writer and scholar Reza Aslan. It is a

I really enjoyed this book on the topic: “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth is a book by Iranian-American writer and scholar Reza Aslan. It is a historical account of the life of Jesus and analyzes the various religious perspectives on Jesus as well as the creation of Christianity.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zealot:_The_Life_and_Times_of_Jesus_of_Nazareth https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zealot:_The_Life_and_Times_o...

1over137 8y ago
Probably not the most impartial author on the topic though, as as he is a theist and self-proclaims himself as a "genuinely committed disciple of Jesus of Nazareth". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reza_Aslan#Religious_views https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reza_Aslan#Religious_views
- idontpost 8y ago
  Who could possibly be considered an impartial author on the topic? Surely not any Christian or any atheist. Not any Muslim either. I suppose Buddhists wouldn't have any particular stake in whether a historical Jesus existed.
  - 1over137 8y ago
    Why not an atheist? Not believing in his divinity doesn't preclude objective analysis of whether a human named Jesus existed. But, yes, surely not any Christian, who by definition believes Jesus exited.
    - amatthew 8y ago
      Why not either? For both the Christian and the Atheist, honest scholarship is inseparable from their beliefs. It's hard to imagine either changing their beliefs from the evidence they could find. The consequences of being able to prove with certainty either that Jesus existed and is who Christians claim him to be, or did not exist or was not divine would have tremendous consequences on the lives of hundreds of millions people who do not ascribe to the proven belief. They could say "I am intellectually honest and will change my beliefs depending on the evidence," but we both know that 1. Concrete evidence strong enough to convince someone to change their beliefs, beyond what is already known, likely does not exist. And 2. Their current beliefs already match their known evidence so any additional information is unlikely to radically change their beliefs, only be accounted for and integrated into their current belief system. I'm not trying to say all scholarship is biased or we shouldn't believe anything. In all likelihood, most people are not deliberately lying or falsifying anything. What does that mean about which scholarship to trust? I have no idea.
      - jkaplowitz 8y ago
        Here's the difference: Christians (ignoring some defunct or very rare forms) have it as an article of faith that Jesus was a real historical human who was also divine. Atheists would deny that Jesus or anyone else was God, but there is nothing about atheism that is opposed to duly considering possibly trustworthy evidence that the Jesus whom Christians believe on faith was/is God may have indeed existed as a real historical human. At the same time, unlike (for example) Muslims who believe Jesus was a human prophet but not himself divine, atheists don't have any specific belief about Jesus's human historical reality at all. If the evidence shows that he was made up by combining bits of multiple people's teachings, atheism is unaffected. Therefore, an atheist's writing about this question is, all things being equal, more likely to neutrally consider all the available the secular observable facts about the question, without influence from religious motivations, than a Christian's. However, that italicized precondition is usually false. Real writers vary in their approach to scientific and historical rigor, being imperfect humans themselves and not abstractions. So an individual Christian could well be a more trustworthy source on this than an individual atheist, or vice versa.
      - 1over137 8y ago
        amatthew: by definition, being Christian means one believes Jesus existed. How does one objectively consider the non-existence of Jesus if one has already arrived at a conclusion? That's some serious cognitive dissonance.
        amatthew 8y ago
        Yeah, I agree with you there. I was trying to make a point closer to what jkaplowitz above mentioned in their last three paragraphs.
sjwright 8y ago
Given that Aslan describes outspoken atheists as "fundamentalists" I would take anything he says about religion with an enormous grain of salt. Aslan claims to speak about religion while choosing to remain willfully ignorant about irreligion; therefore you can't expect his views to be academically rigorous or well thought through. As for his book, I realise that book publishers like to give their products sexy titles, but the title can't possibly be paid out in any non-fiction sense as we have exactly zero contemporaneous written accounts of Jesus' life. Anything he has written could only be a further digestion of the already contentious writings haphazardly collected into the book we now know as the Christian bible.
- dmckeon 8y ago
  If you were to read the book, you might find it more about the times than about the man. The context of the time and the place and the various social and religious movements in the few decades before, during, and after the life of Christ informs the reader, and is worth a reading.
  - sjwright 8y ago
    Given that it's all bunch of vague speculation based on writings—and given the character of Jesus is certainly fictional—this would be a more interesting digestion of the material: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/trs/events/jandb/index.aspx https://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/trs/events/jandb/index.... https://soundcloud.com/kings-college-london/jesus-and-brian-what-have-the-pythons-done-for-us https://soundcloud.com/kings-college-london/jesus-and-brian-...

1over137 8y ago

Probably not the most impartial author on the topic though, as as he is a theist and self-proclaims himself as a "genuinely committed disciple of Jesus of Nazareth". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reza_Aslan#Religious_views https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reza_Aslan#Religious_views

idontpost 8y ago
Who could possibly be considered an impartial author on the topic? Surely not any Christian or any atheist. Not any Muslim either. I suppose Buddhists wouldn't have any particular stake in whether a historical Jesus existed.
- 1over137 8y ago
  Why not an atheist? Not believing in his divinity doesn't preclude objective analysis of whether a human named Jesus existed. But, yes, surely not any Christian, who by definition believes Jesus exited.
  - amatthew 8y ago
    Why not either? For both the Christian and the Atheist, honest scholarship is inseparable from their beliefs. It's hard to imagine either changing their beliefs from the evidence they could find. The consequences of being able to prove with certainty either that Jesus existed and is who Christians claim him to be, or did not exist or was not divine would have tremendous consequences on the lives of hundreds of millions people who do not ascribe to the proven belief. They could say "I am intellectually honest and will change my beliefs depending on the evidence," but we both know that 1. Concrete evidence strong enough to convince someone to change their beliefs, beyond what is already known, likely does not exist. And 2. Their current beliefs already match their known evidence so any additional information is unlikely to radically change their beliefs, only be accounted for and integrated into their current belief system. I'm not trying to say all scholarship is biased or we shouldn't believe anything. In all likelihood, most people are not deliberately lying or falsifying anything. What does that mean about which scholarship to trust? I have no idea.
    - jkaplowitz 8y ago
      Here's the difference: Christians (ignoring some defunct or very rare forms) have it as an article of faith that Jesus was a real historical human who was also divine. Atheists would deny that Jesus or anyone else was God, but there is nothing about atheism that is opposed to duly considering possibly trustworthy evidence that the Jesus whom Christians believe on faith was/is God may have indeed existed as a real historical human. At the same time, unlike (for example) Muslims who believe Jesus was a human prophet but not himself divine, atheists don't have any specific belief about Jesus's human historical reality at all. If the evidence shows that he was made up by combining bits of multiple people's teachings, atheism is unaffected. Therefore, an atheist's writing about this question is, all things being equal, more likely to neutrally consider all the available the secular observable facts about the question, without influence from religious motivations, than a Christian's. However, that italicized precondition is usually false. Real writers vary in their approach to scientific and historical rigor, being imperfect humans themselves and not abstractions. So an individual Christian could well be a more trustworthy source on this than an individual atheist, or vice versa.
    - 1over137 8y ago
      amatthew: by definition, being Christian means one believes Jesus existed. How does one objectively consider the non-existence of Jesus if one has already arrived at a conclusion? That's some serious cognitive dissonance.
      - amatthew 8y ago
        Yeah, I agree with you there. I was trying to make a point closer to what jkaplowitz above mentioned in their last three paragraphs.

sjwright 8y ago

Given that Aslan describes outspoken atheists as "fundamentalists" I would take anything he says about religion with an enormous grain of salt. Aslan claims to speak about religion while choosing to remain willfully ignorant about irreligion; therefore you can't expect his views to be academically rigorous or well thought through. As for his book, I realise that book publishers like to give their products sexy titles, but the title can't possibly be paid out in any non-fiction sense as we have exactly zero contemporaneous written accounts of Jesus' life. Anything he has written could only be a further digestion of the already contentious writings haphazardly collected into the book we now know as the Christian bible.

dmckeon 8y ago
If you were to read the book, you might find it more about the times than about the man. The context of the time and the place and the various social and religious movements in the few decades before, during, and after the life of Christ informs the reader, and is worth a reading.
- sjwright 8y ago
  Given that it's all bunch of vague speculation based on writings—and given the character of Jesus is certainly fictional—this would be a more interesting digestion of the material: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/trs/events/jandb/index.aspx https://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/trs/events/jandb/index.... https://soundcloud.com/kings-college-london/jesus-and-brian-what-have-the-pythons-done-for-us https://soundcloud.com/kings-college-london/jesus-and-brian-...