People in Galilee, were illiterate, so no arguing the finer points of the Jewish law in a temple as a child. A Roman census didn’t require people to travel back to the place of their birth. He could not have made a living there, from carpentry. If he was born in Nazareth, then we need to remember how Nazareth was at the time – a small collection of hovels in the middle of nowhere. Most of it was new information to me, it still produces an “of course” when you read it. This is above all a fascinating examination of the area of Judea, two thousand years ago. “The notion that the leader of a popular Messianic movement calling for the imposition of the “Kingdom of God” – a term that would have been understood by Jew and Gentile alike as implying revolt against Rome – could have remained uninvolved in the revolutionary fervour that had gripped nearly every Jew in Judea, is simply ridiculous.” Reza Aslan writes about the historical Jesus, sifting through what might be derived from truth in the New Testament and the little – the couple of lines there are surviving directly about the historical Jesus – there are no contemporary records of the real Jesus, the man who wandered Galilee a couple of thousand years ago. Those Jesus’ (four Gospels, a source (Q) and other gospels that didn’t make it into the New Testament), were written for an audience, to give that audience what they wanted to hear. The first thing to remember, is that the historical Jesus has very, very little, almost nothing to do with the biblical Jesus. And few figures better exemplified this principle than the charismatic Galilean who defied both the imperial authorities and their allies in the Jewish religious hierarchy. This was the age of zealotry-a fervent nationalism that made resistance to the Roman occupation a sacred duty incumbent on all Jews.

Scores of Jewish prophets, preachers, and would-be messiahs wandered through the Holy Land, bearing messages from God. Sifting through centuries of mythmaking, Reza Aslan sheds new light on one of history’s most influential and enigmatic characters by examining Jesus through the lens of the tumultuous era in which he lived: first-century Palestine, an age awash in apocalyptic fervor. Within decades after his shameful death, his followers would call him God. Two thousand years ago, an itinerant Jewish preacher and miracle worker walked across the Galilee, gathering followers to establish what he called the “Kingdom of God.” The revolutionary movement he launched was so threatening to the established order that he was captured, tortured, and executed as a state criminal. Genre: Non Fiction History, Biblical history, Jesus of Nazareth

Zealot by reza aslan summary