The media is in love with the new book ‘Zealot’ which claims to be a ‘historical’ look at the life of Jesus. There’s just a few problems - the Muslim author has attempted to debunk what made Jesus the center of Christianity. He’s free to write whatever he wants, but isn’t it interesting that the one Jesus book the media decides to promote is the one that attempts to disprove him? Glenn has more on radio today.
Fox News religion correspondent Lauren Green interviewed Dr. Reza Aslan was confronted about his new book "Zealot", and the interview has gone viral for the awkward exchange between the author and the interviewer.
Glenn took issue with many of Aslan's statements in the interview, especially his assertion that as an academic with four degrees he is somehow able to redefine Jesus Christ.
Glenn said, "Look, if you don't believe that Jesus Christ is the savior of the world, that's fine. That's fine. No biggie. Go your way. I'm going my way. I happen to believe it. And there is no doctorate that could ever be given to me that would actually prove otherwise. Because you learn that through faith. You learn that through an individual testimony. I got one. You don't have one, you should find one. You don't want one, that's fine. I don't really care. Stop telling me who Jesus was."
Aslan describes his stance and his goals in his book, as well as his conversion to Christianity in his teenage years before becoming Muslim:
The moment I returned home from camp, I began eagerly to share the good news of Jesus Christ with my friends and family, my neighbors and classmates, with people I’d just met and with strangers on the street: those who heard it gladly, and those who threw it back in my face. Yet something unexpected happened in my quest to save the souls of the world. The more I probed the Bible to arm myself against the doubts of unbelievers, the more distance I discovered between the Jesus of the gospels and the Jesus of history – between Jesus the Christ and Jesus of Nazareth. In college, where I began my formal study of the history of religions, that initial discomfort soon ballooned into full-blown doubts of my own.The bedrock of evangelical Christianity, at least as it was taught to me, is the unconditional belief that every word of the Bible is God-breathed and true, literal and inerrant. The sudden realization that this belief is patently and irrefutably false, that the Bible is replete with the most blatant and obvious errors and contradictions—just as one would expect from a document written by hundreds of different hands across thousands of years—left me confused and spiritual unmoored. And so, like many people in my situation, I angrily discarded my faith as if it were a costly forgery I had been duped into buying. I began to rethink the faith and culture of my forefathers, finding in them as an adult a deeper, more intimate familiarity than I ever had as a child, the kind that comes from reconnecting with an old friend after many years apart.
Meanwhile, I continued my academic work in religious studies, delving back into the Bible not as an unquestioning believer but as an inquisitive scholar. No longer chained to the assumption that the stories I read were literally true, I became aware of a more meaningful truth in the text, a truth intentionally detached from the exigencies of history. Ironically, the more I learned about the life of the historical Jesus, the turbulent world in which he lived, and the brutality of the Roman occupation that he defied, the more I was drawn to him. Indeed, the Jewish peasant and revolutionary who challenged the rule of the most powerful empire the world had ever known and lost became so much more real to me than the detached, unearthly being I had been introduced to in church.
