Scholars Respond to Reza Aslan's 'Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth'

Among some of the claims in Zealot, a biography in the top five of The New York Times Best Seller list and the leading book in a few Amazon categories, is that: Jesus was a revolutionary and a zealot who advocated the use of violence; as a devout Jew Jesus would have rejected the idea of an incarnate God; Jesus was crucified for sedition against the Roman Empire and not for the world's sins.

"Aslan has offered nothing new under the sun when it comes to offering a critique of the historical Jesus," William Lane Craig, a philosopher of religion and a Christian apologist, has said. "In fact, he is attempting to revert scholarship back to the early 1900s by echoing Albert Schweitzer's book, The Quest for the Historical Jesus. Like Schweitzer, Aslan claims that Jesus is historically unknowable and we can never get back to the real Jesus." Read more