Reza Aslan's 'Zealot' Criticized for 'Vociferous Assertion' by UK Guardian Reviewer

A reviewer with a United Kingdom publication has joined the chorus of critics over religious scholar Reza Aslan's controversial book on the life of Jesus.

Stuart Kelly of The Guardian wrote in a review Wednesday that Zealot: The Life And Times of Jesus of Nazareth was "undermined by various facts."

"Aslan simultaneously disparages and relies on the gospels. If a verse fits, he snatches it: if it contradicts his thesis he takes it as proof of the unreliability of the source," wrote Kelly. "When he requires Celsus, the vehement antagonist of Christianity, to be true, he takes his work as such (without ever mentioning we only have Celsus in fragments preserved in Origen's rebuttal); when he wishes it otherwise, Celsus is 'so clearly polemical he cannot be taken seriously'."

Kelly also wrote that there "is an odd intemperance about the tone of this book, with vociferous assertion often replacing argument."

"It seems, in its overstatements and oversights, to yearn for the very kind of furor in which it is now embroiled," concluded Kelly. Read more