Zealot : The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

From the internationally bestselling author of No god but Godcomes a fascinating, provocative end meticulously researchedbiography that challenges long-held assumptions about the man we know as Jesus of Nazareth. Two thousand years ago, an itinerant Jewish preacher from Galilee launched a revolutionary movement proclaiming the Kingdom of God, and threatened the established order of first-century Palestine. Defying both Imperial Rome and its collaborators in the Jewish religious hierarchy, he was captured, tortured and executedas a state criminal. Within decades, his followers would call him the Son of God. Sifting through centuries of myth making, Reza Aslan sheds newlight on one of historys most influential and enigmatic figures byexamining Jesus within the context of the times in which he lived: the age of zealotry, an era awash inapocalyptic fervor, when scores of Jewish prophets and would-be messiahs wandered the Holy Landbearing messages from God. They also espoused a fervent nationalism that made resistance to Romanoccupation a sacred duty. Balancing the Jesus of the Gospels against historical sources, Aslan describes a complex gure: a man ofpeace who exhorted his followers to arm themselves; an exorcist and faith healer who urged his disciplesto keep his identity secret and the seditious King of the Jews, whose promise of liberation from Romewent unful lled in his lifetime. Aslan explores why the early Church preferred to promulgate an image of Jesus as a peaceful spiritual teacher rather than a politically conscious revolutionary and grapples with the riddle of how Jesus understood himself. Zealot provides a fresh perspective on one of the greatest stories ever told. The result is a thoughtprovoking, elegantly written biography with the pulse of a fast-paced novel and a singularly brilliant portrait of a man, a time and the birth of religion