Reza Aslan’s book , Zealot-The life and times of Jesus of Nazareth has created a lot of buzz among Christians, Jews and Muslims alike. His book is best seller on Amazon, Ebay and NYT. There are already lot of reviews and articles on the book.

Among Jews and Christians, the main point of controversy is the Aslan’s assertions that the Jesus was not  a gentle peace-loving person, but  a zealot political activist who challenged the Roman Empire, and for which he was crucified. Among Muslims, his remark that the Jesus of Nazareth was crucified in contradiction to the Muslim’s belief, has restarted the  old debate. Mr. Aslan does not compare the Quran’s narrative with Christian narrative in the Book. He presents only Christian’s narrative, because book is about Jesus of Nazareth.

Before I give some excerpts from Mr. Aslan’s  book , I want to mention the Quran’s narrative as I posted in the comments and excerpt of Mr.Faris’ article.

First Background and then Quran’s Sura 4, Verse 157; Explained by Mr.Ezz Hamza, and my best recollection about narrative; After Jesus Christ challenged the Roman King, it was ordered to arrest him. The arresting soldiers did not know the identity of the Jesus Christ or his residence because he was moving from place to place. One of Christ’s confidants ( most likely Judas Iscariot or Shabih ) betrayed him and agreed to help the Roman soldiers. He told the soldiers that he will kiss the Christ and you will know the identity of the Christ. He kissed the Christ while the slodiers were hiding. But after kissing the Christ, confidant’s own body transformed into the shape of Christ. The Christ was lifted up to heavens and his confidant was left behind in the shape of Christ. Later the confidant was arrested, soldiers thinking that he was the actual Christ and later crucified him. In this background read the Sura 4, Verse 157

4:157 That they said (in boast), “We killed Christ JESUS the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah.;- but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not.” 

Controversy over crucifixion is not new. It started in early period of Christianity , long before the emergence of Islam. Mr. Faris- Al-Kariyani  writes  in one of his article;

“Throughout the course of church history the heresy of the Shabih (  my explanation of Shabih: Shabih , supposedly, is the confidant of Jesus who betrayed him and helped the soldiers to capture Jesus. This confidant was later crucified by Romans, thinking he was Jesus as per narration by verses in Quran )  has never disappeared. From time to time it reappeared among the Christian communities in the East, preached by scattered groups of heretics. In the year A.D. 185 a heretic sect of the descendant of the priests of Thebes who embraced Christianity claimed that “God forbids that Christ should be crucified. He was safely lifted up to heaven.” Also in the year A.D. 370 a hermetic Gnostic sect that denied the crucifixion of Jesus taught that He “was not crucified but it seemed so to the spectators who crucified Him.” Again, in the year A.D. 520 Severus, bishop of Syria, fled to Alexandria where he encountered a group of philosophers teaching that Jesus Christ was not crucified but that it only appeared so to the people who nailed Him on the cross. In A.D. 560 the monk Theodor denied Christ’s human nature and thus denied His crucifixion. About A.D. 610 Bishop John, son of the governor of Cyprus, began to proclaim that Christ was not crucified but that it only seemed so to the spectators who crucified Him.

Among those who preached the theory of the Shabih is the Persian self-proclaimed prophet Mani (A.D. 276). He said that Jesus was the son of a widow, and the one who was crucified was the son of the widow of Nain whom Jesus raised from the dead. In another Manichaean tradition we read that Satan was the one who sought to crucify Jesus but he failed and was crucified in His place.”

 Excerpts From Mr. Aslan’s Book;

Mr. Aslan writes in Authors note, on page xx of his book;

“The reader will notice that I rely primarily on the Gospel of Mark and Q material (the material unique to the Gospels of Mathew and Luke) in forming my outline of the story of Jesus.”

Mr. Aslan writes with certainty in Introduction, on Page Xviii of his book:

“In the end, there are only two historical facts about Jesus of Nazareth we can confidently rely on; the first is that a Jesus was a Jew who led a popular Jewish movement in Palestine at the beginning of First Century C.E; the second is that Romans crucified him for doing so.”

Pages 153-157 are mostly devoted to the crucifixion period and , as a reader ,I was expecting these pages will elaborate and provide some concrete historical proof about Aslan’s certainty obout crucifixion of Jesus as he wrote on page Xviii, but on the contrary these pages are full of uncertainty.

“And yet perhaps no other moment in Jesus’s brief life is more opaque and inaccessible to scholars than this one. That has partly to do with the multiple traditions upon which the story of Jesus’s trial and crucifixion rely. Recall that while Mark was the first written Gospel, It was preceding by written blocks of oral and written traditions about Jesus that were transmitted by his earliest followers.”

“These so- called passion narratives set up a basic sequence of events that the earliest believed occurred at the end of Jesus’ life: the Last Supper. The Betrayal by Judas Iscariot.  The arrest at Gethsemane. The appearance before the high priest and Pilate. The crucifixion and the burial. The Resurrection  three days later.”

“ Mark’s contribution to the passion narratives was his transformation of ritualized sequence of events into a cohesive story about the death of Jesus, which his redactors, Mathew and Luke, integrated into  their Gospels along with their own flourishes( John may have relied on separate set of passion narratives for his Gospel, since almost  none of the details he provides about last days of Jesus’ life match what is found in synoptics).”(  Gospels by Mark , Mathew and Luke together are called Synoptics.)

“ As with everything else in the Gospels, the story of Jesus’s arrest, trial, and execution was written for one reason and one reason only: to prove that he was the promised messiah. Factual accuracy was irrelevant. What mattered was Christology, not history”.

“So, then, one can dismiss the theatrical trial before Pilate as pure fantasy for all the reasons stated above. If Jesus did in fact appear before the Pilate, it would have been brief and, for Pilate, utterly forgettable.”

“ As a result, this final , most significant episode in the story of Jesus of Nazareth is also the one most clouded by theological enhancements  and flat out fabrications. The only means the modern reader has at his or her disposal to try to retrieve some semblance of historical accuracy in the passion narratives is to slowly strip away the theological overlay imposed by the evangelists on Jesus’ final days and return to the most primitive version of the story that can be excavated from gospels. The only way to do that to start at the end of the story, with Jesus nailed to the cross.”  From this point the author moves on to the subject of why Jesus was crucified and crucifixion was common practice among Romans , to punish the Non-Romans for crimes against state. The author writes at the end of Introduction on page xxxI.

“Granted , writing a biography of Jesus of Nazareth is not writing a biography of Napoleon Bonaparte. The task is somewhat akin to putting together a massive puzzle with only a few of the pieces in hand: one has no choice to but to fill in the rest of the puzzle based on the best, most educated guess of what the completed image should look like.”

My comments;

Both Muslims and Christians agree that there was crucifixion, but the only contradiction is whether the person crucified was actual Jesus or somebody else?  Applying today’s forensic scientific knowledge, it is not an easy task unless Jesus’ body is found and identified with crucifixion evidence and DNA tests. If Jesus was risen to heaven, how one can find the body? Eyewitnesses accounts can also differ. How one can recognize a Jesus if someone else’s body was transformed into Jesus as narrated by Quranic verses?

Mr. Aslan does not cite any archaeological evidence but his best personal interpretations and best guesses based primarily on Gospels and other scholars’ work on Gospels. I think his statement of certainty, it is a historic fact that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified, is based on the fact that among major scholars of the Gospels, there is no dissent on this point. He has written this book from the Christian’s perspective, and it is written in a beautiful prose for ordinary reader like me.

Conclusion; Nothing much changed. It is a matter of belief.

.P.S. There have been debates on this controversy between the Islamic and Muslim Scholars. The famous one was between Dr. Floyd E. Clark and Ahmed Deedat. It is  more than two hours debate .I listened to Ahmed Deedat  from 48;00 and rebuttal by Floyd Clark. If you have time at hand and interested in this topic, It is worth listening.  link to debate is :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbMzCkHOBhE&feature=player_detailpage

Fayyaz  Sheikh