Last month we had our first Blog Book Club (the BBC) and it was a smashing success. The feedback has been tremendous. There were three sessions, the first two to discuss two different books (one by me, one by someone who did not like the one by me!) and then the third a Q&A with me to address the issue.
So we’re gonna do it again! The format will be slightly different. This time for the first meeting, participants will read the first book about Jesus EVER to become the #1 Bestseller on the New York Times Bestseller list, Reza Aslan’s Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. The second meeting (two weeks later to give you time to read) participants will read my book about Jesus, which advances a very different, contrary understanding, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium.
Neither book is responding to the other. I wrote mine before Reza wrote his. They simply have different understandings of who the historical Jesus was, in rather striking and important ways. The HEART OF THE MATTER: was Jesus a political revolutionary who wanted a military solution to the Roman presence in the Holy Land (Reza’s view)? Or was he an apocalyptic prophet who was opposed to violence who thought that God himself was going to restore Israel to its rightful place (my view)? Hot topic, lots to talk about!
The third week (two weeks later) I will join the entire group and we will discuss all the issues together.
Are you interested in participating in this BBC? We are doing it both because it will be a heckuva lot of fun and on an unusually important topic, AND in order to raise some funds for the blog. Every penny will go directly to the charities we support helping those in serious need.
So why not join up! The BBC is open to everyone who wants to come for a minimum donation of $30 (even if you come to only one of the sessions). With two provisos. FIRST, we are asking for, not requiring a contribution. If you simply can’t afford it but would love to participate, come anyway. SECOND, we are setting $30 as the minimum suggested donation. If you think it’s worth more please feel free to go above and beyond, to your heart’s content. We both adore and encourage generosity, as way to achieve the summum bonum (!).
The BBC meetings will happen over Zoom. The first two will be moderated by two experienced moderators, my blog assistant Diane Pittman and blog volunteer Lance Boyer, who first came up with this entire idea. I will be running the third myself.
We will be figuring out ways to accommodate however many people sign up, so that you can have a chance to say what you want, if you want, and to listen to what others have to say, no matter how many decide to give it a go (that’s easier on Zoom than live since we can set up break-out rooms, and so on).
For those who decide to come, we will be giving further information about how the sessions will work. Among other things, though, at the BBC:
- Participants are welcome to come to as many of the sessions as they like — hopefully all three, but hey, we all have lives…
- We will have volunteers summarize the important features in advance to get everyone on the same page
- We will have moderated interactions among participants for the first two sessions.
- I will run the third as a discussion/question-answer session on anything connected with the books.
- All sessions will last about 90 minutes (you can obviously leave at any point).
- We will allow participants to stay on longer if they choose just to shoot the breeze, chew the fat, or chew the breeze.
If you are interested in participating, THIS IS ALL THAT’S REQUIRED:
- Click the following link to register (not here as a comment on the blog): Register here
- Indicate the amount you are willing to donate
- Make the donation on the blog site itself (just go to the site, to the bottom of the landing page, and choose one of the two options for making the donation)
- Diane will send you a link to the meetings
- Start reading
The following is the schedule.
Meeting 1: Saturday November 6 3:00 – 4:30 pm (Eastern)/ Discuss Resa Aslan, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth
Meeting 2: Saturday November 20 3:00-4:30 pm (Eastern) Discuss Bart Ehrman, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium
Meeting 3: Saturday December 4; 3:00 – 4:30 pm (Eastern) Discussion of both books with Bart Ehrman
I very much hope you can join in the fun!
I reacted to this proposal enthusiastically and got Aslan’s Zealot but it did not take me long to put it down.
Aslan’s book is assertion piled on affirmation piled on revelation … without proof, sources, citations or reasoned deductions.
It was consciously written in the style of fiction to deny the readers the right to even question the validity of the conclusions by refusing access to how he came to them.
It is an illustration of someone consciously applying the maxim that “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”
The one redeeming feature of Aslan’s book is that it focuses attention on the social/political impact of Jesus’s ministry. It is the most-attested and undeniable fact of his life: he was tried, convicted and executed for *political* crimes against the state.
I know Dr. Ehrman insists his field is exclusively history, but the only reason people care about this history is social. Nobody really cares about Romulus or Apollonius of Tyana.
But focusing on Aslan’s book leads to dismissing the real questions: what made Jesus’s teachings or his movement so dangerous? Or was Pilate just paranoid?
Aslan’s book is geared toward answering just that question! My answer is different, but his makes a lot of sense in terms of logic. I don’t think it makes sense in terms of our historical sources.
Although he got the geography wrong and failed to give attribution for the zealot idea to those who went before, I found Aslan’s belief that Jesus probably worked in Sepphoris during its rebuilding one of the more enlightening aspects of his book. Jesus was unlettered yet comes off as more sophisticated than one would expect from a hick raised in Nazareth.
QUESTION BACKGROUND: Even though it’s a single source and has other historicity problems, i tend to believe the core of Luke’s account of the 12 year old Jesus debating in the Temple while his family journeyed home. It was embellished to make Jesus seem wise, but to me it smacks of the kind of tale that might endure. (But if he had been so wise at 12 then Hillel’s school would have given him a scholarship, so to speak).
QUESTION: understanding Bart will fall back to sources and historical criteria, which do not support the Luke story, does anyone else find it to be the kind of story that might have some truth behind it? Jesus at 12 impressing the rabbis, no, but Jesus being left behind and scaring his parents to death, yes.
Scholars who trust the Bible to be basically accurate do accept the story as plausible. I don’t know of others who do. It is advancing Luke’s agenda (there are hints of that: not just is he superior to other Jews on the interpretation of the Law, he is found on the “third day,” for example), you would expect some trace of idea later, the whole thing seems implausible — for one thing, that impoverished peasants could afford a three or four weeks vacation a hundred miles from home and then, well, the story itself.