Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

by Reza Aslan

  Of course, I argue further that part of the reason we know so little about the historical Jesus is that his messianic mission—historic as it may have turned out to be—was not uncommon in first-century Palestine. Hence my reference to Celsus’s quote—“I am God, or the servant of God, or a divine spirit …”—which can be found in Rudolf Otto’s classic study, The Kingdom of God and the Son of Man (Boston: Starr King Press, 1957), 13.

  A brief word about my use of the term “first-century Palestine” throughout this book. While Palestine was the unofficial Roman designation for the land encompassing modern-day Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon during Jesus’s lifetime, it was not until the Romans quashed the Bar Kochba revolt in the middle of the second century C.E that the region was officially named Syria Palaestina. Nevertheless, the term “first-century Palestine” has become so commonplace in academic discussions about the era of Jesus that I see no reason not to use it in this book.

  For more on Jesus’s messianic contemporaries—the so-called false messiahs—see the works of Richard A. Horsley, specifically “Popular Messianic Movements Around the Time of Jesus,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 46 (1984): 409–32; “Popular Prophetic Movements at the Time of Jesus: Their Principal Features and Social Origins,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26 (1986): 3–27; and, with John S. Hanson, Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs (Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1985), 135–189. The reader will note that I rely a great deal on Professor Horsley’s work. That is because he is by far the most prominent thinker on the subject of first-century apocalypticism.

  Although the so-called Two-Source Theory is almost universally accepted by scholars, there are a handful of biblical theorists who reject it as a viable explanation for the creation of the four canonized gospels as we know them. For example, J. Magne, From Christianity to Gnosis and from Gnosis to Christianity (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993) views the Two-Source Theory as overly simplistic and incapable of adequately addressing what he sees as the complex variants among the Synoptic gospels.

  In addition to the story of the fiendish Jewish priest Ananus, there is one other passage in Josephus’s Antiquities that mentions Jesus of Nazareth. This is the so-called Testimonium Flavianum in book 18, chapter 3, in which Josephus appears to repeat the entire gospel formula. But that passage has been so corrupted by later Christian interpolation that its authenticity is dubious at best, and scholarly attempts to cull through the passage for some sliver of historicity have proven futile. Still, the second passage is significant in that it mentions Jesus’s crucifixion.

  Among Romans, crucifixion originated as a deterrence against the revolt of slaves, probably as early as 200 B.C.E. By Jesus’s time, it was the primary form of punishment for “inciting rebellion” (i.e., treason or sedition), the exact crime with which Jesus was charged. See Hubert Cancick et al., eds., Brill’s New Pauly Encyclopedia of the Ancient World: Antiquity (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2005), 60 and 966. The punishment applied solely to non-Roman citizens. Roman citizens could be crucified, however, if the crime was so grave that it essentially forfeited their citizenship.

  There are no resurrection appearances in the gospel of Mark, as it is the unanimous consensus of scholars that the original version of the gospel ended with Mark 16:8. For more on this, see note to chapter 3 below.

  In 313 C.E., the emperor Constantine passed the Edict of Milan, which initiated a period of Christian tolerance in the Roman Empire, wherein property that was confiscated from Christians by the state was returned and Christians were free to worship without fear of reprisals from the state. While the Edict of Milan created space for Christianity to become the official religion of the empire, Constantine never made it so. Julian the Apostate (d. 363 C.E), the last non-Christian emperor, actually tried to push the empire back toward paganism by emphasizing that system over and against Christianity and purging the government of Christian leaders, though he never repealed the Edict of Milan. It was not until the year 380 C.E., during the rule of Emperor Flavius Theodosius, that Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire.

  The very brief outline of Jesus’s life and ministry presented at the end of the introduction to this book represents the view of the vast majority of scholars about what can be said with confidence about the historical Jesus. For more, see Charles H. Talbert, ed., Reimarus: Fragments (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1985) and James K. Beilby and Paul Rhodes Eddy, ed., The Historical Jesus: Five Views (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2009).

  PART I PROLOGUE: A DIFFERENT SORT OF SACRIFICE

  Help with the description of the Temple of Jerusalem and the sacrifices therein comes from a variety of sources as well as from my frequent trips to the Temple site. But a few books were particularly helpful in reconstructing the ancient Jewish Temple, including Martin Jaffee, Early Judaism (Bethesda: University Press of Maryland, 2006), especially page 172–88; Joan Comay, The Temple of Jerusalem (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975); and John Day, ed., Temple and Worship in Biblical Israel (New York: T&T Clark, 2005).

  Instructions for the Temple’s four-horned altar were given to Moses while he and the Israelites rambled across the desert searching for a home: “And you shall make the altar of acacia wood. And you shall affix horns upon its four corners so that it shall be horned; and you shall overlay it with bronze. And you shall make pots for receiving its ashes, and shovels and basins and forks and fire pans; all of its vessels you shall cast in bronze. And you shall make for it a grating, a net made of bronze; and on the net you shall affix four bronze rings to its four corners. And you shall place it under the edge of the altar, so that the net extends halfway down the altar. And you shall make poles for the altar, poles of acacia wood, and overlay them with bronze. And the poles shall be inserted into the rings, so that the poles shall be on the two sides of the altar when it is carried. You shall make it hollow with boards, as it was shown to you on the mountain. Thus it shall be done” (Exodus 27:18).

  What does it mean for the Temple to be the sole source of God’s divine presence? Consider this: The Samaritans denied the primacy of the Temple of Jerusalem as the sole place of worship. They instead worshipped God on Mount Gerizim. Though this was essentially the only religious difference between the two peoples, it was enough for the Samaritans not to be considered Jews. There were other places of sacrifice for Jews (for instance, in Heliopolis), but these were considered substitutes, not replacements.

  For more on Judea as a “Temple-State,” see H. D. Mantel in “The High Priesthood and the Sanhedrin in the Time of the Second Temple,” The Herodian Period, ed. M. Avi-Yonah and Z. Baras, The World History of the Jewish People 1.7 (Jerusalem: New Brunswick, 1975), 264–81. Josephus’s quote regarding Jerusalem as a theocracy is from Against Apion, 2.164–66. For more on the Temple of Jerusalem as a bank, see Neill Q. Hamilton, “Temple Cleansing and Temple Bank,” Journal of Biblical Literature 83.4 (1964): 365–72. A very concise breakdown of the Temple’s revenues can be found in Magen Broshi, “The Role of the Temple in the Herodian Economy,” Jewish Studies 38 (1987): 31–37.

  The Qumran community rejected the Temple of Jerusalem for having fallen into the hands of the corrupt priesthood. Instead, it saw itself as a temporary replacement for the Temple, referring to the community as the “temple of man/men,” or miqdash adam. Some scholars have argued that this is why the Qumranites were so interested in ritual purity; they believed that their prayers and lustrations were more potent than the rituals and sacrifices in Jerusalem, which had been tainted by the Temple priests. For a detailed discussion of the phrase “temple of man/men” at Qumran, see G. Brooke, Exegesis at Qumran: 4QFlorilegium in its Jewish Context (Sheffield, U.K.: Sheffield Academic Press, 1985), 184–93; D. Dimant, “4QFlorilegium and the Idea of the Community as Temple,” in Hellenica et Judaica: Hommage à Valentin Nikiprowetzky, ed. A. Caquot (Leuben-Paris: Éditions Peeters, 1986), 165–89.

  It is Josephus who famously refers to the entire priestly nobility a
s “lovers of luxury” in The Jewish War, though he was not alone in his criticism. There is a similar criticism of the priests in the Dead Sea Scrolls, where they are called the “seekers of smooth things” and those who are “flattery-seekers.”

  There is a wonderful description of the high priest in the famed Letter of Aristeas, written sometime around the second century B.C.E., a translation of which appears in the second volume of James H. Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 7–34. Here is the excerpt: “We were greatly astonished, when we saw Eleazar engaged in the ministration, at the mode of his dress, and the majesty of his appearance, which was revealed in the robe which he wore and the precious stones upon his person. There were golden bells upon the garment which reached down to his feet, giving forth a peculiar kind of melody, and on both sides of them there were pomegranates with variegated flowers of a wonderful hue. He was girded with a girdle of conspicuous beauty, woven in the most beautiful colours. On his breast he wore the oracle of God, as it is called, on which twelve stones, of different kinds, were inset, fastened together with gold, containing the names of the leaders of the tribes, according to their original order, each one flashing forth in an indescribable way its own particular colour. On his head he wore a tiara, as it is called, and upon this in the middle of his forehead an inimitable turban, the royal diadem full of glory with the name of God inscribed in sacred letters on a plate of gold … having been judged worthy to wear these emblems in the ministrations. Their appearance created such awe and confusion of mind as to make one feel that one had come into the presence of a man who belonged to a different world. I am convinced that any one who takes part in the spectacle which I have described will be filled with astonishment and indescribable wonder and be profoundly affected in his mind at the thought of the sanctity which is attached to each detail of the service.”

  CHAPTER ONE: A HOLE IN THE CORNER

  For a primer on Rome’s policy in dealing with subject populations, and especially its relationship with the high priest and priestly aristocracy in Jerusalem, see Martin Goodman, The Ruling Class of Judea (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987); also Richard A. Horsley, “High Priests and the Politics of Roman Palestine,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 17.1 (1986): 23–55. Goodman’s Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations (London: Penguin, 2007) provides an indispensable discussion of the remarkably tolerant attitude of Rome toward the Jews while also providing a range of Roman views about Jewish exceptionalism. It is from Goodman’s book that the quotations from Cicero, Tacitus, and Seneca are pulled (pages 390–91). Further discussion of Roman attitudes toward Jewish practices can be found in Eric S. Gruen, “Roman Perspectives on the Jews in the Age of the Great Revolt,” in The First Jewish Revolt, ed. Andrea M. Berlin and J. Andrew Overman (New York: Routledge, 2002), 27–42. For more on the religious practices and cults of Rome, see Mary Beard, John North, and Simon Price, Religions of Rome: A Sourcebook, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

  The act of “utter annihilation” (herem in Hebrew), in which God commands the wholesale slaughter of “all that breathes,” is a recurring theme in the Bible, as I explain in my book How to Win a Cosmic War (New York: Random House, 2009), 66–69. It is “ethnic cleansing as a means of ensuring cultic purity,” to quote the great biblical scholar John Collins, “The Zeal of Phinehas: The Bible and the Legitimation of Violence,” Journal of Biblical Literature 122.1 (2003): 7.

  For precise taxes and measures taken by Rome upon the Jewish peasantry, see Lester L. Grabbe, Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian, 2 vols. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 334–37; also Horsley and Hanson, Bandits, Prophets, Messiahs, 48–87. Grabbe notes that some scholars have cast doubt on whether the Jewish population was forced to pay tribute to Rome, though no one questions whether the Jews were forced to finance the Roman civil war between Pompey and Julius Caesar. On the subject of mass urbanization and the transfer of populations from rural to urban centers, see Jonathan Reed, “Instability in Jesus’ Galilee: A Demographic Perspective,” Journal of Biblical Literature (2010) 129.2: 343–65.

  CHAPTER TWO: KING OF THE JEWS

  The term “messiah” in the Hebrew Bible is used in reference to King Saul (1 Samuel 12:5), King David (2 Samuel 23:1), King Solomon (1 Kings 1:39), and the priest Aaron and his sons (Exodus 29:1–9), as well as the prophets Isaiah (Isaiah 61:1) and Elisha (1 Kings 19:15–16). The exception to this list can be found in Isaiah 45:1, where the Persian king Cyrus, though he does not know the God of the Jews (45:4), is called messiah. In all, there are thirty-nine occurrences of the word “messiah” in the Hebrew Bible that refer specifically to the anointing of someone or something, such as Saul’s shield (2 Samuel 1:21) or the Tabernacle (Numbers 7:1). And yet not one of these occurrences refers to the messiah as a future salvific character who would be appointed by God to rebuild the Kingdom of David and restore Israel to a position of glory and power. That view of the messiah, which seems to have been fairly well established by the time of Jesus, was actually shaped during the tumultuous period of the Babylonian Exile in the sixth century B.C.E.

  Although there is little doubt that the bandit gangs of Galilee represented an apocalyptic, eschatological, and millenarian movement, Richard Horsley and John Hanson view these as three distinct categories, and as a result they refuse to label the bandits a “messianic” movement. In other words, the authors contend that “messianic” and “eschatological” must not be viewed as equivalents. Yet, as I discuss in this section, there is no reason to believe that such a distinction existed in the minds of the Jewish peasant, who, far from having a sophisticated understanding of messianism, would have most likely lumped all of these “distinct categories” into a vague expectation of the “End Times.” In any case, Horsley and Hanson themselves admit that “many of the essential conditions for banditry and messianic movements are the same. In fact, there might well have been no difference between them had there not been among the Jews a tradition of popular kingship and historical prototypes of a popular ‘anointed one.’ ” Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs, 88–93.

  For Caesar as Son of God, see Adela Yarbro Collins, “Mark and His Readers: The Son of God Among Greeks and Romans,” Harvard Theological Review 93.2 (2000): 85–100. Two zealous rabbis, Judas son of Sepphoraeus and Matthias son of Margalus, led an uprising that attacked the Temple and tried to destroy the eagle that Herod placed atop the Temple gates. They and their students were captured and tortured to death by Herod’s men.

  The complexities of Jewish sectarianism in first-century Judaism are tackled nicely by Jeff S. Anderson in his cogent analysis The Internal Diversification of Second Temple Judaism (Lanham, Md: University Press of America, 2002).

  Josephus says Simon of Peraea called himself “king,” by which Horsley and Hanson infer that he was part of the “popular messianic movements” that erupted after Herod’s death. See Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs, 93. Again, for me there seems to be no reason to assume any distinction whatsoever in the minds of the Jewish peasantry between “messiah” and “king,” insofar as both titles relied not on the scriptures, which the vast majority of Jews could neither access nor read, but rather on popular traditions and stories of messianic movements from Jewish history, as well as on oracles, popular images, fables, and oral traditions. Of course, some scholars go so far as to refuse to consider “king” to mean messiah. In other words, they make a distinction between, as Craig Evans puts it, “political royal claimants and messianic royal claimants.” Among this camp is M. De Jong, Christology in Context: The Earliest Christian Response to Jesus (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1988). But Evans is right to argue that when dealing with any royal aspirant in first-century Palestine, “the presumption should be that any Jewish claim to Israel’s throne is in all probability a messianic claimant in some sense.” I couldn’t agree more. See Craig Evans, Jesus and His Contemporaries (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1995), 55.

  CHAPTER
THREE: YOU KNOW WHERE I AM FROM

  On the population of ancient Nazareth, see the relevant entry in the Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992). See also E. Meyers and J. Strange, Archaeology, the Rabbis, and Early Christianity (Nashville: Abingdon, 1981) and John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 18. Scholars disagree about just how many people lived in Nazareth at the time of Jesus, with some claiming fewer than a couple hundred, and others saying as many as a couple thousand. My instinct is to hedge toward the middle of the scale; hence my estimate of a population consisting of about one hundred families. For more about provincial life in the Galilee of Jesus see Scott Korb, Life in Year One: What the World Was Like in First-Century Palestine (New York: Riverhead, 2011).

  Despite the stories in the gospels about Jesus preaching in his hometown’s synagogue, no archaeological evidence has been unearthed to indicate the presence of a synagogue in ancient Nazareth, though there very well could have been a small structure that served as such (remember that “synagogue” in Jesus’s time could mean something as simple as a room with a Torah scroll). It should also be remembered that by the time the gospels were written, the Temple of Jerusalem had been destroyed and the sole gathering place for Jews was the synagogue. So it makes sense that Jesus is constantly presented as teaching in the synagogue in every town he visits.