In this book study, I will be presenting a few thoughts on Reza Aslan’s “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.” And I will follow the author’s guideline of three parts; and for this installment, Part I, which covers an opening section Prologue and the first six chapters of the book. Part I is the historical groundwork of the life and times of the people of Palestine, both Jews and Romans. Aslan sets the stage for an appreciation of later discussion in the book (I assume, I have not read beyond Chapter 6 so I can present my thoughts as any reader…without knowledge of what lies ahead).

The Prologue is meant to tease us into wanting to better understand the history of the region, as a brutal act is carried out in the year 56 C.E. So, obviously we must go back and learn what has happened to cause someone to find it necessary to perform such an act. The entire first six chapters (making up Part I) deal nearly exclusively with historical information, and by that I mean, the nuts and bolts of each cultural group and each group’s relationship to others. If you don’t like history, you will likely not enjoy Part I…but stick with it, I’m sure Aslan makes it worth it later!

Chapters 1 and 2 deal closely with not only Roman-Jewish relationships, but the relationships within the Jewish community. The inter-Jewish aspect seems important because it leads to tensions (and eventually bloodshed) due to dramatically different beliefs about how to successfully deal with the Roman Empire. I imagine we should give this idea some serious consideration, as our contemporary faith and how we live out that faith has much to do with how we interpret and interact with our society today. Aslan presents the well known Jewish groups: Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essences; and introduces a perhaps lesser known fourth group of peasant bandits that will become known as Zealots, for their zeal for Jewish law (we learn more in Ch. 4).

Chapter 3 seems to be a respite from the many details of the broader Jewish and Roman communities and Aslan brings us closer to the town of Nazareth. The author’s main point appears to be to introduce the town of Nazareth, its relationship to the greater area, and the apparent nonsense of Mary and Joseph traveling to Bethlehem to be taxed. But this “nonsense” is OK, we are told, because the point of the story is to tell the story as it is woven out of the Hebrew Scripture. And although the young couple’s journey is historically not true, the story is beyond history; Aslan writes, “the people of this time did not make a sharp distinction between myth and reality; the two were intimately tied together in their spiritual experience.” I must admit, I am intrigued by this comment in this place of the narrative, as we learn that the distinction between myth and reality is not of high priority, but the author is spending a lot of time on the reality side of life…our journey must be going somewhere with this later on!

The remaining chapters of Part I again take up the work of explaining the history of 1st century Palestine, in sometimes rather graphic detail. I will not comment on these chapters here, only to say that, again, the details of the historical past must lead up to an important piece of future discussions in the book. By themselves, the details only serve to present the brutal and sordid history of how people selfishly struggled for power and wealth, most often not in anyone’s broad interest.

Part I was a fairly straightforward lesson in Ancient world history, up to the dawn of a man named John Mark picking up his pencil to write the Good News of Jesus Christ. I am hoping Part II of Aslan’s book is good news too!