Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 373

In this post I would like to continue with some of the historical mistakes in Aslan’sZealot. When reading these, do bear in mind that I also had positive things to say about the book.

As in the previous post, I would like this one to focus on historical errors, or historical claims that have no basis in either our ancient sources or modern scholarship. I willnotbe discussing, in this post, the mistakes Aslan has made about the New Testament. That will be my next post.

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Yesterday I pointed out some of the features of Reza Aslan’sZealotthat I found to be commendable. In the next series of posts, starting with today’s, I’ll be pointing out the problems. There are lots of them. Some readers of the blog have objected to my (repeatedly, I’ll grant) pointing out that Aslan is not an expert. Now I’ll try to show why that is both obvious and unfortunate. There are mistakes scattered throughout the book. I’d say 1/3 to 1/2 of the pages in my copy have bright yellow l...

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I begin my assessment of Reza Aslan’sZealotby saying a few things about what I appreciate about the book. In subsequent posts I will talk about the mistakes that pervade it, and about my view of the overarching thesis that Jesus was principally a zealot in favor of a violent insurrection against the Romans.

But first, the positives. As everyone has said, over and over again, the book is extremely well written. It reads more like a novel than a historical reconstruction – it flows very well on...

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Yesterday I resumed my posts on Reza Aslan’s best-selling hit Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, and plan to have several more posts on it, as I explain what I like about the book and about what problems I see in it. But I need to take care of a couple of other concerns first, before launching into a direct discussion.

The first has to do with this blog. A number of people on my facebook page have expressed frustration that the only way to get my comments is to join the blog, whi...

I have promised for some time to make some comments on Reza Aslan’s bestselling reconstruction of the historical Jesus:Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. And now the time is come. As I’ve indicated in my earlier posts, I had my first-year students in my seminar “Jesus in Scholarship and Film” read the book and make an evaluation of it. Most of the students thought very highly of it. In particular they thought it was unusually well written and that it made an interesting case for...

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This weekend I am heading back up to the Washington D.C. area to do some consulting for my Teaching Company (also known as the Great Courses) course on “How Jesus Became God,” a course more or less based on my book of the same name due to be released at the end of March. I will be taping the course in February, over the course of six days spread over two long weekends. My normal procedure for doing these courses has been to record six lectures a day. That’s a killer, but on the upside, it’s o...