Reza Aslan [Zealot The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth] *Retail* {giamiabia}

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From the bestselling author of No God but God comes a provocative and well-researched biography challenging long-held assumptions about Jesus.
2000 years ago, an itinerant Jewish preacher and miracle worker walked across the Galilee, gathering followers to establish the Kingdom of God. The revolutionary movement he launched was so threatening to the established order that he was executed as a state criminal. Within decades of his shameful death, followers would call him God.
Sifting through centuries of mythmaking, Aslan sheds light on one of history’s most influential and enigmatic characters by examining Jesus rthe lens of the tumultuous era in which he lived: 1st-century Palestine, an age of apocalyptic fervor. Scores of Jewish prophets, preachers and would-be messiahs wandered through the Holy Land, bearing divine messages. This was the age of zealotry—a nationalism that made resistance to Roman occupation a sacred duty incumbent on all Jews. Few figures better exemplified this principle than the charismatic Galilean who defied both imperial authorities and their allies in the Jewish religious hierarchy.
Balancing the Jesus of the Gospels against historical sources, Aslan describes a man of passionate conviction, yet rife with contradiction; a man of peace who exhorted followers to arm themselves with swords; an exorcist and faith healer who urged disciples to keep his identity a secret; and ultimately the seditious “King of the Jews” whose promise of liberation from Rome went unfulfilled in his lifetime. Aslan explores the reasons why the early Church preferred to promulgate an image of Jesus as a peaceful spiritual teacher rather than a politically conscious revolutionary. He grapples with how Jesus understood himself, the mystery at the heart of subsequent claims about his divinity.
Zealot yields a fresh perspective on one of the greatest stories ever told even as it affirms the radically transformative nature of Jesus’ life and mission. The result is an elegant biography with the pulse of a fast-paced novel: a portrait of a man, a time and the birth of a religion.