- tutime on Was Jesus Married? Where Was He Born? The Restored Gospel and the Quest for the Historical Jesus: “I don’t agree with Bart Ehrman on many of his conclusions about historical reliability, but I do respect that he at least gets the facts usually right, even if his interpretation is wrong or badly framed. But here is his take on “Zealot” “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 large question marks on them, where (when highlighting) I found factual errors, misstatements, dubious claims, inconsistencies of logic, and so on . . . here are some mistaken historical statements. Some may strike you as picayune, but some of them matter. And there are a lot of them; one wonders why they’re there at all. In each case I’ll cite his claim and then explain the problem.” https://ehrmanblog.org/aslans-zealot-historical-mistakes/” Dec 28, 17:34
- on Was Jesus Married? Where Was He Born? The Restored Gospel and the Quest for the Historical Jesus: “Zealot deserves a fair reading, not a caricature. Reza Aslan explicitly grounds his argument in major historical-Jesus scholarship, citing foundational works such as Jesus and Judaism and The Historical Figure of Jesus—texts that anchor modern consensus about Jesus’s Jewish context under Roman rule. The charge that every page is historically inaccurate is simply false; the real debate is about interpretation and emphasis, not basic competence. Aslan’s contribution is translating complex scholarship for general readers, which inevitably “rocks boats” among specialists but does not invalidate the work. It is telling that respected voices such as Dan Witherspoon have recommended it, and that Dale Martin (Yale University) has described it as a serious and plausible portrait of Jesus, even if not definitive. Universities including Yale University, Georgetown University, and University of Chicago have hosted Aslan for lectures and discussions (hardly the reception accorded to unserious or wholly unreliable work). Critiquing Zealot is fair; dismissing it outright while implying its readers “haven’t read scholarship” (when many have) is not.” Dec 28, 16:10
- on A Review: Latter-day Saint Theology among Christian Theologies: “Jonathan, it’s an important area to explore. There are some truly weird things that we believe, for sure, but often there is more context than we know about to those things.” Dec 27, 19:53
- on Was Jesus Married? Where Was He Born? The Restored Gospel and the Quest for the Historical Jesus: ““Zealot” has factual errors on nearly every page, is full of dubious assertions, and is not taken seriously by most scholars. Anyone recommending it as a useful, informative book needs to read a lot more widely in NT studies.” Dec 27, 17:20
- on Was Jesus Married? Where Was He Born? The Restored Gospel and the Quest for the Historical Jesus: “Stephen C., you should read Reza Aslan’s “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth”. He was likely born in Nazareth. Bethlehem was a contextualizing and symbolic, not literal story. The Romans didn’t have crazy censuses like that (they were much more efficient), and while there are records of censuses taking place, there are no records of a census at that time. He was likely illiterate. Nazareth wasn’t on most maps. It had one cistern, no raoads, no schools, no library, no synagogue, no Torah, and wasn’t on most maps. Only 300-1000 people lived there. A 1-3% literacy rate is a gracious over-estimate. Likely completely illiterate. He wasn’t a rich contractor (as my ward likes to say), a wealthy carpenter or a skilled Mason. No, he was a day laborer, a tekton. His peers would have sloughed stone or rubble used to build or rebuild conquered cities, tediously full in mosaics, or the like for Hellenistic McMansions of the Roman overlords, the nouveau riche Sadducees or Hellenistic Jews working as Pharisees. I’m not sure how the Davidic connection was documented or preserved over a thousand years with an illiterate, war-torn population w/ no genealogy records, no libraries, church records, etc. that’s like proving connection to William of Orange today, but without the above-mentioned records. It could be an oral tradition, or a cultural one, but certainly not a traceable one.” Dec 27, 16:34
- on A Review: Latter-day Saint Theology among Christian Theologies: “This is a topic I wish we spent more time on. Sometimes we have a subconscious sense that we believe some uniquely weird thing, while “real” Christians all believe something else – when the reality is that there’s a range of beliefs even within Protestantism, and LDS teachings fit comfortably in that spectrum. We certainly do have some unique beliefs, but we sometimes have a hard time picking them out.” Dec 27, 14:42
- on Was Jesus Married? Where Was He Born? The Restored Gospel and the Quest for the Historical Jesus: “Those are all very interesting additional insights and data that I wasn’t aware of. Thank you!” Dec 27, 13:30
- on Was Jesus Married? Where Was He Born? The Restored Gospel and the Quest for the Historical Jesus: “The Nephites–from Nephi to Mormon–used “the land of Jerusalem” to describe what we usually call “the land of Israel.” Even Jesus used that phrase when he was among them to describe the gathering place of the Jews. Given that Lehi was probably a descendant of refugees from the northern Kingdom of Israel living in the southern Kingdom of Judah, it is perhaps not surprising that they used a more neutral term. So when Alma said Jesus would be born “at Jerusalem,” I suspect he meant not the city of Jerusalem or even a “Jerusalem metropolitan area” that would include Bethlehem, but what we call the land of Israel. That said, it’s interesting that both the Nephites and the wise men apparently didn’t know about a prophecy that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:1-6). Perhaps they both had scriptures derived from the northern kingdom rather than the south? I confess I’m not too committed to the splashier aspects of the nativity stories. The “slaughter of the innocents” in particular seems like it would have been recorded elsewhere. But the 3 BC conjunction of Venus and Jupiter near Regulus in the constellation Leo seems like a solid candidate for the star of Bethlehem. It was an extremely rare conjunction where the planets were so closely aligned that the naked eye could not distinguish between them. I recently went to a planetarium show where they replayed it, and it was darn impressive watching two stars apparently collide. Meanwhile, Babylonian astrology associated both Jupiter and Regulus with kings, and a lion was the symbol of Judah, so “new king in Judah” would have been the obvious interpretation. (That wouldn’t explain what the Nephites experienced, but that’s just weird. They don’t even mention a light source during the night with no darkness, only a new star later.) I agree that the preponderance of the evidence suggests Jesus was married, and Mary Magdalene is the obvious candidate to be his wife. That explains why she was the very first one he appeared to after his resurrection. Incidentally, where the KJV has Jesus saying “touch me not” in that encounter, the Greek verb can mean either “touch” or “hold,” and the imperative tense used can mean either “don’t do what you’re about to do” or “stop what you’re currently doing.” A long embrace followed by Jesus gently saying “Let go now–I still need to visit my Father” seems right to me.” Dec 27, 09:52
- on Was Jesus Married? Where Was He Born? The Restored Gospel and the Quest for the Historical Jesus: “One evidence that Jesus was married is that he was allowed to teach in the synagogue. A man had to be at least 30 years old and married or he was not allowed to teach in the synagogue. Another is the women who came to dress him after his death. One woman at the tome was Mary Magdalene and only next of kin were allowed to do the last sacred anointing and dressing of the dead, so, unless Mary Magdalene was his sister, then she was his wife. I like these two bits of evidence because they come from the Biblical account, and not polygamous speculation.” Dec 26, 13:57
