Reza Aslan, July 29
Sifting through centuries of mythmaking, "Zealot" does not rely on the gospels for primary source material. Rather, it places Jesus in the social, religious and political milieu of his time so as to form a more accurate picture of Jesus, one that views him as a radical political revolutionary swept up, as every Jew of his era was, in the nationalist struggle for freedom from Roman occupation. Balancing the Jesus of the Gospels against the historical sources, Aslan challenges the conventional portraits of Jesus of Nazareth.