Houston Southard
a name that looks so fake you'll care just as little to learn it's not
Reza aslan - Zealot
Anything that can't be scrutinized shouldn't be sacralized.
The new testaments were written in what’s called a pseudepigraphical fashion, where they are admittedly written by scores of people and only named after peoples whose tone they possessed. These Gospels, or good news, were a new genre created in the century following the death of the Nazarene. Orthodox Christianity didn't even rear its head after Jesus’ death until the year 395 with Constantine's canonization of the Nicene Creed.
Hezekiah the Bandit, Simon of Paraea, Judas the Galilean, his grandson Menaham (who founded the Sicarii assassins), Simon son of Giora, Simon son of Kochba, and Jesus of Nazareth. All fought and died as messiahs, as kings of the jews, rebelling against Rome during King Herod's revolution.
This isn't about Jesus the christ, the cranky fig tree-torching, merlot-making miracle son of man. It's not the one crafted by educated, urbanized, diaspora jews immersed in Greek philosophy, because you can't have an honest conversation about Jesus without talking about when and where he lived. A jewish hamlet being taxed and extorted by roman imperialism. To be called messiah during Jesus' lifetime was akin to being called a bandit, a traitor, or a truant.
It's about Jesus the person, a zealot trying to protect his lot who so happened to embody a lifestyle his followers of today would call criminal, antifa-esque, or anarchistic. A poor, brown, illiterate Jewish activist. A modern day hippie socialist trying to upend the institution and fight imperialism. A shoeless mangy bearded laborer with long hair.
The memory of the revolutionary zealot who walked across Galilee with an army of disciples tying to establish the kingdom of god, the magnetic preacher who defied the authority of the temple priesthood in Jerusalem, the radical Jewish nationalist who challenged the Roman occupation, has been almost completely lost to history, twisted into mythology by its authors, and bastardized by his billions of thirsty followers.
Biblical Jesus is an amalgam of old retroactively cobbled prophecies jammed into one narrative to fit another. Historical Jesus would've been the one to follow.