Being an atheist is so much fun. It's especially enjoyable if you happen to be an atheist and a history nerd. It's even more sublime if you happen to be an atheist and a religious history nerd. You get to learn so much without a religious bias directing your attention, or disavowing things you discover. I love biblical times, reading all I can, learning about the beginnings of our modern civilization. You see, Christians think Jesus is amazing because he is a super-being, the son of a bigger super-being, but I don't think there is anything supernatural about him at all. Which is why I find it even more amazing that this ordinary man was able to start such a massive, globe altering religious movement.
The problem is that I want to learn about Jesus. Not Jesus the Christ, but Jesus of Nazareth. I've always been interested in learning about the man, not the stories about his vigilante messiah deeds, but the actual happenings of the actual man. A book that details just the historical Jesus without entering the tall tales of the bible is a tough thing to find, which is why I loved Zealot so much.
First, the author, Reza Aslan is not an atheist. He is a Christian, who has endeavored to write about the Jesus that you can only find through historical documentation, relying little on the bible's shoddy record keeping. The Jesus you learn about in Zealot is the true portrait of the man, a man who, despite the popular 21st century interpretation, was actually quite the violent religious fanatic. Jesus had brothers and sisters, biological ones (I was a little startled to learn just how many). This is the man I've always wanted to learn about, the plain, unremarkable person who has so changed every aspect of future generations. If you are at all fascinated by history, and would like to learn about the strictly historical Jesus from one hell of a scholar, then buy this, it's worth every penny.
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