Book Reviews

2014, Vol. 2(2) 195221

! The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/2050303214535006
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Reza Aslan, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, New York: Random House, 2013,
8.99 pbk, ISBN 978-1908906298, 318 pp.

Reza Aslan claims that Zealot draws on twenty years of rigorous academic research. He
has indeed read a good deal of signicant scholarly literature, some of which he engages in
the discursive endnotes. The lack of critical analysis of sources and the periodic historical
confusions in his narrative, however, suggest that Zealot is not a historical investigation. The
biography at the end of the book explains that his formative training was in ction and that
his academic position is in the teaching of creative writing. His presentation of Jesus life
and times (a modern genre) appears to ow out of just this literary experience. In some
chapters he appears to write his life of Jesus directly from episodes in the Gospels, somewhat like the nineteenth century lives of Jesus reviewed by Albert Schweitzer a hundred years
ago. Every so often, his brief sketches of life in Galilee are reminiscent of the romantic
Galilean idyll of Ernest Renans Vie de Jesu (1863). In some cases he compares the different gospel accounts of a given incident; more often he collates them, while regularly
assuming a narrative license to embellish, and often to exaggerate. Periodically he takes
(for example) a statement by the distinctively Matthean Jesus or a later memory of the
disciples in John as a statement of Jesus.

A revival of older New Testament scholarship

While Zealot is not a book that would have been written by someone trained in New
Testament studies today, it shares what were the standard assumptions and conceptual
apparatus until forty or fty years ago, and it collapses back into those old assumptions
and concepts some of the serious attempts to challenge them made around thirty years ago.
Immediately noticeable is the idealism that dominated New Testament studies as well as
the humanities in western culture generally: peoples actions and history generally are
driven by ideas. Aslan just adds a strong emotional component: it was widespread zeal/
apocalyptic mania/Jewish nationalism that drove Jesus and nearly all Jews of his time to
revolt against the Romans.
Aslan also works within the standard older Christian theological scheme of the origins of
Christianity as a more spiritual religion from the more parochial religion of Judaism. In
this scheme the catalyst was Jesus as an itinerant individual teacher. Only after his crucixion and resurrection was a community started by his disciples, from which a movement
spread that became largely Gentile and split away from Judaism. In an earlier, more
Christologically focused, version of the scheme, Jesus was the fulllment of the Jewish

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expectation of the Messiah (a highly synthetic concept constructed mainly from Old
Testament prooftexts), who was crucied but was then exalted at the right hand of God as
Lord and Savior. Added to the scheme in the late nineteenth century was that Judaism at
the time of Jesus had become caught up in apocalypticism.
Accordingly, Aslan presents Jesus mainly as an individual preacher totally caught up in
Jewish apocalypticism, who tramped and mostly traipsed through the Holy
Landalong with countless other prophets, preachers, and messiahs. Although at
points he calls Jesus followers a movement, they do not gure in his presentation. The
focus is always on Jesus the itinerant individual preacher. Only after the resurrection appearances, following the ostensible failure of the crucixion, come the church and Jesus Christ.
At least Aslan recognizes that the political economic division between the people of Judea
and Galilee and the Roman conquerors and their client Herodian and high priestly rulers
was what dominated life in Roman Palestine. But he still assumes that the key texts are all
about how Christianity (Christians) emerged from and then broke away from
Judaism (the Jews).
As critical Jewish historians have been discussing, however, it would be dicult to determine when something that could be identied as (rabbinic) Judaism emerged historically in
late antiquity. It is equally dicult to determine when something that could be identied as
Christianity emerged from the diverse Jesus movements and communities of Christ-loyalists that expanded following the mission of Jesus. It has been increasingly recognized
during the last thirty years that most of the texts later included in the New Testament
(the genuine letters of Paul; the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and John) address communities
or movements that are still part (or an extension) of the people of Israel.
Central to the standard construction of Judaism in New Testament studies were the four
sects or parties: the aristocratic priestly Sadducees; the Pharisees known for their
expertise in the laws; the Essenes who had withdrawn from society; and what modern
scholars called the Zealot party or the Zealots. Taking at face value the Judean historian Josephus harangue against the intrusive fourth philosophy as responsible for having
stirred up the social turmoil that escalated into the disastrous revolt against the Romans
(Ant. 18.610), scholars constructed the Zealot Party as a movement that agitated for
seventy years until they nally sparked the Jewish revolt in the summer of 66 C.E. They
were supposedly red by the same zeal for the Law that had led Mattathias, the patriarch of
the Hasmonean family, to touch o the Maccabean Revolt. Into this catch-all category of
the Zealots were lumped virtually all of the gures, protests, brigand-bands, and resistance
and renewal movements in the years from 4 B.C.E. to 70 C.E. that are mentioned by the Judean
historian Josephus.
The Zealots were given further scholarly support by Martin Hengels highly synthetic
magisterial book, Die Zeloten (1961). In 1967, the historian of religion, S G F Brandon
(somewhat in the tradition of Karl Kautsky and Robert Eisler) argued, from critical examination of the gospel sources, that Jesus was a Zealot. In reaction, and in anxiety about
escalating anti-colonial movements and student demonstrations against western governments wars of counter-insurgency, leading New Testament scholars (most prominently
Cullmann, 1970; Hengel, 1971, 1973) used the Zealots as foil over against which to present
Jesus as a pacic prophet of non-violence, and even non-resistance.
Aslan revives and expands this same catch-all construction of zeal/zealotry/the zealots,
with one minor variation. A few scholarly investigations in the 1970s and 1980s had demonstrated, through a more critical reading of the accounts of various gures, protests, and

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movements in Josephus histories, that there was no such long-standing movement toward
revolt against Roman rule. Instead, there were many dierent peasant movements and scribal
groups whose resistance to their rulers took dierent social forms. These included the bands of
peasants displaced by the Roman reconquest in 6768 C.E. who ed into Jerusalem for refuge
and coalesced as one of the four peasant ghting forcesa coalition actually called the
Zealots. A critical review of the construction of the ideal of zeal by Hengel and others,
moreover, found that in the admittedly limited and fragmentary references, zeal was an
individual (not a collective) devotion linked with actions against other Jews and not outsiders.
Ironically, the praise of legendary heroes of zeal such as Phineas the ancient priest and
Mattathias the Hasmonean patriarch for their actions against other Jews (e.g., in Sirach and 1
Maccabees) were components in propaganda to legitimize second-temple priestly dynasties
(Oniads; Hasmoneans; see Horsley, 1987: 121129). The diaspora Jew Saul, who became the
apostle Paul, may have been intensely devoted to the ancestral traditions, but he was hardly
an advocate of violent revolt (Gal 1:14; Phil 3:6; cf. Acts 22:3). The textual evidence does not
support Aslans revival of zeal/zealotry/the zealots any more than it did Hengels and
others earlier synthetic construction of zeal and the Zealots.

The (con)fusion of zealotry, nationalism, apocalypticism, and

the Messiah
Aslan, acknowledging only that the coalition of refugee peasants in 6768 C.E. was somewhat
distinctive (his Zealot party), not only revives the old construct of the zealots/zealotry red
by zeal but expands it, in three ways in particular. First, he identies this zealotry with Jewish
nationalisma Jewish national liberation movement that was driven by a revolutionary
fervor that had gripped nearly every Jew in Judea (xxix, cf. 4044). Second, he fuses zeal/
zealotry with apocalypticismthe apocalyptic mania steadily building through Palestine
into a full-scale revolution. With this combination Aslan has an apocalyptic army of
zealous revolutionaries that would force the Romans to ee Jerusalem in humiliation
(19). Third, Aslan focuses most attention on the leadership of these zealous revolutionaries
by messiahs, with an extremely broad and vague concept of the Messiah of the Jews.
If the resulting construction sounds confused and confusing, it is, partly because the fused
concepts themselves are problematic. Nationalism arose in modern Europe with the development of the nation-state and national culture (Benedict Anderson, 2006). The spread of
nationalism in the 1950s to the 1990s was as often the result of anticolonial movements as
their motivation, as various local resistance groups formed national liberation fronts. It is
anachronistic to project nationalism back onto movements of peoples resisting Roman
domination. Insofar as the regional revolts in 4 B.C.E. and all of the groups that fought
against the Roman reconquest of Galilee and Judea in 6670 C.E. were comprised of peasants
(many displaced by the Roman scorched earth practices), a much closer historical analogy
would be the (well-researched) peasant revolts in late medieval Europe and in modern
Mexico, Viet Nam, and Central America. Aslan imagines that his revolutionary nationalist
zealots launched one revolt after another from mid-rst century B.C.E. until the great
revolt in 6670 C.E. Studies of other agrarian societies conclude that peasant revolts are
very rare, occurring in times of social political breakdown when rulers are no longer able to
ruleas in 4 B.C.E., after Herods death, and in 66 C.E., following the political economic
collapse under the high priests and Roman governors.

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The concept of Jewish apocalypticism in the elds of New Testament and Jewish history had little to do with social political life, since it was a scenario of the end of the
world in cosmic catastrophe, the last judgment, and resurrection. Aslan lists books
by George Nickelsburg and John Collins, but not the major works in which they (and others)
placed the critical study of Judean apocalyptic texts on a solid scholarly footing. Moreover,
he is evidently not aware of recent analysis of Judean apocalyptic texts as visionary
attempts by dissident scribal circles to explain and resist Hellenistic imperial domination
and violence (Horsley, 2007; Portier-Young, 2011)hence not the mania widespread among
the Jews that Aslan imagines.
Aslans fusion of zealotry with his broad and vague concept of the messiah,
which forms the very center of his presentation, is most problematic. It is also puzzling
insofar as his discursive endnotes indicate that he has read some of the critical scholarship
on the key texts. The standard older Christian synthetic construction of Jewish expectations
of the Messiah with which Aslan is still working involved considerable projection backwards from the representations of Jesus in New Testament texts that involved dierent
images, roles, and titles. Beginning at least in mid-twentieth century, however, critical scholars had taken three signicant steps in deconstructing the synthetic concept of the
Messiah and in discerning the dierent gures/roles/titles of agents of deliverance in
Israelite tradition.
First, scholars distinguished four dierent roles or titles of future agents of salvation in
the Old Testament or other Judean texts that early Christians used (and sometimes
fused) in interpreting Jesus: an anointed (messiah) king (often son of David), a prophet
(like Moses, or Elijah-like), the servant of the Lord, and the Son of Man.
Following the standard older Christian understanding of the Jewish expectation of the
Messiah, Aslan asserts that the principal task of the Messiah as the son of David was
to rebuild Davids kingdom and reestablish the nation of Israel (19). But he also includes
prophetic gures, justifying this vague inclusiveness as dierent messianic traditions or the
lack of a clear messianic narrative in the Hebrew Bible (27, etc.)exactly; all the more
reason for not taking prophets as messiahs.
Second, beginning in the 1960s there was increasing recognition that there were precious
few occurrences of the term Messiah/Christ in texts from the late second-temple period.
The dissident scribal-priestly community at Qumran, of which the Moses-like righteous
teacher had been the leader, imagined a ceremonial function for the anointed priest and
the anointed one of Israel at future community meals. Psalm of Solomon 17 stood out as the
key prooftexta petition to God to raise up their king, the son of David to rule over
Israel in justice after shattering unjust rulers (with the words of his mouth). The term
anointed appears in only one line of the long psalm, somewhat as an adjective modifying
the king as the anointed of the Lord. The oce or role is (the) king rather than (the)
Messiah. Aslan lists two major collections of articles on the dearth of messiahs in the
dierent Judaisms attested to in Judean and later rabbinic texts, and summarizes one of
the articles in his notes (Charlesworth, 1992; Neusner et al., 1987). But he does not appear to
have grasped the clear implications: the extremely rare occurrences of the term anointed in
Judean sources in late second-temple times do not allow us to conclude that the messiah
was a standard leadership role or title among Judeans and Galileans in Roman Palestine.
Third, Aslan says (220) he relies a great deal on a series of my articles from the 1970s and
1980s (Horsley, 1979a, 1984, 1985, 1986a, 1986b, 1986c; see also 1979b, 1981). It appears
that he has misunderstood them. In the course of a deconstruction of the synthetic construct

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of the Zealots, I delineated the dierent social forms of the several dierent kinds of social
protests, popular movements, and ad hoc resistance by scribal groups that Josephus mentions in his histories. Among the Galilean and Judean peasants, in the aftermath of conquest
and in deteriorating economic conditions, (what Hobsbawm calls prepolitical), social
banditry became frequent, and escalated to epidemic proportions in the social turmoil of
the 50 s and 60 s C.E. In 4 B.C.E. the revolts that erupted in the countryside in Galilee, in the
TransJordan, and in Judea all took the same distinctively Israelite social form of a movement led by a popularly recognized king, suggesting the inuence of memories of the young
David who had been messiahed by the Judahites and then by the elders of all Israel (2 Sam
2:1 4; 5:1 4). One of the four principal ghting forces from the peasantry in 67 70 took
the same form of a movement headed by a popularly recognized king. In the decades just
after Jesus mission several popular movements of another distinctively Israelite social form
emergedmovements led by popular prophets who promised a new act of deliverance like
one of the great acts of deliverance under Moses or Joshua. Among the scribes and Pharisees
who served as intellectual-legal retainers of the temple-state, according to accounts by
Josephus, were two signicant protests, the resistance to the tribute to Caesar in 6 C.E. by
the fourth philosophy, led by a teacher and a Pharisee, and assassinations of high priests
who collaborated closely with the Romans by the terrorist band of sicarii (dagger-men) in
the 50 s C.E.
Aslan has clearly engaged these articlesI detect familiar turns of phrase in his accounts
here and there. Yet he collapses both the ad hoc scribal protests and the popular movements
that took dierent social forms into the catchall concept of nationalist Jewish zealotry that
he has expanded and fused with apocalyptic mania and leadership by messiahs. With no
basis whatever in Josephus accounts (War 1.204; Ant. 14.159; or any other source), Aslan
claims that already in the mid-40 s B.C.E. the bandit chief Hezekiah tapped into the widespread apocalyptic expectation and openly declared himself to be the messiah, the promised one who would restore the Jews to glory (19). He does recognize that, in the decades
after Jesus mission, the Samaritan, Theudas, and the Egyptian were all prophets who
led movements in anticipation of a new act of deliverance. Yet he then claims (with no basis
in sources) that the Samaritan was a messiah, that Theudas crowned himself messiah,
and that the Egyptian declared himself King of the Jews (4950, 53, 79, 1067, 134). The
accounts in Josephus give no such indication.
Most serious, because it is misleading and simply historically wrong, is Aslans insistence
that Judas of Gamla/Gaulanitis/Galilee, leader of the fourth philosophys resistance to the
tribute in Judea in 6 C.E., is the same as Judas son of Hezekiah, the popular king in Galilee in
4 B.C.E. Josephus mentions Judas son of the brigand-chief Hezekiah as leading his followers
in attacking the fortress at Sepphoris in Galilee and aspiring to kingly honor following
Herods death in 4 B.C.E. By contrast, Josephus identies Judas from Gamla/Gaulanitis/
Galilee as a sophistes (scholar-teacher) who was active ten years later in Judea after the
Romans imposed the more direct rule of a Roman governor. Josephus says nothing that
might suggest that Judas of Galilee was the son of Hezekiah (whom Herod had killed fty
years earlier)much less that he claimed the mantle of the messiah, the throne of King
David (43). Aslans confusion of Judas the scholar-teacher with the popular king Judas son
of the bandit-chief Hezekiah involves him in an utter confusion of the events in Judea in
6 C.E. with earlier events around Sepphoris in Galilee in 4 B.C.E. He confuses a scribal protest
in Judea with a peasant revolt in Galilee (4044)as if Judas the teacher, having claimed the
mantle of the messiah, led guerrilla war throughout Galilee for ten years before the Romans

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destroyed Sepphoris, and as if Antipas did not arrive to rebuild until ten years after the
Romans had appointed him Tetrarch.
This is the chronologically and conceptually confused basis for Aslans revival of zeal,
zealotry, the zealots: Judas was perhaps the rst revolutionary leader to fuse banditry and
zealotry into a single revolutionary force, making resistance to Rome a religious duty incumbent on all Jews. It was Judas erce determination . . . that made the Fourth Philosophy a
model of zealous resistance for the numerous apocalyptic revolutionaries who would . . .
expel the Romans from the Holy Land. Some were willing to resort to extreme acts of
violence if necessary (41). Aslan sees this zeal as deeply rooted in the ancient Jews sense of
exceptionalism. Quoting the infamous holy war passage in Deut 20, he declares that
God had decreed that they massacre every man, woman, and child they encountered when
they came into their promised land (15). Now that their land was occupied by the Romans
what would they do? They would look to the ancient heroes of zeal, such as Aaron or
Phineas or Joshua. They would smash the heads of the gentiles . . . and bathe their feet
in the blood of their enemies, just as the Lord commanded (16). Aslans nationalistic
revolutionary zealotry goes well beyond both Josephus hostile harangue in Ant.
18.6 10 and what Hengel was still imagining 50 years ago.

Jesus the Zealot/Messiah

Aslan constructs this expanded composite scheme of zealous apocalyptic Jewish nationalism
led by messiahs as a mold into which he tries to t Jesus of Nazareth as a zealot messiah who
aimed to drive out the Romans and reestablish the kingdom of David.
He aspires to paint a picture of Jesus of Nazareth that may be more historically accurate
than the one painted by the gospels, which he dismisses as nothing but Christology or an
aloof man of peace. Yet to construct his zealous messiah he cherry-picks images,
phrases, and episodes from the gospels without critical analysis of his sources. He begins
with climactic episodes in the Gospel stories: not surprisingly, in Jesus entry into Jerusalem,
the long-awaited messiah the true King of the Jews has come to free Israel from its
bondage (74); Jesus actions in the Temple in a rage are blatant and inescapably
zealous; and the question about the tribute to Caesar is the essential test of zealotry: are
you or are you not a zealot? (76).
The implications become more ominous in his interpretation of Jesus proclamation of the
coming of the Kingdom of God (115126). After a paragraph citing a few key kingdom
sayings out of literary context, taken more or less literally and without much sense of
metaphor or hyperbole, he claims that Jesus was referring to a real kingdom, with an
actual king. The literal kingship of God, moreover, would mean a chilling new reality in
which Gods wrath rains down upon the rich, the strong, and the powerful (119). He is
focusing here on the blessings and woes in Luke 6:2026, where Jesus declares that the poor
and hungry shall be satised (no mention of becoming rich) and the rich have already
received their consolation (no mention of Gods wrath raining down). In further exposition
of the violence and bloodshed that establishing the kingdom of God would require (120
122), Aslan evidently assumes that the Bible is an extensive compendium of statements that
can be used as prooftexts for a logical argument (an assumption characteristic of sixteenth
century reformers and some twentieth century evangelicals). He concludes that Jesus
must have shared the view articulated in selected prooftexts from the Hebrew Bible

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(Exod 23:3133; Exod 15:3; Isa 63:3; Ps 68:2123) that God commands the wholesale
slaughter of every foreign man, woman, and child who occupies the land of the Jews.
Aslan had stated earlier that Jesus was not a violent revolutionary (79). But now he
argues the other way: Gods sovereignty could not be established except through force
(121122).
Throughout his presentation, Aslan argues that Jesus zeal focused on his claim to be the
promised Messiah (the king) sent to liberate the Jews from Roman occupation (e.g. 77). Like
many Americans in general, many university students, and even some New Testament
scholars, he assumes that the Gospels were written to prove that Jesus was the promised
Messiah (154). Yet he is suciently well-read to recognize that the Gospels do not support
his claim, despite his periodic statements that they do (135 136). The Jesus-speeches paralleled in Matthew and Luke, often labeled Q, know nothing of Jesus as a messiah.
Throughout these speeches, often deemed the earliest source for Jesus, Jesus speaks and
acts in the role of a prophet, in the long line of Israelite prophets who were persecuted and
killed by the rulers. As Aslan recognizes, moreover, in the entire rst gospel (of Mark) there
exists not a single denitive messianic statement from Jesus himself. Yet despite noting how
others foist titles upon Jesus in the passion narrative (and despite his own training in
narrative composition), he pulls Peters confession that you are the messiah out of its
narrative context in Mark. In the Markan narrative Peters declaration is followed immediately by Jesus rst announcement that he must suer and die, Peters protest, and Jesus
rebuke, get behind me, Satan, which is evidently a rejection of the role/title. The Gospel of
Mark portrays Jesus as a prophet like Moses and Elijah and downplays or denies that he is a
messiah.
Left with what he recognizes is a weak case for Jesus claim to be the promised messiah,
Aslan attempts to make his case on the basis of the son of man, which is often Jesus term
of self-reference. He has read some of the wide range of scholarship on the phrase son of
man in Judean texts and its varied usage in the Gospels, much of which focuses on the
inuential image of one like a human being (son of man) coming with the clouds of heaven
in the dream-vision of increasingly violent imperial rule and its judgment by God in Dan
7:1314. But then he misconstrues the text: while the son-of-man gure in Daniel is never
explicitly identied as messiah, he is clearly and unambiguously called king . . . and takes
the son of man as a title that associates Jesus with the Davidic messiah, the king who will
rule the earth . . . and restore the nation of Israel . . . (142). Specialists on the son of man
and Daniel 7, however, would not allow that one like a human was a title, and there is
nothing in the dream image that makes an association with the Davidic Messiah. Aslans key
assumption/argument, that Jesus claimed to be the Messiah, thus appears to be without
support in the Gospel sources.

Jesus portrayed in the Gospels

Aslan repeatedly attacks the Gospels supposed picture of a pacist preacher as a foil for his
Zealot Messiah (xxviii xxix, 150, etc.). He derives this picture, however, not from the
Gospels themselves, but from their interpreters. The Gospels, if examined as complete stories
and speeches in the historical context that recent research has delineated more comprehensively and precisely, present Jesus as broadly and deeply politically engaged, in a more
complex way than can be imagined in the conceptual straightjacket of zealotry.

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All sources for Roman Palestine, including the gospels, indicate a deep divide not so much
between the Jews and the Romans, but between the rulers and the ruled that erupted
periodically into open conict of diverse forms. These conicts were mediated by particular
institutional forms and traditional social forms and traditional patterns of culture. After
each devastating conquest and reconquest of Palestine, Roman warlords and their legions
did not occupy the country. They rather installed client rulers: Herod in the generation prior
to the birth of Jesus; then his son Antipas over Galilee and the high priestly aristocracy,
under the oversight of a Roman governor, over Judea during Jesus lifetime. They ruled over
and extracted revenues from the peasants in the dierent regions of Galilee, Samaria, and
Judea, who were all people of Israelite heritage, with complex traditions of resistance to both
local and imperial rulers. The fundamental social economic form in which the people lived
and worked were village communities (comprised of multiple households), which had begun
to disintegrate under the economic demands for tribute, taxes, and tithes and debts to outside creditors. This is precisely the situation that the gospel sources presuppose and portray
Jesus as addressing.
As noted above, the earliest gospel sources, Mark and Q, present Jesus not as the
Messiah, and not as a king who would lead a revolution and then rule over a kingdom,
but as a prophet leading a movement in the tradition of Moses and Elijah and others. In this
role he appears to have been the rst in a series of prophets leading popular movements in
the 30 s and 40 s C.E. He was followed by the Moses-like prophet in Samaria, the Moses-like
Theudas, and the Joshua-like prophet returned from Egypt, who led movements in anticipation of a new act of deliverance. Unlike the other prophets who called their followers out
of the villages, however, Jesus worked in and sent his cadre of disciples to work in village
communities. This proclamation of Gods direct rule, healing of the peoples personal and
collective trauma, and community organizing may not appear as dramatically disruptive
as a revolt. But this work (in Mark 110 and in the parallel speeches in Matthew and Luke,
called Q), as can be seen also in the stories of Elijah and his protege Elisha, was a renewal
of the people in covenantal communities that was also a resistance to the Herodian and high
priestly rulers exploitation. This is just what the gospels portray in a general way in episode
after episode. Jesus and his proteges work of renewal in village communities was threatening
to the Herodian and high priestly rulers.
Jesus, still adapting the traditional role of Israelite prophet, moreover, engaged in more
direct resistance to the Roman imperial order in Palestine, particularly in condemnation and
forcible demonstration against its face-and-form in the Jerusalem temple-state. It is inappropriate to imagine that Jesus carried out a sustained confrontation with the high priestly
rulers in Jerusalem more or less in the way portrayed in Mark. It is clear, however, that
he not only prophesied Gods judgment of the ruling institutions (temple and high priests) in
traditional Israelite prophetic form, but that he also must have carried out a symbolic condemnation in a forcible demonstration against the temple during the highly politically
charged Passover festival.
This may have been a relatively non-violent direct action, but it was a highly provocative
direct action, not just because it was disruptive but because the political cultural forms of
prophetic speech and symbolic action of Gods condemnation still resonated with the people
and, for that reason, with the high priests as well. This disruptive prophetic action of Jesus
appears to be what provoked his arrest and crucixion by the Romans as a rebel leader. His
prophetic action and martyrdom then appear to have become the breakthrough for the

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movement he had been catalyzing, as it expanded rapidly in Galilee, Judea, and beyond, and
followed his example of bold resistance despite the threat of trial and execution.

Subtext?
One must wonder what it is that Aslan is seeing or addressing that leads him so far beyond
the sources and the critical scholarship on which he is drawing in oversimplifying the complex historical situation and the diverse resistance to Roman rule in Palestine, the ancient
Middle East. Might Aslan, who has written previously about fundamentalism, terrorism,
and jihadis in the contemporary Middle East (Aslan, 2009), be inuenced by current religious-political conicts? and/or might he be addressing them?
The United States invasion of Iraq in response to the destruction of the World Trade
Towers and its broader War on Terror evoked (among other things) an upsurge in attacks
by Islamists (of dierent traditions) against the Western invaders (and against other
Muslims as well). Much of the American Press has labeled virtually all protests and opposition movements in contemporary Southwest Asia as Islamists or jihadis, regardless of
their stated concerns and local circumstances. Has the stereotype of Jihad and militant
Islamist nationalism become so accepted as the dening discourse of contemporary
Middle Eastern insurgency against the modern day Rome that an analogous zealous apocalyptic nationalism can be projected back onto the Jews under ancient Rome and all forms
of resistance be lumped under zealotry? Those trained in the history or sociology of religion
would presumably be able to explain some of the complexities of political cultural power
relations in particular historical circumstances and the dierent forms of local response and
resistance to domination by outside forces.
Or is Aslan trying to blunt American Christian and Jewish support for the war on
terror by arguing that Jesus and other ancient Jews were just like the jihadis? Or, is he
trying to call attention to what he sees as some of the historical roots of contemporary
Christian and Jewish Zionism, with their claims about the chosen people and the Godgiven claim to the Holy Land (a highly charged phrase that he uses throughout the book)?
Closer attention to the ancient sources, however, suggests that the peasant movements
headed by popular kings and those headed by popular prophets hoped simply to be free
of their rulers (Roman and Jerusalem). And since (as Aslan recognizes) they were nonliterate, they would not have been able to read the book of Deuteronomy, composed centuries before in support of the centralization of power in Jerusalem. The Deuteronomic
ideology of bloody holy war does not appear to have been operative among the Galilean,
Samaritan, and Judean popular movements.
However, once Deut 20 and other such texts had become parts of the Jewish and
Christian Scriptures and translated, for example, into the King James Version, they
became sacred charters that legitimated, and perhaps even motivated, European conquest,
slaughter, and dispossession of other peoples. Such texts, moreover, became a major factor
in American exceptionalism, as Gods new Israel, as well as the new Rome. It might be
dicult to nd evidence that such texts were a motivating factor for ancient Jews, but they
surely become major factors in modern conquest and colonization.
Criticism of religion remains as important as ever, especially given the current political religious conicts that have been oversimplied as a clash of civilizations and

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Critical Research on Religion 2(2)

distorted by the Orientalism of the likes of Bernard Lewis. A key aspect of criticism is
analysis of what became deeply inuential scriptures and culture-texts and iconic gures
and founding heroes, including a clearer sense of the circumstances of their origins. This
entails moving beyond previously standard assumptions and stereotypes, including the
essentialist -isms constructed by modern scholarship. Once they are read as complete
stories of political religious conict in their historical context of political religious conict,
it is clear that the Gospels portray Jesus as deeply and pointedly engaged in resistance to the
Roman imperial order in Palestine. Both zeal/zealotry and the Messiah, however,
whether separate or (con)fused, are modern Christian scholarly constructs of fty to a
hundred years ago.

References
Anderson B (2006) Imagined Communities: Reections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, (rev.
edn). New York: Verso.
Aslan R (2009) How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror.
New York: Random House.
Brandon SGF (1967) Jesus and the Zealots: A Study of the Political Factor in Primitive Christianity.
New York: Scribner.
Charlesworth JH (ed.) (1992) The Messiah: Developments in Earliest Judaism and Christianity.
Minneapolis: Fortress.
Cullmann O (1970) Jesus and the Revolutionaries. New York: Harper & Row.
Hengel M (1961) Die Zeloten. Leiden: Brill.
Hengel M (1971) Was Jesus a Revolutionist? Philadelphia: Fortress.
Hengel M (1973) Victory over Violence. Philadelphia: Fortress.
Horsley RA (1979a) Josephus and the bandits. Journal for the Study of Judaism 10: 3763.
Horsley RA (1979b) The Sicarii: Ancient Jewish terrorists. Journal of Religion 59: 159192.
Horsley RA (1981) Ancient Jewish banditry and the revolt against Rome. Catholic Biblical Quarterly
43: 409432.
Horsley RA (1984) Popular messianic movements around the time of Jesus. Catholic Biblical Quarterly
46: 471495.
Horsley RA (1985) Like one of the prophets of old: Two types of popular prophets at the time of
Jesus. Catholic Biblical Quarterly 47: 435463.
Horsley RA (1986a) High priests and the politics of Roman Palestine. Journal for the Study of Judaism
17: 2355.
Horsley RA (1986b) The Zealots, their origins, relationships, and importance in the Jewish Revolt.
Novum Testamentum 28: 159192.
Horsley RA (1986c) Popular prophetic movements at the time of Jesus: Their principal features and
social origins. Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26: 327.
Horsley RA (1987) Jesus and the Spiral of Violence: Popular Jewish Resistance in Roman Palestine. San
Francisco: Harper & Row.
Horsley RA (2007) Scribes, Visionaries, and the Politics of Second Temple Judea. Louisville:
Westminster John Knox.
Neusner J, Green WS and Frerichs E (eds) (1987) Judaisms and their Messiahs at the Turn of the
Christian Era. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Portier-Young A (2011) Apocalypse Against Empire: Theologies of Resistance in Early Judaism. Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans.

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Author biography
Richard Horsley Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and the Study of Religion at the
University of Massachusetts Boston (emeritus), has written extensively on the historical
Jesus in the historical political context, most recently in Jesus and the Powers (2011) and
Jesus and the Politics of Roman Palestine (2014).

Elliot Wolfson, A Dream Interpreted Within a Dream: Oneiropoiesis and the Prism of
Imagination, New York: Zone Books, 2011, $36.95 (cloth), ISBN: 978-1935408147, 576 pp.

Reviewed by Cass Fisher, Associate Professor, Department of Religious Studies, University of South Florida

Mirroring the duplexity of the books title, in A Dream Interpreted Within a Dream:
Oneiropoieses and the Prism of Imagination, Elliot Wolfson has embedded a book within a
book. As Wolfson is one of the premier scholars of Kabbalah, one might imagine this second
book to be a set of secret teachings pulsating beneath the surface of the more exoteric text.
That is far from the case. Beginning with the two epigraphs that open A Dream Interpreted
Within a Dream and throughout the remainder of the work, Wolfson makes clear that the
real dream is reality itself and that alongside the ostensible subject of the bookthe phenomenology of the dream lifeis an ontological argument advancing a nondualist account
of reality. Wolfson, of course, makes gestures to concealment; for instance, the epigraph
adorning the Preface is a quote from Nietzsche in which he asks does one not write books
precisely to conceal what one harbors? (13). Nonetheless, no reader is likely to miss the
ontological and antitheological concerns that drive Wolfsons analysis of dreams. The only
person who might be misled about the subject of the book is someone familiar with
Wolfsons prodigious and penetrating work on Kabbalah who has yet to pick up this
volume. That individual might assume that A Dream Interpreted Within a Dream is another
exegetical and historical work in Wolfsons oeuvre, in this case devoted to exploring the
signicance of dreams within the kabbalistic tradition. Wolfson dispels this view early on in
the Preface, where he says that the current work must be distinguished from his previous
studies insofar as it is not an exegetical work on the history of Jewish mysticism or any
other clearly dened element of Jewish thought (14). As the book breaks from expectations
in a variety of ways, I will begin by highlighting the arguments that guide Wolfsons
discussion.
Wolfson provides a key to understanding A Dream Interpreted Within a Dream in the
Preface, where he renounces the attempt to construct an architectonic of the dream imagination on the basis of classical Jewish sources. Instead, he states that his goal is to produce
a polyphonic sketch, at once restorative and innovative, but ultimately a sketch of what is
necessarily fragmentary (14). It is the nature of the dream imagination itself that mandates such an approach in that it is characterized by the inability to disentangle true and
untrue (16). It seems that Wolfson takes the dream to be corrosive of reason, as is evident in
his suggestion that interpreting the nocturnal dream within the wakeful dream of reality
lodges us in a uroboric state that puts into question the bivalent logic of a linear reason
(16). Wolfson adopts a methodological approach that parallels the dreams resistance to
reason, which he describes in the following terms: my own inquiry is marked . . . by a sense

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