It's been a while since I reviewed a Life of Jesus, but I did promise to review more recent samples of the genre so here, hot off the press, is Reza Aslan's Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. I first heard of Aslan's book via a scathing review by John Dickson . A couple of weeks later, the book itself was staring at me from the new acquisitions display in my local library, so here is my own (rather less scathing) review. Aslan was born in Iran in 1972 and fled to the US with his family in 1979 following the Iranian revolution. After a period as an evangelical Christian in his teens he shifted back to Islam as a young adult. He has a doctorate in religious studies and teaches creative writing and religion at various universities. Apparently Zealot has caused quite a stir in the US and he has not just been criticised for the content of his book, but had his credentials and his character impugned on national television in a way that makes Dickson's d
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson