The news of Fox News’ Islamaphobia has gone viral. And what is the proof of such hatred of Muslims? The proof is an interview with Professor Reza Aslan’s concerning his new book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.
The interview is supposed proof that Fox News orchestrated this interview as a further demonstration of its anti-Islam bias. The host seems intrigued that Professor Aslan is writing a book about Jesus when he is a Muslim. She implies that when a Muslim writes about Jesus there is then a definite agenda at play. Aslan responds incredulously:
I am a scholar of religions with four degrees including one in the New Testament . . . I am an expert with a Ph.D. in the history of religions . . . I am a professor of religions, including the New Testament–that’s what I do for a living, actually . . . To be clear, I want to emphasize one more time, I am a historian, I am a Ph.D. in the history of religions.
If this is the case, is he then justified in making some of the claims in the book? One assertion made in the book, according to Aslan, is that Jesus was an illiterate Jew. a
In Chapter 4 he writes,
Whatever languages Jesus may have spoken, there is no reason to believe that he could read or write in any of them, not even Aramaic. Luke’s account[s of Jesus’s literacy] … are both fabulous concoctions of the evangelist’s own devising. Jesus would not have had access to the kind of formal education necessary to make Luke’s account even remotely credible. b
This is a rather comic observation, especially in light of the fact that Luke himself is committed to accurately writing from detailed witness accounts (Lk. 1:2). The same Luke concludes that Jesus grew in wisdom, stature, and in favor of God and man (Lk. 2:52). Another observation is that when Jesus opens the Isaianic scroll he not only reads it, but also explains it revealing his rabbinic reputation.
Further, as Alan Jacobs writes at the American Conservative, Aslan’s conclusions are nothing new. They are simply following the general outline of The Jesus Seminary guru, John Dominic Crossan. Crossan and others argued in the 80’s and 90’s that Jesus did not say the majority of things he claimed to say. Part of this conclusion meant attributing certain colors according to degree of certainty. Red meant the sayings of Jesus were authentic. The other colors pink, gray, and black were used to claim whether a saying of Jesus was paradoxical or not said by Jesus.
But a more embarrassing fact for Aslan’s assertion is that they are false, especially as it relates to his repeated mention of his Ph.Ds in history. As Matthew Franck writes in First Things:
None of these degrees is in history, so Aslan’s repeated claims that he has “a Ph.D. in the history of religions” and that he is “a historian” are false. Nor is “professor of religions” what he does “for a living.” He is an associate professor in the Creative Writing program at the University of California, Riverside, where his terminal MFA in fiction from Iowa is his relevant academic credential. It appears he has taught some courses on Islam in the past, and he may do so now, moonlighting from his creative writing duties at Riverside. Aslan has been a busy popular writer, and he is certainly a tireless self-promoter, but he is nowhere known in the academic world as a scholar of the history of religion. And a scholarly historian of early Christianity? Nope.
One must also conclude that though the Fox News host (Laura Green) did not appear to be particularly interested in the book’s content as much as the book’s author, she was right to challenge his credentials as a Muslim. As Kuyperians we know well that to expect a Muslim to represent Jesus accurately is an impossibility. Therefore, the author’s claim to neutrality concerning our blessed Lord is an academic sham and should be seen for what it is: another public attack upon Jesus, the Messiah.<>
- Alan Jacobs writes: Aslan asserts that Luke was a conscious fabulist. Yet even if Luke were wrong about Jesus’s literacy — or about anything else — there is more than one way to explain those errors. For instance, Richard Bauckham’s important and much-celebrated book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses — which Aslan appears not to know — makes a strong case that Luke’s Gospel, like the others, is based on the testimony of those who claimed to be eyewitnesses. Especially since Luke places such emphasis on his attempt to gather reliable witnesses to the life of Jesus, wouldn’t it make sense to attribute his errors (if they exist) to his interviewees’ lively imaginations or poor memories, and to his own credulousness, rather than to intentional deception? Yet Aslan never considers any other possible explanation than the one he blandly asserts without argument. (back)
- From Alan Jacob’s “More About Reza Alan’s Zealot” (back)
