

Not just a radical man with an amazingly spiritual message, but a violent encourager of murder, rioting, and violent takeover. In short, Jesus was a revolutionary zealot.How would the church have survived through 60 years of disillusionment, given they knew Jesus’ mission was a failure?.Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore" (Mic 4:3). They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore" (Isa 2:4). (Joel 3:10 – preparation for war.) "He will judge between many peoples and will settle disputes for strong nations far and wide. "He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. Yet the Messiah was to be the Prince of Peace.Today we have the wrong N.T., thanks to Paul’s influence. The early church followed suit, and replaced the zealot Jesus with a heavenly figure, putting Paul's letters into the N.T. “ conception of Jesus as Christ would have been shocking and plainly heretical, which is why, around 57 C.E., James and the apostles demand that Paul come to Jerusalem to answer for his deviant teachings”. The apostle Paul was the leader of this reinterpretation.The church changed the true Jesus into a more heavenly figure with merely otherworldly interests. They “transformed Jesus from a revolutionary zealot to a Romanized demigod, from a man who tried and failed to free the Jews from Roman oppression to a celestial being wholly uninterested in any.Yet Jesus failed to reestablish nation of Israel.However, later Aslan seems to backtrack: “Nor can Jesus be labeled a violent revolutionary bent on armed rebellion…”. The God of violence is “the only God that Jesus knew and the sole God he worshipped”. Jesus intended that the twelve tribes be reconstituted for a single purpose: war.

John 18:36 has been totally misunderstood. For Jesus, the Kingdom of God is very much of this world.Jesus was a zealot, advocating violence to overthrow the occupying Romans as well as the corrupt priesthood.The numbers in are the page numbers in the paperback edition.

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To hear my review of Reza Aslan's Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (2013), click on the arrow. Prism : Insight & Inspiration (Christ in the Old Testament).
