How did an illiterate and very likely married young Jewish day laborer from a Galilean backwater who rose up against an entrenched Roman-Jewish priesthood establishment as a messiah and was killed by the regional establishment like a dozen other messiahs in the same region during the same period–and for the same crowd control-related reasons–become the focal point of a major and enduring world religion? “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth” is the best selling book by Iranian-American author Reza Aslan published by Random House in mid-2013. Zealot is not going to make everyone happy but it’s a brave, competent and well-written sliver of history. Part scholarship and part clever provocation.
