Annette Citzler
Thursday, March 7, 2024
Dear Readers, I have recently been reading and discussing with a few others at my church the book ZEALOT. It was a best-seller of 15 or so years back written by Reza Aslan, a professor and sociologist-historian specializing in religion. The book examines the two centuries on either side of the birth of Jesus, in trying to decipher what the actual life of Jesus in Gallilee and Judea must have been like. (Aslan says he is trying to examine the life of “Jesus the Man” instead of “Jesus Christ, Messiah.”) I highly recommend the book for its insights into the political and social pressures of those times, for its insights about who Jesus was and how He understood Himself, and also for its remarkable documentation and ease of reading for lay people like me. In any case, the book has piqued my interest again in what was going on in the early church, and where all those apostles went whom Jesus sent out with his command to “make disciples of all nations,” resulting in a very rapid growth of this religion into almost all regions of the world (as known by the Roman Empire at least).