Well, you have to remember that in the Fox worldview, the only scientific question Muslims ask is “how big a bomb do I need to build to destroy the adherents of all other religions, as I am required to?” Just take a look at the last paragraph of the OP’s article. I’m surprised they put the interview up on FoxNews.com at all.
Instead of low point let’s just say it continued to lower the average.
For more of Reza Aslan, check out last week’s “Realtime with Bill Maher.” He was very good as part of the panel.
“Gotcha” piece from an, ahem, “interreligious, nonpartisan research and education institute whose purpose is to advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society”, claiming that he mis-represented his academic credentials.
Reaching a bit, if you ask me.
Aslan also had a good interview on NPR a couple of weeks ago. I can’t remember which show it was.
There’s one point I’d like to make about the book in question: I suppose Aslan is a pretty good popular writer, but it’s not like he invented the idea of the historical Jesus, or of seeing the Christ as a man in his own historical context, or of critical interpretation of gospel texts. It’s a huge field of study and has been for ages, and there’s nothing remotely controversial about it, as any student of theology will tell you. Aslan’s book is a just another one with a take on the subject.
In any case, I suppose that this latest offering has nothing to with why people have their panties in a twist. I guess some people just see him as a “Muslim apologist” after No God but God, and will snipe at him for anything now, up to and including what he eats for breakfast in the morning, apparently with no regard for whether or not they hit their real or imaginary targets. If anyone else had written this book, no one would have given a flying fuck.
But hey, any publicity is good publicity, so I suspect everybody’s happy. I for one will be checking out his book now, it looks like a good read.
They’re happy to dismiss scholars as “out of touch” until they want to use an appeal to authority with those they think agree with them.
Horrifyingly embarrassing interview.
I am in no way defending Fox News and the interviewer, but if that “gotcha” piece is at all accurate, Dr. Aslan did somewhat exaggerate his credentials in the interview.
That said, it sounds like an interesting book, and if it’s available at my local library, I plan to read it.
Right! What would Aslan know about Jesus? Get back to Narnia where you came from you durned allegorical feline!
The problem I have with him was pretty well stated by a commenter on the Daily Show blurb. It’s not what he wrote, but that he acts like he can’t understand why his book would bother people. He flat out claims that Jesus isn’t divine–at least, based on that interview. He doesn’t ignore the question like he claims he does.
I also saw a pretty obvious argument on Yahoo comments of all places. If he claims that the people who wrote the Bible were not accurately portraying who Jesus really is because they didn’t know him personally, doesn’t that same argument apply even more so to him? The real personality of Jesus is either what our sources say it is, or a complete mystery.
I can’t stand Fox News, so I won’t watch the link–am I right in saying that neither of these points were brought up? Because those are his weaknesses, not some claim that his scholarship is wrong or that he is attacking the Christian faith. He’s made it very clear what the book is about, and, if that bothers you, don’t read it. I’m probably not going to.
Wow. Biased like a compass by a magnet. As mud goes, a sling and a miss…
Actually, he doesn’t. He says that even if Jesus *is *divine, he was *also *a man, and to understand that man, we must do so historically, in terms of how he fit into his own world, and his own political and historical reality. Jesus’ world isn’t our world. If we can understand who Jesus was in the context of his own world, we’ll learn to understand him better. I can’t really work out how that could be a controversial claim, or offensive to anyone.
Research on the historical Jesus is in no way an attack on Christianity. I’ll bet (although I haven’t done a headcount) that you’ll find that most historians who do this type of research are themselves Christians or come from a religious background. You have to love Jesus in one sense or another in order to be *that *interested in the man.
By the way, the Gospels do still remain our main source of information about the life of Jesus. There isn’t that much more to go by. The main point is figuring out how to read them properly. Again, the key word is context. If you take something out of its context, you will misunderstand it.
It’s a nitpick. Aslan gave an accurate summary of his credentials at the beginning of the interview and the blogger is complaining about a shorter explanation later on. And even that is pretty debatable: he says Aslan can’t call himself a historian because he doesn’t have a degree in history and he says Aslan can’t say he has a doctorate in the religious history when he has a doctorate in the sociology of religion. It sounds like a pretty dumb complaint, but of course the point is calling his credentials into question. It doesn’t matter if they’re really questionable; as long as his critics can say they’re under question, the debate takes place on their terms.
Does he claim to be accurately portraying Jesus to a degree of accuracy greater than those who wrote the Bible?
If I could point to two sentences on the internet which demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding of scholarship, then this would be a good candidate.
First, I don’t know if he has specifically made that claim the people couldn’t be accurate because they didn’t know him personally. From his interviews, his argument appears to be that the writers of the Gospels were not attempting to portray him historically accurately because they had a different motivation.
This is well-established among Biblical scholars. One such book would be The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics by Elaine Pagels, professor of religion at Yale University who writes that in order to understand the Gospels, you must understand they were written in the context of war propaganda.
Historians look at a period of time, study it to see how people would feel and then make conclusions. I have not read his book, and therefore cannot say if I feel his conclusions are reasonable or not or if he is overly reaching, but to say that it is impossible to know anything about a person because one did not know them personally betrays a lack of understanding of scholarship.
What people don’t apparently understand, is that PhDs (and professors!) decide for themselves their area of research, in many cases regardless of their teaching assignment and regardless of their actual degrees. I’m a university professor, tenured, and some of my areas of scholarship are directly related to my degree, and some aren’t. Same with teaching.
You might legitimately criticize Dr. Aslan for over-simplifying his complex academic and publishing careers, but the fact is, his credentials are not reasonably in question to anyone with a brain.
It amounts to ad hominem. Oooohhh! He said he’s a PhD in history when it’s really sociology! Oooooh! Honestly, people, these black and white distinctions are unworthy of even undergraduate degrees. The man knows his shit, that’s what matters.
If Christians want to find someone to be offended by, biblical scholars would be a strange group to pick. That’s just getting silly. I don’t think even the poor Fox News lady has a problem with the idea of someone writing a book about Jesus per se, let alone one that’s meticulously researched and well written. She’s just on Aslan’s case because he’s a muslim. Also, as I mentioned upthread, I suspect that she’s picking on him in particular because of the other stuff he’s written, not least the book No God but God, which in some people’s view argued for a too “liberal” approach to Islam. He’s on certain paranoid people’s shitlist, and now they think he must have an “agenda”.
Which really is just making **BigT’s **point for him. The guy may be a religious scholar but if he doesn’t understand why a scholar from a different religion writing realistic and accurate things about somebody else’s religion would offend them, he doesn’t know jack about religion, or he’s pretending he doesn’t.
Again, by that logic, Christians are disqualified from writing factually about Islam.
Also, for crying out loud, Aslan is an Iranian-American who has lived in the US since childhood, grew up in San Francisco, and used to be an evangelical Christian. He’s not exactly anyone’s idea of a fundamentalist jihadist, unless you have your thickest pair of conspiracy-tinted glasses on.
OP: Are you a fox? Well? Answer the question. If you’re not a fox then why would you write a post about Fox News? Huh? Huh?