If anyone was upset at Reza Aslan’s book Zealot, a fairly tame view of Jesus by standards of orthodox biblical studies, they will self-destruct when they hear about another Muslim’s take on Jesus. . . .
Agron Belica has already written The Crucifixion: Mistaken Identity, John the Baptist and Jesus the Christ. This work was preceded by a warm-up preface of sorts: Deliver a Messiah: Mistaken Identity. The book being advertized through Salem-News is The Passion of the Baptist, Not the Christ.
It’s interesting to look at the way the book is being promoted. I first was made aware of it through Gilad Atzmon’s regular newsletter. His blog post repeats what that contained. Atzmon finds it interesting just as Richard Dawkins was interested to hear Joseph Atwill’s thesis on the Roman invention of Christianity. It’s a harmless curiosity. I don’t believe either of these men will take either of these ideas and shout them from rooftops with conviction. They’ll simply take them as an interesting set of ideas to speculate about.
That won’t stop Fox interviewers or mainstream biblical scholars and theologians from going ballistic, however. If any of them take notice I can hear already their offended cries: But Agron Belica is not one of us! He is not trained in our schools! Therefore he is not qualified to write what he does and we think everyone should scoff at the book and insult its author and avoid reading it.
What is different about this work is that it is apparently based on a study of three pillars:
- Gospels
- Josephus
- Quran and other Islamic texts Continue reading “Another Islamic study: John the Baptist, not Jesus, was Crucified”