{"author":"Reza Aslan","author_id":"Reza+Aslan","total_quotes":33,"quotes":[{"text":"Scattered across the Roman Empire, it was only natural for the gospel writers to distance themselves from the Jewish independence movement by erasing, as much as possible, any hint of radicalism or violence, revolution or zealotry, from the story of Jesus, and to adapt Jesus's words and actions to the new political situation in which they found themselves.","author":"Reza Aslan","tags":["bible","revisionism"],"id":9324,"author_id":"Reza+Aslan"},{"text":"The Romans may be known for many things, but humor isn't one of them. As usual, this interpretation relies on a prima facie reading of Jesus as a man with no political ambitions whatsoever. That is nonsense. All criminals sentenced to execution received a titulus so that everyone know the crime for which they were being punished and thus be deterred from taking part in similar activity. That the wording on Jesus's titulus was likely genuine is demonstrated by Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, who notes that 'if [the titulus] were invented by Christians, they would have used Christos, for early Christians would scarcely have called their Lord 'King of the Jews'.'[..] the notion that a no-name Jewish peasant would have received a personal audience with the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, who had probably signed a dozen execution orders that day alone, is so outlandish that it cannot be taken seriously.","author":"Reza Aslan","tags":["jesus","pontius-pilate","titulus"],"id":36125,"author_id":"Reza+Aslan"},{"text":"Religion is never going to go away, and anyone who thinks it will doesn't understand what religion is. It is a language to describe the experience of human nature, so for as long as people struggle to describe what it means to be alive, it will be a ready-made language to express those feelings.","author":"Reza Aslan","tags":["nature","experience","struggle "],"id":43733,"author_id":"Reza+Aslan"},{"text":"The choice between James’s vision of a Jewish religion anchored in the Law of Moses and derived from a Jewish nationalist who fought against Rome, and Paul’s vision of a Roman religion that divorced itself from Jewish provincialism and required nothing for salvation save belief in Christ, was not a difficult one for the second and third generations of Jesus’s followers to make.Two thousand years later, the Christ of Paul’s creation has utterly subsumed the Jesus of history. The memory of the revolutionary zealot who walked across Galilee gathering an army of disciples with the goal of establishing the Kingdom of God on earth, the magnetic preacher who defied the authority of the Temple priesthood in Jerusalem, the radical Jewish nationalist who challenged the Roman occupation and lost, has been almost completely lost to history.","author":"Reza Aslan","tags":["history","jesus","religion"],"id":64017,"author_id":"Reza+Aslan"},{"text":"All these schools of though gradually transformed into legal institutions, the diversity of ideas and freedom of opinion that characterized their early development gave way to rigid formalism, strict adherence to precedent, and an almost complete stultification of independent though.","author":"Reza Aslan","tags":["islam","religion"],"id":95741,"author_id":"Reza+Aslan"},{"text":"No one speaks for God - not even the prophets (who speak about God).","author":"Reza Aslan","tags":["islam","prophets","religion"],"id":119229,"author_id":"Reza+Aslan"},{"text":"A politician is a politician whether he's wearing a suit or a funny hat.","author":"Reza Aslan","tags":["cynicism","hamid-karzai","politicians","politics"],"id":119365,"author_id":"Reza+Aslan"},{"text":"Despite two millennia of Christian apologetics, the fact is that belief in a dying and rising messiah simply did not exist in Judaism. In the entirety of the Hebrew Bible there is not a single passage of scripture or prophecy about the promised messiah that even hints of his ignominious death, let alone his bodily resurrection.","author":"Reza Aslan","tags":["jesus","messiah","scripture"],"id":123608,"author_id":"Reza+Aslan"},{"text":"Whether for good or for bad, the Iran that ultimately rises out of the ashes of last summer's uprising will be unlike the Iran we know today, and for that we can thank the Green Movement, not another round of useless sanctions.","author":"Reza Aslan","tags":["dissent","green-movement","iran","politics","protest","sanctions","united-nations"],"id":173007,"author_id":"Reza+Aslan"},{"text":"Among Romans, crucifixion originated as a deterrence against revolt of slaves, probably as early as 200 B.C.E. By Jesus's time, it was the primary form of punishment for 'inciting rebellion' (I.E., treason or sedition) the exact crime which Jesus was charged.[..] The punishment applied solely to non-Roman citizens. Roman citizens could be crucified, however, if the crime was so grave that it essentially forfeited their citizenship.","author":"Reza Aslan","tags":["crucifixion","jesus","rome"],"id":174413,"author_id":"Reza+Aslan"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":33,"pages":4,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}