Scholars Still Sparring About Jesus
I’m sure all you folks who think that Christmas is about shopping and boys’ choirs and not about Jesus will skip this story. For the rest of you: ‘The different historical and religious interpretations of Jesus are generally cause for a heated debate, and in a HuffPost Live panel discussion on Monday, author Reza Aslan and theological scholar Peter Lillback had just that. The “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth” author argues that a tension exists between the historical and theological narratives of Jesus, as “many Christians would say Jesus fulfilled” the prophecies detailed in the Bible, while “many historians would say Jesus’ life was crafted so that it would fulfill these prophecies.”
“There are many prophecies of the coming messiah that Jesus does not fulfill,” he added. “It’s kind of a hodge-podge of different prophetic statements about what the messiah’s supposed to do, where the messiah’s supposed to be born, etc.”
