Reza Ipsa Loquitur – Eric Lindner

My wife and I just saw the movie American Hustle.  The film begins thus: “Some of this actually happened.”

Reza Aslan’s hustle is less forthright.  He issues no such caveat.  He should.  Some of what’s in Zealot actually happened, but the key assertions are the bogus yarns of a slick writer.

I have no problem with Muslims.  Indeed, we Christians can learn a great deal from Sufism in particular, as well as the impressive, laudable piety of a peaceable Islam.

My beef is with specious scholarship.  That I’m far from alone is attested to by my good friend in Madrid, a very sophisticated Tehran-born Muslim scholar, who said recently, “Aslan and his smugness are an embarrassment to Iranians.”

But the Tehran-born Aslan doesn’t embarrass the mainstream Media.  He should.  The Media act like he dug up the Q Gospel in his California backyard.  Bobble-headed “reporters” are beside themselves, calling those of us who disagree with Aslan “anti-fact.”

Well, now, let’s have a look at Aslan’s “facts,” especially his two main assertions.  First: Jesus was a Pharisaically inclined Jew, who would have abhorred Paul’s twisted teachings.  Second: Aslan’s being a multi-degreed “internationally acclaimed scholar and expert on religions” (per his website) renders his methodologies and motivations beyond reproach.

Had Aslan made such assertions before a judge, he would have been thrown out of court, and cited for contempt –  Aslan’s four degrees and media sycophants notwithstanding.

As an attorney who once helped prosecute Neo-Nazi terrorists, my assertion is this: Aslan engages in a form of literary, hermeneutical terrorism.  A full airing of the pertinent facts makes this crystal clear, including the analogous case of the UK’s Hitler-loving scholar and convicted libeler, David Irving.

Now I’m no scholar.  Even though, I’d wager, I’ve read as much on the topic as Aslan.  Even though I once worked as the research assistant to one of the world’s foremost legal scholars (the former Dean of The University of Chicago Law School), who put me through the paces of objectivism and positivism—the true scholar’s rudder and sail.  Even though I studied at the foot of a Nobel laureate, which included three years of painstaking primary research to satisfy just one of the 20 courses needed to satisfy my Master’s degree.

But one doesn’t need to be a scholar to drive a Mack truck through Aslan’s Tinkertoy thesis.  His book is further proof that the late, great Walter Wink hit the nail on the head when he said “historical biblical scholarship is bankrupt.”

Why give a nod to Wink?  Because his methods and motives are beyond reproach.  Not only did he crank out some of the finest original biblical scholarship ever (e.g., his “Powers” series, “Myth of Redemptive Violence” thesis, terrific exegeses of what Jesus truly meant by “turning the other cheek” and “giving the cloak off your back”), but also he “walked the walk,” putting himself in harm’s way in Jim Crow’s South, Pinochet’s Chile, and the Afrikaner’s apartheid South Africa.  Even the mainstream media’s favorite organ, The New York Times, heaped praised on Wink, calling him an “influential theologian.”  Most of his 307 books and articles delved into who Jesus really was.  Yet Aslan barely gives Wink the time of day.

For instance, take “The Son of Man debate.”  To prop up his cardboard argument, Aslan cites Albert Schweitzer’s 1906 book.  Now I love Schweitzer, but citing the great doctor on this matter is a bit like citing Isaac Newton in a debate about The Big Bang.  Had Aslan really wanted the most contemporary—and best—view on the subject, he would have found pretty much all he needed in Wink’s The Human Being: Jesus and the Enigma of The Son of Man (2001), and Just Jesus: My Struggle to Become Human (2014).  But as Wink’s work flatly refutes Aslan, the “scholar” cites Wink but once, pertaining to the irrelevant (on this issue) “infancy narratives.”

At least Wink got one cite.  Other great scholars were completely shunned.

Take Professor Kenneth Bailey, who for 4 decades taught the New Testament; often in Arabic; in Jerusalem and other places—where Jesus actually trod.  The author of the magnificent Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, as well as 150+ other books and articles, ran a prestigious Institute for Middle Eastern and Religious Studies, in Beirut.  He’s arguably the world’s foremost expert in the Aramaic, Hebrew and Syriac versions of Scripture, the languages closest to Jesus’ actual words.  Bailey doesn’t recognize Aslan’s Jesus, in part because the Arabist can discern the Aramaic play on words so often exhibited by The Son of Man.  Aslan is the poster child for Bailey’s terrific quip: “analysis of biblical texts is like playing the saxophone: it is easy to do poorly.”  And as Aslan makes Bill Clinton sound like Mozart, it’s no wonder Bailey also escapes mention anywhere in Zealot’s copious footnotes or bibliography.

If you’re beginning to get the sense that there is indeed a zealot being zealous, but it’s the author, engaging in transference—Jung would agree, as underscored by yet another first-rate scholar that Aslan avoids, because any inclusion of her would crater his thesis.  Sarah Ruden is perhaps the world’s foremost translator of the Greek and Latin in use circa Jesus, as well as a perspicacious historian of the culture and context then prevailing.  (She does her own translating; unlike Aslan, who relies on old texts and/or the aid of Professor Helen Moritz.)  Like Wink and Bailey, Ruden doesn’t recognize Aslan’s Jesus, either.  Or his Paul.  And while she doesn’t try to defend Paul’s “nasty streak,” she lauds his love-centered teachings, cogently insisting that (i) they’ve often been badly translated, and (ii) Paul was faithful to Jesus’ teachings; albeit building on them, as Jesus himself built upon Amos, John the Baptist, and others.

Then what’s the provenance of Aslan’s notion of Jesus as a zealot, of Paul illegitimately twisting the “tribal” practices away from James the Just, so as to appeal to all those incestuous longshoremen and carousing ex-Legionnaires in Corinth?  The provenance is two-fold.

First, Aslan relies on dated, typically “outlier” materials: Schweitzer’s 1906 book instead of Wink’s 2014 book; Gerd Ludeman’s “indispensable” 2002 book on Paul, that’s trumped by Bailey’s 2010 book; etc.  Aslan’s most egregious source, however, goes back not 10 years, or even 100 years, but 2,000 years.  Aslan loves a guy named Josephus.

Who’s he?  A guy whose despicable treachery makes Benedict Arnold look altruistic and heroic.  One of the least reliable guys ever to put pen to paper.  (Quill to parchment, or papyri.)

Even Aslan admits that some of Josephus’ claims are “nonsense.”  But in a legerdemain of chutzpah he blames “later Christian interpolation,” that “so corrupted” the truth that “scholarly attempts to cull through. . . for some sliver of historicity has proven futile.”  (Christians have been guilty of corruption, but in this case it’s a red herring.)  Naturally, however, insofar as the Josephus passages that support Zealot, Aslan has sufficient gnosis to cull like Solomon.

The second and main provenance, however, is Aslan’s creative mind.  Let’s remember: Aslan teaches creative writing (i.e., not biblical exegesis) at The University of California, Riverside; he was The Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction at The University of Iowa.

Let’s compare credentials.  Wink taught theology at Princeton and Columbia.  Bailey taught it at the best universities in the Middle East.  Ruden was a Fellow at Yale Divinity School.

We haven’t much direct evidence regarding what lurks inside Aslan’s head or heart, what motives truly lay behind his bogus, bigoted book.  But we do have some.  He’s told of his having been psychologically abused at the hands of “Fundamentalist Christian fanatics,” he’s tweeted at least one anti-Semitic rant (in January, 2014, likening the Israelis to the Nazis), and he hopes his BoomGen Studios can be Hollywood’s version of Al Jazeera.

But we don’t need any direct evidence.  In purporting to speak on the Law, Aslan opened the door to the rules of evidence.  One rule holds that when the circumstantial evidence is so obvious and overwhelming, the principle of res ipsa loquitur imputes motive.

Res ipsa loquitur is Latin for “the thing speaks for itself.”  Zealot does indeed speak for itself.  Or, rather, for its author, who is clearly more interested in creatively pursuing his anti-Christian agenda than in revealing anything even remotely resembling the truth.

Eric Lindner has been a traveler all his life, spiritually and geographically.  These days he spends about half the year on an antebellum farm midway between Washington, DC (his hometown) and Charlottesville, Virginia, where he and his wife, Ellen, have raised two entertaining children, Matthew (25) and Sarah (23).

Having traveled several Christian highways and bi-ways, Eric today considers himself “a nascent Quaker.”  While his BBA (’81, The George Washington University), JD and MBA (’87, The University of Chicago) were bereft of theology courses, his self-guided curriculum has focused on (i) unearthing “Jesus’ authentic impulse” (Walter Wink), and (ii) highlighting its compatibility with (a) other wisdom traditions (Huston Smith), (b) science (Freeman Dyson), and (c) nature (Thomas Berry).

Early interests in criminal justice and mental health led Eric to work for Professor Norval Morris, former dean of Chicago’s law school, and a towering advocate for reforming how society treats the marginalized.  After 30 years in business, capped by the sale of his Polish company, Eric turned his attention to one such marginalized group: the terminally ill.  Four years as a hospice volunteer led to the 2013 publication of Hospice Voices: Lessons for Living at the End of Life (www.hospicevoices.com); and to international critical acclaim (AARP TV, Voice of America TV, BBC, HOPE-FM, Publisher’s Weekly).  Eric is donating 100% of his book profits to hospice-related charities.