Shooting down Fox

[alanjjohnstone]

A video of author of a book on Jesus taking no nonsense from a Fox interviewer who tries to discredit his theories by associating it with his Muslim religion.

 

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/fox-hosts-bigotry-exposed-reza-aslan

[ALB]

I don't think that the interview was so bad. It  doesn't seem to me to be unreasonable to take into account the religion of a person who writes on religion, especially a rival one. In any event, although Reza Aslan might have a load of PhDs he was talking nonsense as what he claims is based on taking the so-called "gospels" as evidence (when they were concocted by later christians). The view that Jesus was a Zealot who was executed by the Romans for leading an insurrection has been put forward before. In fact he seems to be making the same argument, based on the same "evidence" as Joel Carmichael did 50 years ago.  Compare the summary of his book with that by Carmichael. There seems to be a continuing market for this sort of thing. But there is no evidence that Jesus existed, let alone that he was crucified.

[jondwhite]

Not as bad as I hoped, and the interviewee seemed too keen to appeal to authority (PhD, scholarly work etc.) – but at least the interviewer from Fox could have read the first few pages of the book rather than Muslim-baiting.

[alanjjohnstone]

I don't think he was appealing to authority to support his interpretation of Jesus's life and views but emphasising that he was an academic not a religious teacher. Even if he was Christian, would it matter if he was a baptist, catholic or whatever unless he was purposefully setting out to support that particular religion's theology. I don't think it matters much that  Vermes was jewish when he wrote Jesus the Jew trilogy  argueing he was little more than a eschatological preacher.  Without reading the book and simply having read a review which i blogged it doesn't seem as if he is repeating the accepted Islamic interpretation of Jesus so why tar him with that brush as she seemed intent on doing. Does Chomsky and Fickelstein have to always declare their religion as disclaimer when discussing Israel and Palestine and Zionism. There actual religion is used politically like Fox uses it to dismiss them …"self-hating jews" Adam, the gospels are evidence but just hearsay thats been doctored to fit beliefs but still nevertheless evidence of such things as historical background, language/translation, customs etc which he may well have used it to bolster his premise that Jesus was more political than is customary presented. see bloghttp://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2013/07/jesus.html He should have insisted that Fox interviewer  declare her own religious bias and what qualified her to form an opinion. Did you catch the woman's aside that she had indeed read many biblical scholars  who have written of the "true resurrected" Jesus? 

[alanjjohnstone]

Aslan's CNN interview http://edition.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2013/07/30/pmt-intv-reza-aslan.cnn.html

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