{"id":108580,"date":"2013-07-26T09:20:57","date_gmt":"2013-07-26T13:20:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/?p=108580"},"modified":"2013-07-26T10:41:44","modified_gmt":"2013-07-26T14:41:44","slug":"nprs-curiously-biased-quest-for-the-historical-jesus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/2013\/07\/nprs-curiously-biased-quest-for-the-historical-jesus\/","title":{"rendered":"NPR’s curiously biased quest for the historical Jesus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Did you know that Jesus wasn\u2019t really God? Despite what his disciples claim, he never believed he was the Messiah, much less God incarnate. He was a merely a Jewish revolutionary that was crucified by the Roman Empire and later deified (quite literally) by people who really didn\u2019t know him.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not a new claim, of course, but it\u2019s getting new attention because of a new book, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth<\/em>, by Reza Aslan. Many media outlets have covered the book or interviewed the author. But one of the most peculiar is an interview by Terry Gross on NPR<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Writer and scholar Reza Aslan was 15 years old when he found Jesus. His secular Muslim family had fled to the U.S. from Iran, and Aslan\u2019s conversion was, in a sense, an adolescent\u2019s attempt to fit into American life and culture. \u201cMy parents were certainly surprised,\u201d Aslan tells Fresh Air<\/em>\u2018s Terry Gross.<\/p>\n

As Aslan got older, he began his studies in the history of Christianity, and he started to lose faith. He came to the realization that Jesus of Nazareth was quite different from the Messiah he\u2019d been introduced to at church. \u201cI became very angry,\u201d he says. \u201cI became resentful. I turned away from Christianity. I began to really reject the concept of Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Aslan continued his Christian scholarship, and he found that he was increasingly interested in Jesus as a historical figure. The result is his new book, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth<\/em> \u2014 a historical look at Jesus in the context of his time and Jewish religion, and against the backdrop of the Roman Empire.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From that introduction you might get the impression that Aslan is a historian and an unbeliever, probably an agnostic or atheist. So you might be surprised to hear that Aslan is a devout Muslim and a professor of creative writing<\/a> at University of California at Riverside. While Aslan has a PhD in sociology of religions, he is not a trained historian. Rather than a work of \u201cChristian scholarship\u201d the book is merely one Muslim\u2019s opinion about the historical figure of Jesus.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing wrong, of course, with a Muslim, a sociologist, or a creative writing instructor, producing a book on Jesus. But there is something wrong with media outlets presenting an author as if he were some an objective expert on a subject when they clearly are not.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not surprising that secular outlets that are moderately hostile to religion (The Daily Show<\/a>,\u201d\u00a0Huffington Post<\/a>,\u00a0MSNBC<\/a>, etc.) would keep such information from their audience. But for a reputable outlet like NPR to give a creative writing instructor 45 minutes to espouse his historically revisionist views on Jesus without ever mentioning his religious faith or credentials (or lack therefore) reveals a surprising disrespect for it\u2019s radio listeners.<\/p>\n

As John Dickerson says<\/a>, \u201cAs a journalist and author who is Christian I cannot imagine penning a so-called objective biography of Muhammad and then concealing my conflict of interest in national media interviews.\u201d Whether Aslan intentionally concealed his conflict of interest is uncertain. But it it clear that NPR failed to make it\u2019s audience aware of that potential conflict and bias. Perhaps they assumed listeners would discount the work as mere opinion and then wonder why they were running such an interview in the first place. <\/p>\n

UPDATE: As a reader points out, NPR does acknowledge that Aslan became a Muslim \u2014 forty minutes into the forty-five minute interview<\/a>. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Did you know that Jesus wasn\u2019t really God? Despite what his disciples claim, he never believed he was the Messiah, much less God incarnate. He was a merely a Jewish revolutionary that was crucified by the Roman Empire and later deified (quite literally) by people who really didn\u2019t know him. That\u2019s not a new claim, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1213,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,66,35,18,23,12,19],"tags":[15468,105,2033,2035,2034],"class_list":["post-108580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-interviews","category-islam","category-people","category-radio-and-tv","category-religion","category-world-religions","tag-islam","tag-npr","tag-reza-aslan","tag-terry-gross","tag-zealot"],"yoast_head":"\nNPR's curiously biased quest for the historical Jesus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Did you know that Jesus wasn't really God? Despite what his disciples claim, he never believed he was the Messiah, much less God incarnate. 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