On Jesus as zealot.
Reza Aslan’s Zealot is the best book on the historical Jesus I’ve ever read. Part of what makes it so interesting is Aslan’s ambivalence. Had Jesus not been transformed from a zealot whose only interest was the liberation of the Jews from Rome into a universal man-God, Christianity would not have survived. It would never have been created in the first place. But the survival and prosperity of Christianity came at a cost: the loss not only of its Jewish roots, but its political program of equality and justice. Or so Aslan argues.