Gary Manning, Jr., associate professor of New Testament at Biola University’s Talbot School of Theology, has extensive take down of the currently popular book on Jesus, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. He notes at the end of his long post that there are too many problems with this book to list or argue with them all, but here’s a couple of them:

“Why does Paul make a sacrifice in Jerusalem? It must be that James forced him to recant his heretical views, not (as Luke claims) to complete a Nazirite vow that Paul voluntarily began before arriving in Jerusalem. Why does Luke end the book of Acts with Paul’s imprisonment, not his death? It must be to cover up some damning evidence against Paul! (No mention of the idea that Luke ended Acts then because that’s when he wrote Acts).”

Manning summaries the book as a conspiracy theory. It’s message, he writes: “Jesus was really a proclaimer of violent revolution, but the gospels and Paul covered up the evidence. Aslan then has a typical conspiracy-theory approach: any time the gospels present evidence against Aslan’s theory, they were making it up; any time the gospels present evidence in favor of Aslan’s theory, they were telling the truth.” (via Justin Taylor)