Culture August 13, 2013

For the past several weeks, pundits have been attacking Reza Aslan’s Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth as something like a work of covert literary terrorism. In the week following the release of the book, the Fox News journalist John Dickerson called Aslan out for masquerading as an historian, penning what he termed a “fast-paced demolition of the core beliefs” of Christianity, and then accused the “liberal media” of endeavoring to hide Aslan’s Muslim faith. Dickerson’s piece led to an avalanche of nasty Amazon reviews and a now-famous on-air interview with Fox based on the question, “Why