Zealotry was originally a political movement in 1st century Second Temple Judaism which sought to incite the people of Iudaea Province to rebel against the Roman Empire and expel it from the Holy land by force of arms, most notably during the Great Jewish Revolt (66-70). Zealotry was described by Josephus as one of the "four sects" at this time. The zealots have been described as one of the first examples of the use of terrorism.^[1]

Etymology[link]

The term "zealot", in Hebrew kanai (קנאי, frequently used in plural form, קנאים (kana'im)), means one who is zealous on behalf of God. The term derives from Greek ζηλωτής (zelotes), "emulator, zealous admirer or follower".^[2][3]

History[link]

Statue of Simon the Zealot by Hermann Schievelbein at the roof of the Helsinki Cathedral.

Josephus' Jewish Antiquities^[4] states that there were three main Jewish sects at this time, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes. The Zealots were a "fourth sect", founded by Judas of Galilee (also called Judas of Gamala) and Zadok the Pharisee in the year 6 against Quirinius' tax reform, shortly after the Roman Empire declared what had most recently been the tetrarchy of Herod Archelaus to be a Roman province, and that they "agree in all other things with the Pharisaic notions; but they have an inviolable attachment to liberty, and say that God is to be their only Ruler and Lord." (18.1.6)

According to the Jewish Encyclopedia article on Zealots:^[5]

The opposite has also been argued: that the group was not so clearly marked out (before the first war of 66-70/3) as some have thought.^[6]

The Crisis under Caligula (37-41) has been proposed as the "first open break between Rome and the Jews", even though problems were already evident during the Census of Quirinius in 6 and under Sejanus (before 31).^[7] See also Anti-Judaism in the pre-Christian Roman Empire.

Two of Judas' sons, Jacob and Simon, were involved in a revolt and were executed by Tiberius Alexander, the procurator of Iudaea province from 46 to 48.^[8]

When Rome introduced the imperial cult, the Jews unsuccessfully rebelled in the Great Jewish Revolt (66–73 CE). The Zealots continued to oppose the Romans.

The Zealots had the leading role in the Jewish Revolt of 66. They succeeded in taking over Jerusalem, and held it until 70, when the son of Roman Emperor Vespasian, Titus, retook the city and destroyed Herod's Temple during the destruction of Jerusalem.

The Zealots objected to Roman rule and violently sought to eradicate it by generally targeting Romans and Greeks. Zealots who engaged in violence against other Jews were called the Sicarii.^[9] They raided Jewish habitations and killed Jews they considered apostate and collaborators, while also urging Jews to fight Romans and other Jews for the cause. Josephus paints a very bleak picture of their activities as they instituted what he characterized as a murderous "reign of terror" prior to the Jewish Temple's destruction.

According to Josephus, the Zealots followed John of Gischala, who had fought the Romans in Galilee, escaped, came to Jerusalem, and then inspired the locals to a fanatical position that led to the Temple's destruction.

Talmud against the Zealots[link]

In the Talmud, the Zealots are the non-religious (not following the religious leaders), and are also called the Biryonim (בריונים) meaning "boorish", "wild", or "ruffians", and are condemned for their aggression, their unwillingness to compromise to save the survivors of besieged Jerusalem, and their blind militarism against the Rabbis' opinion to seek treaties for peace. They are further blamed for having contributed to the demise of Jerusalem and the second Jewish Temple, and of ensuring Rome's retributions and stranglehold on Judea. According to the Babylonian Talmud, Gittin:56b, the Biryonim destroyed decades' worth of food and firewood in besieged Jerusalem to force the Jews to fight the Romans out of desperation. This event directly led to the escape of Yochanan ben Zakkai out of Jerusalem, who met Vespasian, a meeting which led to the foundation of the Academy of Yavneh which produced the Mishnah.

The Zealots advocated violence against the Romans, their Jewish collaborators, and the Sadducees, by raiding for provisions and other activities to aid their cause.

Masada[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

After the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in AD 70, 960 Zealots under the lead of Elazar ben Yair took refuge by capturing the Roman fortress of Masada and taking no prisoners. Rome sent the Tenth Legion to retake the stronghold, but it failed for three years. It is estimated that they took over 1,000 casualties in the process. The Zealots held the fortress even after the Romans invented new types of siege engines. Finally, in the third year of the siege, 73, The Romans completed a massive earthwork siege ramp up one face of the mountain on which Masada sat. This allowed them to bring the full strength of their siege to bear and penetrate the walls, a feat impossible before due to the topography of the mountain itself. When the Romans stormed in to capture the Zealots, they found that the fighters and their families had all committed suicide.

Today, members of some units of the Israel Defense Forces, climb Masada and declare "Masada Shall Not Fall Again", in Hebrew, at their graduation from basic training.

[edit] Sicarii

One particularly extreme group of Zealots was also known in Latin as sicarii, meaning "violent men" or "dagger men" (sing. sicarius, possibly a morphological reanalysis), because of their policy of killing Jews opposed to their call for war against Rome. Probably many Zealots were sicarii simultaneously, and they may be the biryonim of the Talmud that were feared even by the Jewish sages of the Mishnah.

According to historian H.H. Ben-Sasson, the Sicarii, originally based in Galilee, "were fighting for a social revolution, while the Jerusalem Zealots placed less stress on the social aspect" and the Sicarii "never attached themselves to one particular family and never proclaimed any of their leaders king". Both groups objected to the way the priestly families were running the Temple.^[8]

The term sicariii also referred to a class of gladiators who fought with a long, curved knife.

In the New Testament[link]

Simon[link]

A Simon who is referred to as "the Zealot" is found among the disciples of Jesus.^[10] It is unknown if this is the same "Simon the Zealot" mentioned by Josephus (as in "Eleazar ben Simon the Zealot", Eleazar's father), although the two Simons would be contemporaries.

Paul the Apostle[link]

Taking the Greek word zelotes in Acts 22:3 and Galatians 1:14 of the New Testament to mean a 'Zealot' with capital Z (the earliest Greek manuscripts are uncials or all capital letters), an article^[11] by Mark R. Fairchild suggests that Paul the Apostle may have been a Zealot, which might have been the driving force behind his persecution of the Christians (see stoning of Saint Stephen) before his conversion to Christianity, and his incident at Antioch even after his conversion.

While most English translations of the Bible render this Greek word as the adjective "zealous", the word is a noun meaning 'adherent, loyalist, enthusiast; patriot, zealot'. A 'Zealot' with capital Z, however, would suggest a member of the particular Zealots, the group that emerged in Jerusalem ca. AD 6 according to Josephus, see above. In the two cited verses Paul literally declares himself as one who is loyal to God, or an ardent observer of the Law, but see also Antinomianism in the NT. This does not necessarily prove Paul was revealing himself as a Zealot. A translation (the Modern King James Version of Jay P. Green) renders it as 'a zealous one'. Two modern translations (Jewish New Testament and Alternate Literal Translation) render it as 'a zealot'. The Unvarnished New Testament (1991) renders Galatians 1:14 as "...being an absolute zealot for the traditions...". These translations may not be inaccurate, but it is disputed by those who claim it gives the wrong association with the "Zealots".

See also[link]

• Knanaya

Notes[link]

External links[link]

Look up zealot in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Look up zealotry in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Look up Zealot in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

•  Sydney F. Smith (1913). "Zeal". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 
•  "Zealot". New International Encyclopedia. 1905. 

This article relies on references to primary sources or sources affiliated with the subject, rather than references from independent authors and third-party publications. Please add citations from reliable sources. (November 2007)

Reza Aslan
Born	(1972-05-03) 3 May 1972 (age 40) Tehran, Tehran Province, Iran
Occupation	Writer, Islamic thinker
Nationality	American
Spouse(s)	Jessica Jackley

Reza Aslan (Persian رضا اصلان, born May 3, 1972) is an Iranian-American activist, a nationally acclaimed writer of religions. He is on the faculty at the University of California, Riverside, and is a contributing editor for The Daily Beast. His books include the international bestseller, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, which has been translated into thirteen languages, and named one of the 100 most important books of the last decade. He is also the author of How to Win a Cosmic War, published in paperback as Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in a Globalized Age. He is also editor of Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East, published by W. W. Norton, and co-editor with Aaron Hahn-Tapper of Muslims and Jews in America: Commonalities, Contentions, and Complexities, published by Palgrave Macmillan. Dr. Reza Aslan is CEO of Aslan Media Inc., whose holdings include BoomGen Studios, the first ever motion picture studio entirely focused on entertainment content about the Greater Middle East and its globally dispersed communities. His non-profit organization, Aslan Media Initiatives (AslanMedia.com), uses social-media technology to provide news and information about the Middle East to young people all over the world.

Background[link]

Aslan's family came to the United States from Tehran in 1979, fleeing the Iranian Revolution. He grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. In the early 1990s, Aslan taught courses at De La Salle High School in Concord, California. Iranian singer Leila Forouhar is his aunt.

Aslan holds a Bachelor of Arts' degree in religions from Santa Clara University, a Master of Theological Studies' degree from Harvard Divinity School, a doctorate in the sociology of religions from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a Master of Fine Arts' degree from the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop, where he was named the Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, and the Pacific Council on International Policy. He has served as Legislative Assistant for the Friends Committee on National Legislation in Washington D.C., and was elected President of the World Conference of Religions for Peace, Harvard Chapter. He serves on the board of directors of the Ploughshares Fund, PEN Center USA, and serves on the national advisory board of the Levantine Cultural Center.

As Contributing Editor, Aslan has written numerous articles for The Daily Beast. He has also written for various newspapers and periodicals, including The Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Slate, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The Guardian, the Chicago Tribune, and The Nation. He has made numerous appearances on TV and radio, including National Public Radio (NPR), PBS, The Rachel Maddow Show, Meet the Press, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, Anderson Cooper 360°, Hardball, Nightline, Real Time with Bill Maher, Fareed Zakaria GPS, and ABC Australia's Big Ideas.^[1]

Currently[link]

Aslan is President and CEO of Aslan Media Inc., whose holdings include BoomGen Studios, a mini-motion picture and media company focused entirely on entertainment about the Greater Middle East and its Diaspora communities. He currently lives in Hollywood, California where he is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside. In addition, he is a Research Associate at the University of Southern California's Center on Public Diplomacy.

War on Terrorism[link]

Aslan refers to Al Qaeda's jihad against west as "a cosmic war", distinct from holy war, in which rival religious groups are engaged in an earthly battle for material goals. "A cosmic war is like a ritual drama in which participants act out on earth a battle they believe is actually taking place in the heavens." American rhetoric of "war on terrorism", Aslan says, is in precise "cosmic dualism" to Al Qaeda's jihad. Aslan draws a distinction between Islamism and Jihadism. Islamists have legitimate goals and can be negotiated with, unlike Jihadists, who dream of an idealized past of a pan Islamic borderless "religious communalism". Aslan's prescription for winning the cosmic war is to not fight one and engage moderate Islamic political forces in democratic process. "Throughout the Middle East, whenever moderate Islamist parties have been allowed to participate in the political process, popular support for more extremist groups has diminished."^[2]

Other publications[link]

• 'The Struggle for Islam's Soul', essay in With All Our Might: A Progressive Strategy for Defeating Jihadism and Defending Liberty, Will Marshall, ed. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006.
• 'From Here to Mullahcracy', essay in My Sister, Guard Your Veil; My Brother, Guard Your Eyes: Uncensored Iranian Voices, Lila Azam Zanganeh, ed. Beacon Press, 2006.
• 'Forward', Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions, Catherine Bell, Oxford University Press, 2009.
• 'Losing the War', The New World Reader, Gilbert H Muller, ed., CUNY Press, 2010.
• 'Preface', Reframing 9/11: Film, Popular Culture and the War on Terror, Jeff Birkenstein, Anna Froula, and Karen Randell, eds. Continuum, 2010.
• 'Preface'. Religion and the New Atheism: A Critical Appraisal, Amarnath Amarasingam, ed. Brill, 2010.

Quotations[link]

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This biographical section of an article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (April 2012)

• "I believe we are living in the time of the Islamic reformation. In fact, I think we are living in the twilight of that reformation. For me, the word reform is defined by its inevitability. This process cannot be stopped; it can be slowed down for a time but reform is inevitable. It's an historic reformation taking place within Islam — it's adapting itself to the realities of the world around it. I think we'll see the same process we saw in the Christian reformation from doctrinal absolutism to doctrinal relativism; toward a truly indigenous Islamic enlightenment. And it's up to us as Muslims in the US to give voice to that for our brothers and sisters who don't have the voice or the same ability to speak out as we do."
• "It is pluralism—the peaceful coexistence and legal equality between different ethnic, religious or political ideologies—that defines democracy, not secularism."
• "The veil is seen as a symbol of Islam but like all symbols, it's meaningless unless interpreted. The veil is as much a symbol of oppression of women as it is an expression of Muslim femininity. The strangeness of this is that if you go to a country where the veil is either mandatory or there is a lot of pressure to wear it, you'll find the vast majority of women are against it. But, if you go to a country like Turkey where the veil is outlawed in much of the public realm — in the latest polls, 70 percent of the Muslim women want to remove that law."
• "Iraq should look to Israel for a model that combines democracy and religious belief."
• "Despite the apartheid state that has resulted from over half a century of bloody territorial conflicts with its neighboring Palestinian territories, few would deny that the state of Israel is a democracy. At the same time, Israel is a country founded upon an exclusivist Jewish moral framework, which offers all the world's Jews — regardless of their nationality — immediate citizenship, providing them with a host of benefits and privileges over its non-Jewish citizens. It is a country in which the Orthodox rabbinical courts have jurisdiction over all matters relating to Judaism (including who is a Jew); where religious schools (yeshivas) are subsidized by the state, and marriages are religious, rather than civil affairs (meaning no official will marry a Jew to a non-Jew); and the government is dominated by religious parties such as the ultra-Orthodox Shas, the Yahadut Hatorah, and of course the ruling Likud."
• "If we don't figure out a way to strip these conflicts of their religious connotations, then we will never figure out a way to put an end to them. Because as long as these remain cosmic conflicts, they will go on for eternity."
• "A lot of scholars, myself included, believe the future of Islam, especially Islamic democracy, rests in the Shia world. It's Iran and Iraq where the most exciting experiments are being carried out."
• "Iraq’s 2,000-year-old Christian community is on the brink of extinction, its members targeted by al Qaeda attacks and fleeing abroad... This silence cannot stand. Americans of all faiths must band together and pressure the State Department to do something about the wanton murder of Iraqi Christians before it's too late and there are no more Christians in Iraq to protect. What is happening in Iraq is genocide, plain and simple. It must be stopped now."
• "The fact of the matter is that Islam, like all religions, has been in a constant state of evolution for 1400 years. It has been constantly adapting to the spiritual, the cultural, the political, the social realities and the landscape in which it finds itself, which is why there is such a wide diversity of belief and practices within the Muslim world."

See also[link]

• No God but God (book)
• List of Islamic scholars
• Extremism
• List of Muslim reformers

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Reza Aslan speaks at Asia Society, November 2010 (w/ video)
• at Levantine Cultural Center
• Interview with Reza Aslan from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Reza Aslan's Intellectual Groupie's on Livejournal
• His biography
• The Islamic reformation Reza Aslan speaks with Madrid11.net
• LA Weekly Interview
• Reza Aslan Interview with Islamica Magazine
• Aslan's articles in the Public Diplomacy Blog

Video and audio[link]

• Reza Aslan is a keynote speaker in the upcoming conference December 4–6, 2009 Los Angeles, USC CA
• Reza Aslan interviewed by Bree Walker March 30, 2008
• Reza Aslan talks about The Future of U.S./Iran Relations (video)
• Reza Aslan in Conversation with Jack Miles (video)
• Reza Aslan vs. Sam Harris Debate
• Video debates featuring Aslan on Bloggingheads.tv
• Raza's talk, "How to Get Out of the Cosmic War in the Middle East."
• Reza talks to Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks.