Jesus Of Nazareth Analysis

This podcast talks about Jesus Christ from a historical perspective through the book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth and its author, Reza Aslan. This book dives into the historical perspective of Jesus of Nazareth and discusses Reza’s own religious journey. Religion is defined by the book to a a social institution involving beliefs and practices based on recognizing the sacred. There are several concepts from the lecture and book can be seen through this podcast. Religion is very complex as shown by Emile Durkheim thought of religion involves things that surpass the limits of our knowledge. The podcast discusses Reza’s life story and journey from war struck Iran to the United States. Reza describes that Muslim in Iran is more …show more content…
This analysis follows Durkheim’s theory that religion has three major functions. These functions are that of religion promotes social cohesion by uniting people together, religion promotes conformity by encouraging people to obey cultural norms, and religion gives meaning to purpose an life. For Reza in Iran, the social norm was to follow islamic beliefs and be muslim. But in order to escape war, Reza and his family immigrated to the United States. This geographical move introduced a different culture and social norms causing Reza to back away from his culture, ethnicity, and religion. In the United States, majority of the population are Christians setting the social norm of being a believer in the Christian faith. The lecture defines faith as a belief based conviction rather than scientific evidence that cant be proved or disproved. Many of the kids Reza hung out with were Christians and parents saw as good people. Reza took Jesus into his heart at age 15 at a YoungLife camp. Reza states, “You couldn't be more American than to accept Jesus into your heart.” This quote shows that even an outsider could see the social norm of being Christian in the United