1Sahil B = ""In the end, there are only two hard historical facts about Jesus of Nazareth upon which we can confidently rely: the first is that Jesus
was a Jew who led a popular Jewish movement in Palestine at the beginning of the first century C.E.; the second is that Rome crucified him
for doing so. By themselves these two facts cannot provide a complete portrait of the life of a man who lived two thousand years ago. But
when combined with all we know about the tumultuous era in which Jesus lived—and thanks to the Romans, we know a great deal—these
two facts can help paint a picture of Jesus of Nazareth that may be more historically accurate than the one painted by the gospels. Indeed,
the Jesus that emerges from this historical exercise—a zealous revolutionary swept up, as all Jews of the era were, in the religious and
political turmoil of first-century Palestine—bears little resemblance to the image of the gentle shepherd cultivated by the early Christian
community"-Zealot, Reza Aslan "
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