Reza Aslan could have saved his useless trouble, if he had read my essay

Here is mine:

deretour : Was Jesus, the Christ, Essenian?
http://hglundahlsblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/was-jesus-christ-essenian.html

When asking the question, I answer, in the essay, no.

He now goes on to say yes, and gets this review by Lita Cosner:

CMI : Reza Aslan’s Zealot, a second-rate rehashing of discredited theories
http://creation.com/zealot

A bonus to Lita, she gives an explanation of how St Joseph had an independent economy after returning to the Holy Land and to Nazareth that I had not thought of:

This is not a minor slip; this is sloppiness indicative of the quality of the entire book. He says a woodworker in Jesus’ day would have had little to do. Even without making the correction that tekton often can indicate some sort of stonemason as well as carpenter, most scholars believe that the construction in nearby Sepphoris would have meant steady work for artisans like Joseph and Jesus.

My own take would have been he left his carpenter's shop with one of the sons of the earlier marriage (or one of the nephews, if you favour St Jerome over Protoeveangelium Jacobi) and got it back after a longer absence than planned. But either way, there is no unsolvable mystery as to how he got back in business.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
UL of Nanterre - Paris X
St Remigius of Reims
(Little St Therese is
the day after tomorrow
or was yesterday)
1-X-2013

PS, she does make a slip:

Furthermore, nowhere in early Christianity is there the slightest hint that this is a land-oriented faith. Centuries later when it becomes centered around a location, it is Rome and a few other influential cities that become bases for the faith, not Jerusalem.

Two points: this does not make the faith or the Church land-oriented. Not like the Hebrew Temple Cult was. Rome has been for seventy years or so, replaced by Avignon. It may be now replaced by Elx or Palmar de Troya or a Vatican in Exile in Topeka. But insofar as it does, it was already so the generation immaediately following the apostles:

Ignatius, who is also called Theophorus, to the Church which has obtained mercy, through the majesty of the Most High Father, and Jesus Christ, His only-begotten Son; the Church which is beloved and enlightened by the will of Him that wills all things which are according to the love of Jesus Christ our God, which also presides in the place of the region of the Romans, worthy of God, worthy of honour, worthy of the highest happiness, worthy of praise, worthy of obtaining her every desire, worthy of being deemed holy, and which presides over love, is named from Christ, and from the Father, which I also salute in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father: to those who are united, both according to the flesh and spirit, to every one of His commandments; who are filled inseparably with the grace of God, and are purified from every strange taint, [I wish] abundance of happiness unblameably, in Jesus Christ our God.

St Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Romans - and he was second successor of St Peter in Antioch. The very next generation, not centuries later.