This book provides a very interesting view to the history of Christianity and its belief system. It paints a picture of Jesus of Nazareth as a revolutionary rebel, challenging the status quo and trying to reverse the wealth and power dynamics of the society he lived in. Religion lessons in school would've been way more interesting if these aspects would've been discussed!

For a long time, I've thought that pretty much everything in the Bible is made up. Apparently, this is not the case. This book provides an interesting dive into the historical aspects of Jesus and the Bible and the religious layers added onto the accounts later on.

I've never thought about the political situation in ancient Palestine and knew practically nothing about the Roman occupation and the status of the Palestinian Jews. This book gave me a whole new understanding of how modern Christianity was born – and created – and what its relationship with Jesus' teachings and views is like. (Very distant and often contradictory.) I also learned about one of the earliest roots of antisemitism: the Jews were explicitly blamed for killing Jesus in an attempt to appeal to the Romans who became the biggest target audience for early Christianity. This was very interesting to me.

The book is a well-functioning mix of nonfiction and academic literature. The main book is in literary style, while the notes are more academic and contain a lot of sources. They're still quite readable, at least in my opinion.

My biggest grievance with the book is not providing the original names of the people discussed. Jesus' original name (Yeshu) is mentioned, but anyone else's is not. I would have also liked to know the definition for a cult, as Aslan often refers to the "Jewish cult". And I was left wondering why Jesus started to follow John the Baptist in the first place. Maybe it's not known, but it could've been addressed. However, these are quite small things; it's a very good book.