i thoroughly enjoyed this deep dive and changing my perspective to consider historically the time and place and context of jesus of nazareth. i enjoy placing things in the context within which they exist, and despite growing up heavily catholic, i had never considered jesus the historical man, and for all it's sins, this book introduced me to that. it also led me to a deep reddit spiral about the controversy surrounding this book and the author, which was in and of itself a pleasant reminder about the realities of being an academic studying this field - there are no truths here, just theories (some more substantiated than others), and the work of academia is two-fold: standing on the shoulders of giants to further theorize, or bring dense academic material to mainstream culture. reza aslan did not discover anything in this book, but he made jesus of nazareth a man mainstream culture can learn to engage with beyond jesus christ, and that's worthwhile too.