Reza Aslan's Zealot. It's a life and times of Jesus. I am not qualified to judge the story he tells; I would be interested to see comments from anyone who is. The story is of a messianic zealot, of a sort that were common in those days, from the poor and obscure village of Nazareth, who wandered around preaching a message of deliverance for the Jewish people to happen in this world, not the next. He eventually came up against the Roman powers in Jerusalem, who immediately executed him for sedition, as they did all of his sort. The label "King of the Jews" on the cross was not a recognition of his divine status, but the charge against him. The only thing that distinguishes him from other failed messiahs (of whom Aslan mentions a good many) was that his movement survived his death and grew.

Aslan passes on the question of whether the resurrection actually happened, but identifies it as the key idea that transformed the movement into one that would spread across the world. Without the resurrection, Jesus is just another false messiah, the crucifixion being the proof of his falsity. Aslan declares the resurrection to be "not a historical event" and to lie "outside the scope of history", which seems like fudging. The paucity of sources may make it inaccessible to historical inquiry, but in fact, either something of the sort happened or it did not. Other messiahs were executed and that was the end of them. Somehow, in Jesus' case, the idea of the resurrection took hold and gave his followers hope for the future of what he had started.

Those followers continued to meet, led by James, Peter, and John. First among these was James, brother of Jesus. But then Paul had some sort of conversion experience, joined the movement, and then fought bitterly with its leaders to take it over and take it in a new direction, one more palatable to the Roman authority. The very idea of Jewish deliverance from oppression was eliminated, the kingdom was declared to be not of this world, Jesus' death was firmly placed on the heads of the Jews, Pilate was whitewashed (the whole trial account in the Gospels, Reza says, is clearly fiction), James in Jerusalem was marginalised in favour of Peter in Rome, the original emphasis on justice for the poor and upholding of the Jewish law faded away, and modern Christianity began to be created.