Is Reza Aslan's New Book Giving History A Bad Name?

"For a brief moment, Reza Aslan will be heralded as a breakthrough author. In a month or so, some other theory, equally unsubstantiated and certainly contradictory, will get the same kind of airtime. Such works are generally ignored by working scholars, who tend to be suspicious of anything that bypasses the peer review process."  -John Dickson

Recently I posted about Reza Aslan's new book Zealot expressing some of the concerns I had about the author over stating his credentials here.  There are many that are weighing in on Aslan's book but I found one review particularly interesting by John Dickson which can be read here.  Dickson offers up a lengthy discussion of Aslan's book and if you have the time I highly recommend you read it, but I found the quote above interesting.  Dickson mentions that works like Aslan's are generally ignored by working scholars.  The reason he gives is that scholars tend to be suspicious of anything that bypasses the peer review process.  One of the questions I asked in my original post is why would someone of Aslan's self proclaimed scholarly motives not submit his work to an academic publisher to follow the peer review process.

Moving on, I have listed some of John Dickson's criticisms of Aslan's book below:

Reza Aslan New Book on the Historic Jesus

The new book Zealot by Reza Aslan (another attempt at revealing the "historic Jesus" that contradicts the Biblical account) has gained much attention in popular media.  I watched the Fox interview here and became suspicious about the books legitimacy without even having read the book.  I know we have been told not to judge a book by its cover but is it ok to judge a book by its author?

Immediately the author became defensive when asked the question why a Muslim would be interested in Jesus.  Call this a red flag but when a person responds to a question by misdirection some thing is up.  It is like a criminal who was asked where he was while the crime was taking place.  Instead of providing an explanation that would clear him he engages in misdirection and opens a discussion about something irrelevant to the question.  In this case Aslan goes right to protecting his credentials as a "Ph.D" as a "scholar" etc.  In my opinion this question could have been a great opportunity to do two things: first, he could have provided an answer to win ligitimacy for the work and secondly, if done well he could have dismissed any suspecion about his motives as a Muslim writing about the historic Jesus.

Repeatedly through the interview Reza restates his credentials over and over like a montra.  Maybe he is impressed by them but for most of us outside of the ivory towers we want something like compelling substance before we run right out and buy.  It doesn't matter how many abbreviations one has in front of his name if he isn't making sense.  Moreover, academia also functions in this same way.  Interestingly in spite of his admiration for his academic credentials his book wasn't published by an academic publisher.  Why not?  If this is truly a piece of unbiased scholarly inquiry why not share it among is peers?

After watching the interview with Fox News I attempted to look up Reza Aslan to give him the benefit of the doubt in my mind.  What I found was it was difficult to learn anything about his credintials.  I went to his web site then to his faculty web site at the University of California Riverside and found nothing.  I was expecting to find his four degrees in New Testament, Biblical Greek, maybe a PhD. in History that he boasted about or maybe a Curriculem Vitae.  No such luck.  However, I did find a post  
Snickering at FoxNews while getting duped by ‘Zealot’ author that explains the author overstated his claims.  This actually explains quite a bit about why the interview was so strange.  So the question is if he is willing to overstate his claims about his credentials is he also willing to overstate his claims in his book about the historical Jesus?  I think i'll pass on this one.