Ernest Renan

1823-1892 · French · History of Religion

The Sermon on the Mount will never be surpassed.

Ernest Renan (1823–1892) was a Breton seminarian who lost his faith over Hebrew grammar. Studying for the priesthood at Saint-Sulpice, he found that the philological evidence for the composition of the Pentateuch could not be reconciled with what he was required to believe about it, and left in 1845 — not in rebellion, he insisted afterwards, but because he could no longer say the words. He became instead the most famous, and most hated, historian of Christianity in France.

Topics Ernest Renan addresses

• the exclusion of miracle from historical method
• the Life of Jesus
• the Galilean idyll
• the hardening of the ministry
• the resurrection and the love of Mary Magdalene
• the origins of Christianity
• the Apostles
• Saint Paul
• the Antichrist and Nero
• the Christian church under Hadrian
• Marcus Aurelius
• the history of the people of Israel
• the future of science
• philology as the exact science of mind
• the Semitic and the Aryan
• monotheism as a racial disposition
• the intellectual and moral reform of France
• what is a nation
• the daily plebiscite
• forgetting as a factor in nationality
• the seminary and the loss of faith
• Averroes and Averroism
• the fourth Gospel as a source
• legend and the formation of the Gospels

Questions to put to Ernest Renan

The Life of Jesus and the Origins of Christianity

• What made you write a Life of Jesus as history rather than theology?
• How do you picture Jesus in the early Galilean ministry?
• Why does Jesus's preaching harden as the ministry goes on?
• What actually happened on Easter morning if the resurrection didn't occur?
• How did a movement that began in a Galilean village become the religion of the Roman Empire?

Historical Method and the Exclusion of Miracle

• Why do you exclude miracles from history in advance?
• Isn't ruling out miracles before you examine the evidence just another dogma?
• How do you decide which parts of the Gospels are historical and which are legend?
• What role does the Fourth Gospel play in reconstructing the historical Jesus?
• Can a historian who doesn't believe in miracles write a fair account of a religious founder?

The Semitic and the Aryan Mind

• What do you mean by the Semitic mind and the Aryan mind?
• How does studying languages lead you to conclusions about racial psychology?
• Why do you say the Semitic peoples lack mythology and plastic art?
• Is monotheism really a racial disposition rather than a theological discovery?
• How do you respond to scholars who reject the Semitic-Aryan distinction?

What Is a Nation?

• What makes a nation a nation if not race or language?
• What do you mean by calling a nation a daily plebiscite?
• Why is forgetting as important to nationhood as remembering?
• How should France think about Alsace-Lorraine after 1871?
• Can your account of nationhood reconcile patriotism with universal humanity?

The Future of Science and the Religion of Humanity

• What do you mean by the future of science?
• How can philology be an exact science of the products of mind?
• Will organized critical knowledge really replace religion?
• Why did you wait forty years to publish the book you wrote in 1848?
• What is the religion of humanity and how does it differ from Christianity?

The Seminary and the Loss of Faith

• What happened at Saint-Sulpice that made you abandon the priesthood?
• How did studying Hebrew lead you to doubt the Bible's divine authorship?
• Can you describe the intellectual crisis that ended your vocation?
• Do you see your scholarship as continuing the religious life by other means?

Converse with Ernest Renan on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Ernest Renan's own writing, cited to the page.