{"agent_id":"renan","agent_name":"Ernest Renan","slug":"method","label":"Method: may a historian exclude miracle in advance, or is that a dogma disguised as a rule?","topic":"Method","question":"May a historian exclude miracle in advance, or is that a dogma disguised as a rule?","position":"A historian works with what can be examined. No miracle has ever taken place under conditions that would allow verification, and to admit one is to abandon the discipline, not to extend it.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"A historian works with what can be examined.","n":[]},{"t":"No miracle has ever taken place under conditions that would allow verification, and to admit one is to abandon the discipline, not to extend it.","n":[1,2,3,4,5]}]],"texts":"*Vie de Jésus* (1863), the Introduction and the preface to the thirteenth edition; *Les Apôtres* (1866), introduction; *L'Avenir de la science* (written 1848, published 1890). Reception: the immediate Catholic replies of 1863–64; the standing charge that the exclusion is a philosophical premise smuggled in as method; Schweitzer's placement of the book in the liberal quest.","works":["*Vie de Jésus* (1863), the Introduction and the preface to the thirteenth edition","*Les Apôtres* (1866), introduction","*L'Avenir de la science* (written 1848, published 1890)"],"reception":"the immediate Catholic replies of 1863–64; the standing charge that the exclusion is a philosophical premise smuggled in as method; Schweitzer's placement of the book in the liberal quest.","status":"The premise of the whole authorship and the point at which its critics have always attacked.","era":"1823-1892","discipline":"Theology, Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"The Life of Jesus","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Marvellous facts, attested by the whole population of small towns, have, thanks to a severer scrutiny, been exploded. If it is proved that no contemporary miracle will bear inquiry, is it not probable that the miracles of the past, which have all been performed in popular gatherings, would equally present their share of illusion, if it were possible to criticise them in detail?","label":"The Life of Jesus"},{"n":2,"work":"The Life of Jesus","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"They were written between the year 50 and the year 140 of the Hegira. When the history of the Jewish schools in the ages which immediately preceded and followed the birth of Christianity shall be written, no one will make any scruple of attributing to Hillel, Shammai, Gamaliel the maxims ascribed to them by the *Mishnah* and the *Gemara*, although these great compilations were written many hundreds of years after…","label":"The Life of Jesus"},{"n":3,"work":"Recollections of My Youth","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"M. Littre's inexorable phrase, \"Despite all the researches which have been made, no miracle has ever taken place where it could be observed and put upon record\" is a stumbling-block which cannot be moved out of the path.","label":"Recollections of My Youth"},{"n":4,"work":"Studies of Religious History and Criticism","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"This they say is merely a negative argument from which no conclusion can be drawn. But would they reason thus in any secular matter, and are not these the sort of arguments on which a true criticism often bases its most solid inductions?* THE CRITICAL HISTORIANS OF JESUS.","label":"Studies of Religious History and Criticism"},{"n":5,"work":"The Apostles","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"To debar criticism from similar interpretations would be as unreasonable as to limit the astronomer to the visible state of the heavens. Does not astronomy, on the contrary, involve an allowance for the parallax caused by the position of the observer, and construe from apparent deceptive appearances the real condition of the starry skies?","label":"The Apostles"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[]}