Ernest Renan

“ To write the history of a religion, it is necessary, firstly, to have believed it (otherwise we should not be able to understand how it has charmed and satisfied the human conscience) ; in the second place, to believe it no longer in an absolute manner, for absolute faith is incompatible with sincere history. But love is possible without faith. To abstain from attaching one's self to any of the forms which captivate the adoration of men is not to deprive ourselves of the enjoyment of that which is good and beautiful in them. ”

“ When I first conceived the idea of a history of the origin of Christianity, what I wished to write was, in fact, a history of doctrines, in which men and their actions would have hardly had a place. Jesus would scarcely have been named; I should have endeavoured to show how the ideas which have grown under his name took root and covered the world. But I have learned since that history is not a simple game of abstractions; that men are more than doctrines. ”

“ To seek to explain these, or to reduce them to legends, is not to mutilate facts in the name of theory; it is to make the observation of facts our groundwork. None of the miracles with which the old histories are filled took place under scientific conditions. Observation, which has never once been falsified, teaches us that miracles never happen but in times and countries in which they are believed, and before persons disposed to believe them. No miracle ever occurred in the presence of men capable of testing its miraculous character. ”

“ If the miracle succeeded each time, two things would be proved: first, that supernatural events happen in the world; second, that the power of producing them belongs, or is delegated to, certain persons. But who does not see that no miracle ever took place under these conditions, but that always hitherto the thaumaturgus has chosen the subject of the experiment, chosen the spot, chosen the public; that, besides, the people themselves most commonly in consequence of the invincible want to see something divine in great events and great men -- create the marvellous legends afterwards? ”

“ In histories such as this, the great test that we have got the truth is to have succeeded in combining the texts in such a manner that they shall constitute a logical, probable narrative, harmonious throughout. The secret laws of life, of the progression of organic products, of the melting of minute distinctions, ought to be consulted at each moment; for what is required to be reproduced is not the material circumstance, which it is impossible to verify, but the very soul of history ”

“ This by no means implies that there are not in the discourses of John some admirable gleams, some traits which truly come from Jesus. But the mystic tone of these discourses does not correspond at all to the character of the eloquence of Jesus, such as we picture it according to the Synoptics. A new spirit has breathed; Gnosticism has already commenced; the Galilean era of the kingdom of God is finished; the hope of the near advent of Christ is more distant; we cater on the barrenness of metaphysics, into the darkness of abstract dogma. ”

“ A rapid metamorphosis operated in the same manner in the twenty or thirty years which followed the death of Jesus, and imposed upon his biography the peculiarities of all ideal legend. Death adds perfection to the most perfect man; it frees him from all defect in the eyes of those who have loved him. ”

“ Everyone who sets himself to write the life of Jesus without any predetermined theory as to the relative value of the Gospels, letting himself be guided solely by the sentiment of the subject, will be led in numerous instances to prefer the narration of John to that of the Synoptics. The last months of the life of Jesus especially are explained by John alone; a number of the features of the passion, unintelligible in the Synoptics, resume both probility and possibility in the narrative of the fourth Gospel. ”

“ We should see the learned system of the Antonines crumble, the decadence of the ancient civilization become irrevocable, Christianity profit from its ruin, Syria conquer the whole West, and Jesus, in company with the gods and the deified sages of Asia, take possession and a purely civil government no longer sufficed. ”

“ Matthew evidently merits an unlimited confidence as to the discourses; they are the logia, the identical notes taken from a clear and lively remembrance of the teachings of Jesus. A kind of splendour at once mild and terrible -- a divine strength, if we may so speak -- emphasises these words, detaches them from the context, and renders them easily distinguishable. The person who imposes upon himself the task of making a continuous narrative from the gospel history possesses, in this respect, an excellent touchstone. The real words of Jesus disclose themselves ”

“ We are here, then, upon solid ground; for we are concerned with a work written entirely by the same hand, and of the most perfect unity.
The Gospels of Matthew and Mark have not nearly the same stamp of individuality. They are impersonal compositions, in which the author totally disappears. A proper name written at the head of works of this kind does not amount to much. But if the Gospel of Luke is dated, those of Matthew and Mark are dated also; for it is certain that the third Gospel is posterior to the first two, and exhibits the character of a much more advanced compilation. ”

“ We say, "Up to this time a miracle has never been proved." If to-morrow a thaumaturgus present himself with credentials sufficiently important to be discussed, and announce himself as able, say, to raise the dead, what would be done? A commission, composed of physiologists, physicists, chemists, persons accustomed to historical criticism, would be named. This commission would choose a corpse, would assure itself that the death was real, would select the room in which the experiment should be made, would arrange the whole system of precautions, so as to leave no chance of doubt. ”

“ Our remembrances are transformed with our circumstances; the ideal of a person that we have known changes as we change. Considering Jesus as the incarnation of truth, John could not fail to attribute to him that which he had come to consider as the truth.
If we must speak candidly, we will add that probably John himself had little share in this; that the change was made around him rather than by him. One is sometimes tempted to believe that precious notes, coming from the Apostle, have been employed by his disciples in a very different sense from the primitive Gospel spirit. ”

“ The poor man who has but one book wishes that it may contain all that is dear to his heart. These little books were lent, each one transcribed in the margin of his copy the words, and the parables he found elsewhere, which touched him. ”

“ It is necessary to make a selection. To assert that an event cannot take place in two ways at once, or in an impossible manner, is not to impose an a'pyiori philosophy upon history. The historian ought not to conclude that a fact is false because he possesses several versions of it, or because credulity has mixed with them much that is fabulous. He ought in such a case to be very cautious, to examine the texts, and to proceed carefully by induction. There is one class of narratives especially to which this principle must necessarily be applied. Such are narratives of supernatural events. ”

“ There are many not well-defined legends which have proceeded from the zeal of the second Christian generation. The Gospel of Mark is much firmer, more precise, containing fewer subsequent additions. He is the one of the three Synoptics who has remanied the most primitive the most original, the one to whom the fewest after-elements have been added. In Mark the facts are related with a clearness for which we seek in vain among the other evangelists. He likes to report certain words of Jesus in Syro-Chaldean. He is full of minute observations, coming doubtless from an eve-witness. ”

“ In this sense such popular narratives would be worth more than a formal and official history. We may say as much of the Gospels. Solely attentive to bring out strongly the excellency of the Master, his miracles, his teaching, the evangelists display entire indifference to everything that is not of the very spirit of Jesus. The contradictions respecting time, place, and persons were regarded as insignificant; for the higher the degree of inspiration attributed to the words of Jesus, the less was granted to the compilers themselves. ”

“ In almost all ancient histories, even in those which are much less legendary than these, details open up innumerable doubts. When we have two accounts of the same fact, it is extremely rare that the two accounts agree. Is not this a reason for anticipating many difficulties when we have but one? We may say that among the anecdotes, the discourses, the celebrated sayings which have been given us by the historians, there is not one strictly authentic. ”

“ He subdues some details in order to make the different narratives agree; he softens the passages which had become embarrassing on account of a more exalted idea of the divinity of Christ; he exaggerates the marvellous; commits errors in chronology; omits Hebraistic comments; quotes no word of Jesus in this language, and gives to all the localities their Greek names. We feel we have to do with a compiler -- with a man who has not himself seen the witnesses, but who labours at the texts and wrests their sense to make them agree. ”

“ Little importance was attached to these writings, and the preservers, such as Papias, greatly preferred oral tradition. As men still believed that the world was nearly at an nd, they cared little to compose books for the future; it was sufficient merely to preserve in their hearts a lively image of him whom they hoped soon to see again in the clouds. Hence the little authority which the Gospel texts enjoyed during one hundred and fifty years. ”

“ It requires a profound sentiment to embrace them all, moulding them into perfect unity. The method of art in a similar subject is a good guide; the exquisite tact of a Goethe would know how to apply it. The essential condition of the creations of art is, that they shall form a living system of which all the parts are mutually dependent and related. ”

“ Even partly erroneous traditions contain a portion of truth which history cannot neglect. No one has blamed M. Spranger for having, in writing the life of Mohammed, made much of the hadith or oral traditions concerning the prophet, and for often having attributed to his hero words which are only known through this source. Yet the traditions respecting Mohammed are not superior in historical value to the discourses and narratives which compose the Gospels. ”

“ Each trait which departs from the rules of classic narration ought to warn us to be careful; for the fact which has to be related has been living, natural, and harmonious. If we do not succeed in rendering it such by the recital, it is surely because we have not succeeded in seeing it aright. Suppose that, in restoring the Minerva of Phidias according to the texts, we produced a dry, jarring, artificial whole, what must we conclude? ”

“ Such a rearrangement is much more difficult in the case of the Gospels, the public life of Jesus having been shorter and less eventful than the life of the founder of Islamism. Meanwhile, the attempt to find a guiding thread through this labyrinth ought not to be taxed with gratuitous subtlety. There is no great abuse of hypothesis in supposing that a founder of a new religion commences by attaching himself to the moral aphorisms aleady in circulation in his time, and to the practices which are in vogue ”

“ On the other hand, the style of the discourses attributed to Jesus by the fourth Gospel presents the most complete analogy with that of the Epistles of St. John; we see that, in writing the discourses, the author followed not his recollections, but rather the somewhat monotonous movement of his own thought. Quite a new mystical language is introduced, a language of which the Synoptics had not the least idea ("world," "truth," "life," "light," "darkness," etc.) ”

“ Luke had probably under his eyes the biographical collection of Mark and the Logia of Matthew. But he treats them with much freedom; sometimes he fuses two anecdotes or two parables in one; sometimes he divides one in order to make two. He interprets the documents according to his own idea, he has not the absolute impassibility of Matthew and Mark. We might affirm certain things of his individual tastes and tendencies; he is a very exact devotee; he insists that Jesus had performed all the Jewish rites ”

“ Let anyone endeavor to get at the truth as to the way in which such or such contemporary fact has happened; he will not succeed. Two accounts of the same event given by different eye-witnesses differ essentially. Must we, therefore, reject all the colouring of the narratives, and limit ourselves to the bare facts only? That would be to suppress history. Certainly, I think that, if we except certain short and almost mnemonic axioms, none of the discourses reported by Matthew are textual ”

“ We should see it develop itself slowly, and sustain an almost permanent war against the empire, which had just reached the highest degree of administrative perfection, and, governed by philosophers, combated in the new-born sect a secret and theocratic society, which obstinately denied and incessantly undermined it. ”

“ But that, as a whole, this Gospel may have originated towards the end of the first century from the great school of Asia Minor, which was connected with John, that it represents to us a version of the life of the Master, worthy of high esteem, and often to be preferred, is demonstrated in a manner which leaves us nothing to be desired, both by exterior evidences and by examination of the document itself. ”