LIFE OF JESUS, The de Jesus,' 1863), by Renan, is the effort of an Oriental scholar and Biblical critic, who was also a subtle psychologist, to disengage the Gospel narratives from what he believed to be legendary accre tions and to show the "incomparable man" Jesus not as a founder of dogmas, a maker of symbols, but as the initiator of a new spirit° who, indeed, founded "the true religion;' for those who came after to develop and make fer tile. (13th ed., pp. 460, 461). The book was begun in Syria in 1860 at the suggestion of his sister Henriette, to whom it is dedicated, with the New Testament and Josephus for his only library. It is saturated with the atmosphere of the East ; it reveals intimate knowledge of the Bible, of theological speculation, of Syria and of the Syrians; but its method of dealing with documents is more eclectic than scholarly. For Renan the miraculous does not exist because it cannot (pp. 5, 9). All that is certain in the
life of Jesus, he says, can be told in a few lines (p. 16). His concern is with the thoughts and feelings of the time, its hopes, its expectations and how the idea of the kingdom of God ger minated in Galilee and found its fruition in Je rusalem. Published 23 June 1863, the hook im mediately evoked wide attention. By November 60,000 copies had been sold; in Renan's lifetime 300,000. It evoked many protests and answers, notable among them Tulloch's, The Christ of the Gospels) and The Christ of Modern Criti cism' (1864). Consult P. Schaff and N. Roussel, The Romance of M. Renan and The Christ of the Gospels' ; and R. H. Hutton's (M. Renan's Christ,' in his (Theological Essays> (1902). There are translations by W. G. Hutchinson and others.