THE LIFE OF JESUS BY ERNEST RENAN Complete Edition 3.D. Levy (ISSUED FOR THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, LIMITED) 17, JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C 1908 $22V 7323 ΤΟ The Pure Soul OF MY SISTER HENRIETTA, WHO DIED AT BYBLUS, ON SEPTEMBER 24TH, 1861. Dost thou recall, from the bosom of God where thou reposest, those long days at Ghazir, in which, alone with thee, I wrote these pages, inspired by the places we had visited together? Silent at my side, thou didst read and copy each sheet as soon as I had written it, while the sea, the villages, the ravines, and the mountains were spread at our feet. When the overwhelming light had given place to the innumerable army of stars, thy shrewd and subtle questions, thy discreet doubts, led me back to the sublime object of our common thoughts. One day thou didst tell me that thou wouldst love this book-first, because it had been composed with thee, and also because it pleased thee. Though at times thou didst fear for it the narrow judgments of the frivolous, yet wert thou ever persuaded that all truly religious souls would ultimately take pleasure in it. In the midst of these sweet meditations, the Angel of Death struck us both with his wing: the sleep of fever seized us at the same time-I awoke alone!......Thou sleepest now in the land of Adonis, near the holy Byblus and the sacred stream where the women of the ancient mysteries came to mingle their tears. Reveal to me, O good genius, to me whom thou lovedst, those truths which conquer death, deprive it of terror, and make it almost beloved. THE present edition of Renan's famous work is a reprint of the first English edition, published by Messrs. Trübner in 1863, brought up to date by collation with the thirteenth and later French editions, in which Renan's views as to the fourth Gospel are somewhat modified. Renan holds that the fourth Gospel is neither the work of the Apostle John nor a piece of religious fiction. If in some respects his later views diverge more widely from the idea of Apostolic authorship, he has in other respects become more than ever convinced that the statements of facts peculiar to the Gospel are of inestimable value. The framework of the document Renan regards as more accurate than that of the Synoptic Gospels. The narrative of the last weeks of the life of Jesus is more faithful as a recital of material circumstances. The writer is probably correct in the dates of the Last Supper and the Crucifixion, as well as in the details of the alleged Resurrection and subsequent occurrences. These features do, no doubt, strengthen the impression that the fourth Gospel embodies a trustworthy tradition; but, as Renan remarks, they are no proof whatever that the Apostle John was the actual writer of the book. On the other hand, the discourses must emphatically be pronounced unhistorical. The tone of the whole work is less simple and spontaneous than that of the earlier Gospel writers, while the manifest object of the author to establish the authority of one in particular of the Apostles renders him a less reliable guide. The personal touches which have been so much relied on by Christian advocates as implying the intimacy of the author with Jesus, and therefore plainly indicating the Apostle as the writer, are discredited by Renan as being the artifices of a later disciple, anxious to establish the authority of a work which had to rival the weight of earlier traditions. The fourth Gospel was not quoted by Christian writers or recognised as worthy of general acceptance until the latter half of the second century. The language, moreover, differs greatly from that of the Synoptics in being Greek of purer quality, and is also superior to that of the Apocalypse, which may fairly be attributed to the Apostle. Renan's conclusion is that the work is an esoteric writing, produced by one of the schools in Asia Minor, probably at Ephesus, which reflected the teaching of the Apostle, and propagated that which they believed he had handed down. It is a noteworthy fact that the Johannine discourses are not merely unlike those of the Synoptics, but are in the precise style of the narrative portions of the fourth Gospel, as well as of the Epistles attributed to John. Renan also points out that the mystical use of certain words, such as "world," "truth," "life," "light," etc., is in complete harmony with the usage of the Book of Wisdom, of Philo, and of the Valentinians. If Jesus really spoke in the manner represented by the fourth Gospel, it is more than strange that only one of his hearers should have preserved the secret. In common with most modern critics, Renan discards the last chapter as a later addition to the original work. Renan surmises that the fourth Gospel may possibly be the' work to which Papias referred when he opposed to the exact information of the Synoptics the long discourses and strange precepts which later writers had added to the simple tradition of the Gospel. He remarks that, if the fact were so, it would not be the first time that a 'heretical book had forced the gates of the orthodox Church. The foregoing considerations, drawn from the Appendix to the later editions of the Life of Jesus, will probably suffice to show that, while Renan makes no very marked deviation from his original estimate of the fourth Gospel, he has advanced in the direction of holding it to be of late and composite authorship. In a word, while we cannot say who the author was, we can say who he was not. He was not the Apostle John. October, 1904. CHARLES T. GORHAM. |