Customer Reviews

The Life of Jesus

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This has got to be the best book I've ever read. It's an absolute masterpiece. If you don't already own this book, you really must pick it up. It's a classic of classics and continues to be controversial even to this day.
Renan presents us with a brilliant biography of Jesus, but one in which he's a mere man, not a god. He paints us a picture of a talented and wise man who gets caught up in the fervor he creates and provides us with logical explanations for the "miracles" that were said to surround him. This book created an enormous stir at the time it was written and still ruffles feathers even now.
Renan certainly treads on sacred cows, but they are cows that deserve to be treaded upon. Of all the divisive factors, religion has been the main and most persistent one. Religion has greatly hampered the advancement of humanity and caused a great deal of suffering, privation, and death. It also kept women oppressed for millennia, and we are still working to undo that damage. It's only been in the past century that great strides have been made to improve the lot of women, and I believe that religion has been the main culprit to blame for the inequities that women have faced for so long.
This book is a body blow to traditional Christian dogma and a supremely original work. It's a definite must-read.

Humanity has spent far too long hobbling on the crutch of religion, and it's long past time for us to cast that crutch aside and run free. Religion has bridled too many minds and bound too many hands. How much longer will humanity remain crippled by it? How much longer will we continue to point fingers at others, harm each other, and limit ourselves in the name of a god? This is the 21st century. We're only just beginning to see the wonders we can achieve (and might have achieved ages ago if religious leaders hadn't kept insisting that the world was flat and viciously persecuting anyone who decreed otherwise).

Renan was cruelly persecuted for penning his masterwork on the life of Jesus as a mere man. Now that we live in more enlightened times, it's easy to forget what a fearsome and powerful adversary the church used to be and how ruthlessly it dealt with anyone who crossed it.

I strongly recommend this book. It's wonderfully thought provoking, and the author wrote it at great risk to himself.

There are some books that everyone should read, and this is one of them. The idea was so fresh, and controversial, for its time and remains intriguing to this day. Renan was a brilliant and courageous man who dared to do what no one else had done before. He insisted on writing an unthinkable biography on Jesus, treating him like any other man, and critiquing the Bible like any other book. Naturally, a firestorm ensued. The book still causes firestorms today, but it also has been very influential. It's been an important steppingstone that's inspired other works, though I believe Renan's work is the best of them all. The original always is. I can't recommend this book enough.

I believe this book should be on every intellectual's shelf. It's excellently written, and the ideas contained within are brilliantly presented. This work is a timeless classic, one of the great masterpieces. If you haven't already read it, you should, and if you have, you should pick up a copy for a friend. This book won't just open your mind; it will free it.

Humanity has spent far too long hobbling on the crutch of religion, and it's long past time for us to cast that crutch aside and run free. Religion has bridled too many minds and bound too many hands. How much longer will humanity remain crippled by it? How much longer will we continue to point fingers at others, harm each other, and limit ourselves in the name of a god? This is the 21st century. We're only just beginning to see the wonders we can achieve (and might have achieved ages ago if religious leaders hadn't kept insisting that the world was flat and viciously persecuting anyone who decreed otherwise).

Renan was cruelly persecuted for penning his masterwork on the life of Jesus as a mere man. Now that we live in more enlightened times, it's easy to forget what a fearsome and powerful adversary the church used to be and how ruthlessly it dealt with anyone who crossed it.

I strongly recommend this book. It's wonderfully thought provoking, and the author wrote it at great risk to himself.

Ernest Renan (1823-1892) was a French philosopher and writer, who was best known for this 1863 book. The book presents a very (some would say "excessively") "emotional" telling of the life of Jesus (remember that it was written at the height of the "Romantic" era in literature), and it became a best-seller in France.

The book was intended as the first book of a history of the origin of Christianity, of which this volume "treats of the particular fact which has served as the starting-point of the new religion, and is entirely filled by the sublime person of the Founder."

As an example of the "emotional" character of his writing, here is a scene from the crucifixion: "The sky was dark, and the earth, as in all the environs of Jerusalem, dry and gloomy. For a moment, according to certain narratives, his heart failed him; a cloud hid from him the face of his Father; he endured an agony of despair a thousand times more acute than all his torture."

Here are some other representative quotations from the book:

"That the Gospels are in part legendary, is evident, since they are full of miracles and of the supernatural; but legends have not all the same value."
"I beg those who think that I have placed an exaggerated confidence in narratives in great part legendary ... To what would the life of Alexander be reduced if it were confined to that which is materially certain?"
"We do not say, 'Miracles are impossible.' We say, 'Up to this time a miracle has never been proved.'"
"Jesus despised all religion which was not of the heart ... We should seek in vain in the Gospel for one religious rite recommended by Jesus."

Although stylistically much different from how we would write today, this influential book remains a crucial book for students of the historical Jesus, biblical criticism, and the early Christian church.

Renan was thrown out of the "Collège de France" for having written that Jesus was an extraordinary man. He is THE, or at least one of the most important founders of the secular interpretation of Jesus, amazingly derived essentially from John's Gospel rather than from the Synoptics. His book is an important landmark to have, if not on our bookshelves, at least in our memories. For the happy few, it's easier as always to read in the original French rather than the translated version. Writing styles have also considerably changed since the romantic literature era. And many ideas and discoveries have been made since Renan's mid-nineteenth century days and he would have loved all the material disclosed a hundred years later by the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi library as well as all the archaeology related in the "Bible Unearthed". The book may seem a bit outdated today, but what insight and intellectual courage!

Aware of many unresolved problems, Renan prophesized that the correct interpretation of the bible would come from a layman using a critical approach and is devoid of any desire to destroy the dogma or to protect it. If we follow his recommendations, we have to look for someone who wants to discover the real meaning (I'm sure that the Jesus of the Gospels is just as alien to Church readings as to scholarly revisions) of these ancient texts and who is neither a Christian apologist nor an already convinced atheist. Who will square the circle?

This is one of the very first attempts at a real Jesus, one who speaks to us through himself, and not through one of the many churches who shout his name...thereby drowning all thought. It's superbly written by a leading Hebrew scholar of his day. I gave it five stars for two reasons. One. To try to reflect its worth more accurately than the above review. Two. It bloody deserves it.

This book is recommended by conservative Christian teacher, the late Dr. J. Vernon McGee, in his 5-year program called "Through the Bible." This free online and radio program is a verse-by-verse journey through the entire Bible in 5 years. From humble beginnings, the program is now broadcast in over 100 languages and dialects, all over the world. The program is beginning again as I write this review and Renan is recognized as a brilliant author. Here is a quote from Dr. McGee:

"Renan, the French skeptic, made an attack on the Word of God, as you know; yet he wrote a "Life of Christ." His book is divided into two sections, one is the historical section, the other is the interpretation of the life of Christ. As far as the first part is concerned, there probably has never been a more brilliant life of Christ written by any man. But his interpretation of it is positively absurd. It could have been done better by a twelve-year-old Sunday school boy. What is the explanation of that? Well, the Spirit of God does not teach you history or give you facts that you can dig out for yourself; a very clever mind can dig out those. But the interpretation is altogether different. The Spirit of God has to do the interpreting, and He alone must be the Teacher to lead us and guide us into all truth. We must have the Spirit of God to open our eyes to see."

Renan was a Frenchman who had spent a considerable time in Palestine. He attempted to write a life of Christ based not on the perspective that he was God but rather a man. This consists of trying to put what happened in the context of Jewish and Roman Society at the begining of the Christian era.

He portrays Jesus as a spiritual leader who rejected orthodox judiasm and was killed by conservative believers who felt the order of their religion was threatened. He explains some of the miracles by coming up with mundane explanations. Thus Lazarus might have been simply sick rather than dead.

Historically the book was of importance in developing a secular understanding of the Gospels. However it is now out of date as many more questions have been raised about the content and consistency of the gospels and what appears to be historical and mythical in the life of Jesus. The book is reasonably easy to read but is written in a archaic style that does not read easily today and it also is reflective of descriptions of Jewish people that would now be seen as racist.