The Life of Jesus. Ernest Renan

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       Ernest Renan

      The Life of Jesus

      Biblical Criticism and Controversies

      e-artnow, 2020

       Contact: [email protected]

      EAN 4064066058203

Table of Contents

       AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION,

       CHAPTER I. PLACE OF JESUS IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.

       CHAPTER II. INFANCY AND YOUTH OF JESUS—HIS FIRST IMPRESSIONS.

       CHAPTER III. EDUCATION OF JESUS.

       CHAPTER IV. THE ORDER OF THOUGHT WHICH SURROUNDED THE DEVELOPMENT OF JESUS.

       CHAPTER V. THE FIRST SAYINGS OF JESUS—HIS IDEAS OF A DIVINE FATHER AND OF A PURE RELIGION—FIRST DISCIPLES.

       CHAPTER VI. JOHN THE BAPTIST—VISIT OF JESUS TO JOHN, AND HIS ABODE IN THE DESERT OF JUDEA—ADOPTION OF THE BAPTISM OF JOHN.

       CHAPTER VII. DEVELOPMENT OF THE IDEAS OF JESUS RESPECTING THE KINGDOM OF GOD.

       CHAPTER VIII. JESUS AT CAPERNAUM.

       CHAPTER IX. THE DISCIPLES OF JESUS.

       CHAPTER X. THE PREACHINGS ON THE LAKE.

       CHAPTER XI. THE KINGDOM OF GOD CONCEIVED AS THE INHERITANCE OF THE POOR.

       CHAPTER XII. EMBASSY FROM JOHN IN PRISON TO JESUS—DEATH OF JOHN—RELATIONS OF HIS SCHOOL WITH THAT OF JESUS.

       CHAPTER XIII. FIRST ATTEMPTS ON JERUSALEM.

       CHAPTER XIV. INTERCOURSE OF JESUS WITH THE PAGANS AND THE SAMARITANS.

       CHAPTER XV. COMMENCEMENT OF THE LEGENDS CONCERNING JESUS—HIS OWN IDEA OF HIS SUPERNATURAL CHARACTER.

       CHAPTER XVI. MIRACLES.

       CHAPTER XVII. DEFINITIVE FORM OF THE IDEAS OF JESUS RESPECTING THE KINGDOM OF GOD.

       CHAPTER XVIII. INSTITUTIONS OF JESUS.

       CHAPTER XIX. INCREASING PROGRESSION OF ENTHUSIASM AND OF EXALTATION.

       CHAPTER XX. OPPOSITION TO JESUS.

       CHAPTER XXI. LAST JOURNEY OF JESUS TO JERUSALEM.

       CHAPTER XXII. MACHINATIONS OF THE ENEMIES OF JESUS.

       CHAPTER XXIII. LAST WEEK OF JESUS.

       CHAPTER XXIV. ARREST AND TRIAL OF JESUS.

       CHAPTER XXV. DEATH OF JESUS.

       CHAPTER XXVI. JESUS IN THE TOMB.

       CHAPTER XXVII. FATE OF THE ENEMIES OF JESUS.

       CHAPTER XXVIII. ESSENTIAL CHARACTER OF THE WORK OF JESUS.

      AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION,

       Table of Contents

      In Which the Sources of This History Are Principally Treated

      A history of the "Origin of Christianity" ought to embrace all the obscure, and, if one might so speak, subterranean periods which extend from the first beginnings of this religion up to the moment when its existence became a public fact, notorious and evident to the eyes of all. Such a history would consist of four books. The first, which I now present to the public, 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. The second would treat of the apostles and their immediate disciples, or rather, of the revolutions which religious thought underwent in the first two generations of Christianity. I would close this about the year 100, at the time when the last friends of Jesus were dead, and when all the books of the New Testament were fixed almost in the forms in which we now read them. The third would exhibit the state of Christianity under the Antonines. 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. This book would cover the entire period of the second century. Lastly, the fourth book would show the decisive progress which Christianity made from the time of the Syrian emperors. 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 of a society for which philosophy and a purely civil government no longer sufficed. It was then that the religious ideas of the races grouped around the Mediterranean became profoundly modified; that the Eastern religions everywhere took precedence; that the Christian Church, having become very numerous, totally forgot its dreams of a millennium, broke its last ties with Judaism, and entered completely into the Greek and Roman world. The contests and the literary labors of the third century, which were carried on without concealment, would be described only in their general features. I would relate still more briefly the persecutions at the commencement of the fourth century, the last effort of the empire to return to its former principles, which denied to religious association any place in the State. Lastly, I would only foreshadow the change of policy which, under Constantine, reversed the position, and made of the most free and spontaneous religious movement an official worship, subject to the State, and persecutor in its turn.

      I know not whether I shall have sufficient life and strength to complete a plan so vast. I shall be satisfied if, after having written the Life of Jesus, I am permitted to relate, as I understand it, the history of the apostles, the state of the Christian conscience during the weeks which followed the death of Jesus, the formation of the cycle of legends concerning the resurrection, the first acts of the Church of Jerusalem, the life of Saint Paul, the crisis of the time of Nero, the appearance of the Apocalypse, the fall of Jerusalem, the foundation of the Hebrew-Christian sects of