SOURCE: Hutchison, William G. Introduction to Renan's Life of Jesus, translated by William G. Hutchison, pp. ix-xxxii. London: Walter Scott, 1897.

In the following essay, Hutchison examines the early criticism of The Life of Jesus as well as the sources Renan used to write his biography.

The year 1860 marked an important point in the life of Ernest Renan. Having acquired, by years of hard work and unremitting study, a European reputation as man of letters and as a writer of authority on the Semitic languages and Oriental archæology, he was commissioned by the Imperial government to proceed to Syria and undertake an expedition in quest of ancient Phœnician monuments, sites, and inscriptions. For this welcome opportunity of coming face to face with the land whose peoples, languages, and traditions had been of life-long and absorbing interest to him, Renan was probably indebted to his friend Prince Napoleon...