SOURCE: Mott, Lewis Freeman. “Syria; Henriette Renan; Professor of Hebrew; ‘Life of Jesus.’” In Ernest Renan, pp. 207-41. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1921.

In the following excerpt, Mott praises the intellectual courage and literary imagination of The Life of Jesus.

[The] greatest scandal to Renan's opponents was the publication of the Life of Jesus on June 24, 1863. Though certainly not so intended, it seemed like a gage of defiance designed to insult and irritate. That Renan had such a work in hand was no secret. Taine, who saw much of him at Chalifer, writes:

He read me a long piece of his Life of Jesus. He constructs this life delicately but arbitrarily; the documents are too much altered, too uncertain. For the period of Nazareth, he puts together all the gentle and agreeable ideas of Jesus, removes all the gloomy ones, and makes a charming mystical pastoral. Then...