SOURCE: Holmes, John Haynes. Introduction to The Life of Jesus, by Ernest Renan, pp. 15-23. New York: The Modern Library, 1955.

In the following essay, originally published in 1927, Holmes argues that The Life of Jesus was one of the most important and revolutionary books written in the nineteenth century and that the work remains a classic because of Renan's scholarly breadth and literary clarity.

“Ernest Renan's Vie de Jésus,” said the late Joseph Henry Allen, famous scholar and church historian, “is the one great literary monument of a century of New Testament criticism.” This tribute to the immortal Frenchman's masterpiece was paid in 1895, just thirty-two years after its publication in 1863. Now that another thirty-two years have passed away, the tribute is seen to be inadequate. Renan's Life of Jesus is something more than a great monument of New Testament criticism. As we look back upon the nineteenth century...