SOURCE: Lagrange, M. J. “Antecedent Leanings, Negative Prejudice, and Positive Aspiration.” In Christ and Renan: A Commentary on Ernest Renan's “The Life of Jesus,” translated by Maisie Ward, pp. 5-17. London: Sheed & Ward, 1928.

In the following essay, Lagrange criticizes the theological and historical arguments of The Life of Jesus, concentrating on how Renan's work differs from nineteenth-century German biblical exegesis.

From the very first, and in explaining his method, Renan is determined to distinguish himself from the German schools. And, in fact, the Life of Jesus was only discussed in Germany during the nineteenth century by theologians. The eighteenth century had seen the Orientalist, Reimarus, rejected by the theologians as a deist. Certainly these theologians did not resemble ours. They were emancipated enough to write “the gospel according to Hegel.”

But they did remain more or less attached to Protestant Evangelicalism, and, anxious not to break with the...