# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1864_S240
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

240 The Life of Jesus by Ernest Renan.

paths, yet the history of the one has no understanding without that of
the other. Indeed, countless essential circumstances in the gospels find
their commentary in the Talmud," p. 17. The Talmud — this stinking
mud puddle of Pharisaic-rabbinic drivel, this abomination of all
abominations, which, on Luther's advice, a Christian authority ought to
burn everywhere — is for Renan a source for the history of the life of
Jesus. Renan continues: "The assistance which, in this work, a learned
Israelite, Mr. Neubauer, who is extremely well versed in talmudic
literature, rendered to my labor, put me in a position to go still further,
and, through a number of new comparisons, to shed light on the most
important parts of my task." P. 17.

This does indeed provide a not insignificant piece of information about
Renan's book. Its origin, accordingly, is this. A mad Frenchman and a
deranged Jew write, in partnership, a libel against Jesus, and divide the
work between themselves in such a way that Renan gathers together
everything ever slandered against Christ by the heathen, while Neubauer
has collected all the shameful lies of the Jews about Jesus.

But we must mention yet one more treasure-trove of which Renan
often boasts, and which he calls his "fifth" gospel. Let us hear him on
this himself: "For the reading of the texts I was put in a position to open
up a new source of light, namely an investigation of the places in which
the events took place. The scientific commission for the exploration of
ancient Phoenicia, of which I was the director in the years 1860 and
1861, gave me occasion to take up my residence on the borders of
Galilee and to wander through it frequently. I traveled through the
evangelical province in every direction; I visited Jerusalem, Hebron, and
Samaria; scarcely a single locality important for the history of Jesus
escaped me. This whole story, which from a distance had seemed to me
to hover as though in the clouds of an unreal world, took on, in this
way, a shape, a certainty, that astonished me. The striking agreement
of the texts and the places, the wonderful harmony between the
evangelical ideal and the landscape that served as its setting, appeared
to me like a revelation. I had before my eyes a fifth gospel, torn,
indeed, but still legible, and from then on I saw, in the narratives of
Matthew and Mark, in place of an abstract being that could scarcely
have existed, a wonderful human figure living and moving." P. 55.

The master of lies, Renan, has here forgotten that he had, shortly
before, called the disciples of Christ feeble-minded, ignorant, cunning
frauds. For here he praises "the striking agreement of the texts and the
places," and thus confesses himself that the disciples wrote the truth.
Yet we set no store by it when Renan's slandering mouth, even once, for