# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1864_S243
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Life of Jesus by Ernst Renan. 243

Everything that Jesus says about God, Renan regards as admirable
errors. "This belief gave him a lofty conception of the close kinship of
men with God, and an exaggerated confidence in human power; admirable
errors, which laid the foundation of his power," 98. Hatred of God
drives Renan to the following hideous blasphemy: "Soon the desert became
his school, and he stayed there a long time. But the God whom he found
there was not his own. It was at most the God of Job, stern and terrible,
who did not concern himself with men. Having returned to his beloved
Galilee, he found again his heavenly Father on the green hills, by the
clear springs, among the throngs of children and women who, with joyful
soul and the song of angels in their hearts, waited for the redemption of
Israel," 123. Renan blasphemously makes Christ into a pantheist: "In his
poetic conception of nature, only a single breath pervades the whole
universe; the breath of man is the breath of God," etc., 274.

In Galilee, in the north of Palestine, Jesus led — as the devil just as
foolishly and maliciously slanders — a merry, carefree life with his
disciples, of which Renan writes the following farcical romance: "The
north alone formed Christianity," 118. "In this earthly paradise there
dwelt an industrious, upright people," 192, "cheerful children," 215,
"men and women of youthful integrity and unaffected simplicity," 178;
"simple souls, happy children, whose purity of heart made them one day
worthy to behold God," 206. There Jesus was the agreeable moral teacher,"
163. "The believing flock, cheerful wanderers, followed after him," 206.
"Thus his journey through Galilee was one continual holiday. He rode upon
a mule, an animal which in the East is so sure-footed, so gentle, in
whose large black eyes, shaded by long lashes, there lies a fullness of
meekness. His disciples often unfolded a rustic pomp about him, spreading
their garments as carpets. They laid these upon his mule or spread them
on his path. When he alighted at a house, blessing and rejoicing entered
there. He lingered in marketplaces and large farmhouses, where he
enjoyed an obliging hospitality," 227. "The children brought him little
tributes of homage, which gave him much joy," 229. "He affected no
strict manner of life and did not flee pleasures, but cheerfully took
part in wedding feasts." "His gentle cheerfulness continually expressed
itself through innocent jests," 226. "The whole story of the birth of
Christ thus became a sweetly serene idyll. A Messiah at a wedding, the
loose woman and the good Zacchaeus as invited guests at his banquets. The
founders of the heavenly kingdom, like a train of groomsmen ... such
scenes did Galilee dare to set before the world," p. 122.