History of the Origins of Christianity

The History of the Origins of Christianity
Renan, Ernest
London, Mathieson & company [1890]

Ernest Renan was a French philosopher, historian, and scholar of religion. He trained for the priesthood but left the Catholic church in 1845, feeling that its teachings were incompatible with the findings of historical criticism, though he retained a quasi-Christian faith in God. His seven-volume History of the Origins of Christianity (1863-90) includes his Life of Jesus (1863); an attempt to reconstruct the mind of Jesus as a wholly human person.