BY ERNEST RENAN, MEMBRE DE L'INSTITUT. AUTHOR OF “THE LIFE OF JESUS,” ETC., ETC. TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL FRENCH. NEW YORK: Carleton, Publisher, 413 Broadway. PARIS: MICHEL LEVY FRERES. M DCCC LXVI. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by GEO. W. CARLETON, In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. The New York Printing Company 81, 83, and 85 Centre Street , New York ....

The first book of our History of the Origins of Christianity brought us down to the death and burial of Jesus; and we must now resume the subject at the point where we left it—that is to say, on Saturday, the fourth of April, in the year 33. The work will be for some time yet a sort of continuation of the life of Jesus. Next to the glad months, during which the great Founder laid the bases of a new order of things for humanity, these few succeeding years were the most decisive in the history of

Jesus, although constantly speaking of resurrection and of a new life, had not declared very plainly that he should rise again in the flesh. [1.1] The disciples, during the first hours which elapsed after his death, had, in this respect, no fixed hope. The sentiments which they so artlessly confide to us show that they believed all to be over. They bewail and bury their friend, if not as one of the common herd who had died, at least as a person whose loss was irreparable; [1.2] they were sorrowf

The most earnest desire of those who have lost a dear friend is to revisit the places where they have lived with him. It was no doubt this feeling which, some days after the events of Easter, induced the disciples to return to Galilee. From the moment of the arrest of Jesus, and immediately after His death, it is probable that many of His disciples had already taken their departure for the northern provinces. At the period of the resurrection, a report was spread that it was in Galilee that they

The apparitions, in the meanwhile, as is usually the case in all movements of too credulous enthusiasm, began to diminish. Popular chimeras are nearly allied to contagious diseases; quickly do they become stale and change their shape. The activity of these ardent souls was already turned in another direction. That which they believed they had heard from the lips of their beloved and resuscitated friend, was the command to go before him to preach and to convert the world. But where should they co

Mean, narrow, ignorant, inexperienced they were, as much as was possible for them to be. Their simplicity of mind was extreme; their credulity had no bounds. But they had one quality; they loved their Master to madness. The remembrance of Jesus, the only moving power of their life, had possessed them constantly and entirely; and it was clear that they existed only on account of Him who, during two or three years, had so completely attached and seduced them to Himself. The safety of minds of a se

The custom of living in a community professing one identical faith, and indulging in one and the same expectation, necessarily produced many habits common to all the society. Very soon rules were enacted, and established a certain analogy between this primitive church and the cenobitical establishments with which Christianity became acquainted at a later period. Many of the precepts of Jesus conduced to this; the true ideal of the gospel life is a monastery—not a monastery closed in with iron gr

Up to the present time the Church of Jerusalem has practically been only a little Galilean colony. The friends of Jesus in Jerusalem and its vicinity, such as Lazarus, Martha and Mary of Bethany, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, had disappeared from the scene. Only the Galilean group gathered around the twelve apostles remained, compact and active; and meanwhile these zealous apostles were indefatigable in the work of preaching. Subsequently, after the fall of Jerusalem, and in places distant

A comparison of the history of religion shows, as a general truth, that all those religions not contemporary with the origin of language itself, owe their establishment to social rather than theological causes. This was assuredly the case with Buddhism, the prodigious success of which may be traced to its social element, rather than to the nihilistic principle on which it was based. It was in proclaiming the abolition of castes, and establishing, in his words, “a law of grace for all,” that Saky

It was inevitable that the preachings of the new sect, even while they were disseminated with much reserve, should revive the animosities which had accumulated against its Founder, and had ultimately resulted in His death. The Sadducee family of Hanan, which had caused the death of Jesus, was still reigning. Joseph Caiaphas occupied, up to the year 36, the sovereign Pontificate, the effective power of which he left to his father-in-law Hanan, and to his relations, John and Alexander. [8.1] These

The persecution of the year 37 had for its result, as always happens, the expansion of the doctrine it was wished to arrest. Until then the Christian preaching had scarcely extended beyond Jerusalem; no mission had been undertaken; inclosed within its lofty but narrow communion, the mother Church had not radiated around itself nor formed any branches. The dispersion of the little supper-table scattered the good seed to the four winds. The members of the Church of Jerusalem, violently driven from

But the year 38 is marked in the history of the nascent Church by a new and important conquest. It was during that year [10.1] that we may safely place the conversion of that saint whom we saw a participant in the stoning of Stephen, and a principal agent in the persecution of 37, and who now, by a mysterious act of grace, becomes the most ardent of the disciples of Jesus. Saul was born at Tarsus, in Cilicia, [10.2] in the year 10 or 12 of our era. [10.3] According to the manner of that day, his

From the year 38 to the year 44 no persecution seems to have weighed upon the Church. [11.1] The faithful, no doubt, were far more prudent than before the death of Stephen, and avoided speaking in public. Perhaps, also, the troubles of the Jews who, during all the second part of the reign of Caligula, were at variance with that prince, contributed to favor the nascent sect. The Jews, in fact, were active persecutors in proportion to the good understanding they maintained with the Romans. To buy

The new faith was propagated from one neighborhood to another with astonishing rapidity. The members of the Church of Jerusalem who had been dispersed immediately after the death of Stephen, pushing their conquests along the coast of Phœnicia, reached Cyprus and Antioch. They were as yet guided by an unvarying principle of refusing to preach the gospel to the Jews. [12.1] Antioch, “the metropolis of the East,” the third city of the world, [12.2] was the centre of this Christendom of northern Syr

Great was the excitement at Jerusalem [13.1] on hearing what had passed at Antioch. Notwithstanding the kindly wishes of a few of the principal members of the Church of Jerusalem, Peter in particular, the Apostolic College continued to be influenced by mean and unworthy ideas. On every occasion when they heard that the good news had been announced to the heathen, these veteran Christians manifested signs of disappointment. The man who this time triumphed over this miserable jealousy, and who pre

Barnabas found the Church of Jerusalem in great trouble. The year 44 was perilous to it. Besides the famine, the fires of persecution which had been smothered since the death of Stephen were rekindled. Herod Agrippa, grandson of Herod the Great, had succeeded, since the year 41, in reconstituting the kingdom of his grandfather. Thanks to the favor of Caligula, he had reunited under his domination Batania, Trachonites, a part of the Hauran, Cibilene, Galilee, and the Persea. [14.1] The ignoble pa

We have now arrived at a period when Christianity may be said to have become established. In the history of religions it is only the earliest years during which their existence is precarious. If a creed can triumphantly pass through the severe ordeals which await every new system, its future is assured. With sounder judgment than other cotemporary sects, such as the Essenes, the Baptists, and the followers of Judas the Gaulonite, who clung to and perished with the Jewish institutions, the founde

We have seen Barnabas leaving Antioch in order to carry to the faithful at Jerusalem the contributions of their brethren in Syria, and arriving at Jerusalem in time to be present at several of the excitements occasioned there by the persecution of Herod Agrippa. [16.1] Let us now follow him again to Antioch, where, at this period, all the creative energy of the sect seems to have been concentrated. Barnabas took back a zealous assistant, his cousin John-Mark, the disciple of Peter, [16.2] and th

The political condition of the world was most melancholy. All power was concentrated at Rome and in the legions. The most shameful and degrading scenes were daily enacted. The Roman aristocracy, which had conquered the world, and which alone of all the people had any voice in public business under the Cæsars, had abandoned itself to a Saturnalia of the most outrageous wickedness the human race ever witnessed. Cæsar and Augustus, in establishing the imperial power, saw perfectly the necessities o

During the first century of the Christian era, the empire, while manifesting more or less hostility to the religious innovations which were imported from the East, did not declare open war against them. The doctrine of a state-religion was not clearly defined or vigorously upheld. At different epochs under the republic, foreign rites had been proscribed, especially those of Sabazius, Isis, and Serapis. [18.1] But those mysterious systems presented such irresistible attractions to the common peop

Such was the world which the Christian missionaries undertook to convert. It may now be readily perceived, it seems to me, that the enterprise was nothing impossible, and that its success was no miracle. The world was fermenting with moral longings to which the new religion answered admirably. Manners were losing their rudeness; a purer religion was looked for; and the notions of human rights and social improvement were everywhere gaining ground. On the other hand, credulity was extreme, and the