SOURCE: Noonan, John T. “Renan's The Life of Jesus: A Re-examination.” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 11 (1949): 26-39.

In the following essay, Noonan argues that The Life of Jesus is a deeply flawed work expressing many of the prejudices of nineteenth-century religious skepticism.

They admit certainly a real and historical Jesus, but their historical Jesus is not a Messiah or a prophet or a Jew. They do not know what He wanted; they understand neither His life nor His death. Their Jesus is, in His own way, an eon, an impalpable, intangible being. Pure history does not know any such being.

(Ernest Renan on the Protestant Liberals)¹

Why have we not laughed from the beginning at any rationalist or rationalizing ‘Life of Jesus’? Because neither the author nor the public were really emancipated from the magic of Christian faith.

(George Santayana)²

And devils went out from many, crying out and...