Ernest Renan

Joseph Ernest Renan (pronounced ruh-NAHN; 27 February 1823 – 2 October 1892) was a French scholar of the Orient and Semitic cultures, whose work spanned history, religion, philosophy, philology, and biblical criticism. He studied the origins of early Christianity and promoted influential political ideas about nationalism and national identity, while also asserting the racial superiority of White people. Renan was an early proponent of the Khazar theory, which claimed that Ashkenazi Jews descended from the Khazars—a Turkic group that converted to Judaism and supposedly moved into central and eastern Europe after their empire fell. Based on this, he labeled Jews "an incomplete race." From 1864 to 1874, he directed an archaeological mission to Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine, searching for traces of the ancient Phoenicians.

Renan was born in Tréguier, Brittany, in northwestern France, into a fishing family. His grandfather had bought a house there after saving money from his fishing boat, and his father, a republican ship captain, married the daughter of a Royalist shopkeeper from nearby Lannion. This political divide between his parents shaped Renan throughout his life. His father died when Renan was five, leaving his sister Henriette—twelve years older—to become the family’s moral guide. After failing to run a girls’ school in Tréguier, she moved to Paris to teach at a boarding school.

Ernest attended the local ecclesiastical seminary, where his reports described him as diligent and thorough. Catholic priests taught him math and Latin, while his mother—half Breton, with ancestors from Bordeaux—completed his education. Renan often said his Gascon and Breton natures were in conflict. In the summer of 1838, he won every prize at the college of Tréguier. Henriette told her brother’s story to the doctor at her Paris school, who then informed Félix Dupanloup. Dupanloup, involved in organizing the elite Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet college, summoned Renan—then fifteen and never outside Brittany. There, Renan realized that knowledge wasn’t limited to the Church, and he began to grasp concepts like talent and fame. Religion felt completely different in Paris than in Tréguier, and he saw Dupanloup as a father figure.

In 1840, Renan left Saint Nicholas to study philosophy at the Saint-Sulpice Seminary near Paris, driven by a passion for Catholic scholasticism. He was first drawn to Thomas Reid and Nicolas Malebranche, then to Hegel, Kant, and Herder. He noticed a growing gap between the metaphysics he studied and his faith, but a hunger for verifiable truths held back his skepticism. He wrote to Henriette that philosophy excited but only half satisfied his thirst for truth, and he longed for mathematics. Henriette, now working for Count Zamoyski in a better-paying role, remained a strong influence.

Philology, not math, resolved Renan’s doubts. After finishing at Issy in 1844, he entered St. Sulpice college to earn a philology degree before joining the church, and there he began learning Hebrew. He discovered that the second part of Isaiah differed from the first in style and date, that the Pentateuch’s grammar and history came after Moses, and that the Book of Daniel was written centuries after its setting. At night, he read Victor Hugo’s novels; by day, he studied Hebrew and Syriac under Arthur-Marie Le Hir. In October 1845, he left St. Sulpice for Stanislas, a lay college of the Oratorians. Still feeling the church’s grip, he reluctantly cut his last religious ties and became a teacher at M. Crouzet’s school for boys.

Educated by priests, Renan embraced the scientific ideal with great energy, becoming captivated by the universe’s vastness. Late in life, he remarked of Amiel that anyone with time for a private diary had never grasped the cosmos’s immensity. In 1846, the chemist Marcellin Berthelot—then eighteen and Renan’s pupil at Crouzet’s school—revealed the certainties of physical and natural science to him. Their friendship lasted until Renan’s death. Renan worked as an usher only in the evenings; during the day, he pursued Semitic philology. In 1847, he won the Volney prize from the Academy of Inscriptions for his manuscript “General History of Semitic Languages.” That same year, he became an Agrégé de Philosophie and was offered a teaching post at the lycée Vendôme.

In 1856, Renan married Cornélie Scheffer in Paris. She was the daughter of Hendrik Scheffer and niece of Ary Scheffer, both French painters of Dutch descent. They had two children: Ary Renan, born in 1858, who became a painter.