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Life of Jesus. Ernest Renan is neither Hebraic nor Jewish, how does it come that, amongst the auditors, only a single one of the latter has kept the secret? xlvii For the rest, literary history offers one example which presents a certain analogy to the historic phenomenon we have just been describing, and which serves to explain it. Socrates, who, like Jesus, did not write, is known to us through two of his disciples, Xenophon and Plato; the former corresponding with the synoptics by reason of his compilation, at once consecutive, transparent and impersonal; the latter, by reason of his robust individuality, recalling the author of the fourth Gospel.

To what would the life of Alexander be reduced if it were limited to that which is materially certain? Even partly erroneous 3 See, for example, John xix. 23, 24. 38 The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book I. Life of Jesus. lii Ernest Renan traditions contain a portion of truth which history may not pass over. No one has reproached M. Sprenger for having, in writing the life of Mahomet, set much store by the hadith or oral traditions concerning the prophet, and for often having imputed to his hero words which are only known through this source.

All of this is important. For my part, I reject the idea that the fourth Gospel could have been written by the pen of a quondam Galilean fisherman. But that, taken all in all, this Gospel may have proceeded, about the end of the first century or the beginning of the second, from one of the schools of Asia Minor which was attached to John, that it presents to us a version of the life of the Master worthy of high consideration and often of being preferred, is indeed rendered probable, both by external evidence and by examining the document under consideration.