Ernest Renan - Revision history

D-Backup: /* Edward Said */

2026-06-26T10:24:26Z

Edward Said

D-Backup at 08:09, 26 June 2026

2026-06-26T08:09:59Z

David: /* Renan's Islamophobia */

2026-06-05T13:38:59Z

Renan's Islamophobia

David: /* Views on Yiddish speakers and Ashkenazim (1855) */

2026-05-25T11:59:29Z

Views on Yiddish speakers and Ashkenazim (1855)

David: /* 1883 Lecture: Judaism as Race and Religion */

2026-05-25T11:43:37Z

1883 Lecture: Judaism as Race and Religion

David: /* Renan's Islamophobia */

2026-05-25T11:41:36Z

Renan's Islamophobia

David: /* Renan's Islamophobia */

2026-05-25T11:41:12Z

Renan's Islamophobia

David: /* Renan's Islamophobia */

2026-05-25T11:40:52Z

Renan's Islamophobia

David: /* Renan's Islamophobia */

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Renan's Islamophobia

David: /* Renan's Islamophobia */

2026-05-25T11:39:50Z

Renan's Islamophobia

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 ===[[Edward Said]]===
 *'''Orientalism''' (1978): "Lastly, Semitic was Renan's first creation, a fiction invented by him in the philological laboratory to satisfy his sense of public place and mission. It should by now be clear... that Renan’s Semitic was a creation of the philological laboratory... [with] his notorious race prejudice against the very Oriental Semites whose study had made his professional name—a harsh divider of men into superior and inferior races."<ref name="SaidOrientalism">Said, Edward W. [https://syllabus.pirate.care/library/Edward%20W.%20Said/Orientalism%20%28462%29/Orientalism%20-%20Edward%20W.%20Said.pdf Orientalism] ''Penguin'', 1978, pp. 138–139.</ref>
-*'''Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Victims''' (1979): "The French writer Ernest Renan, for instance, was an outright anti-Semite; Eliot was indifferent to races who could not be assimilated to European ideas." This appears in a discussion of European colonialism and the victimization of Jews by Christian Europe, framing Renan’s views within the anti-Semitic racism that Zionism sought to escape.<ref name="SaidZionism">Said, Edward W. [https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Edward-Said-Excerpt.pdf Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Victims] (from ''The Question of Palestine''), 1979.</ref>
+*'''Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Victims''' (1979): "The French writer Ernest Renan, for instance, was an outright anti-Semite; Eliot was indifferent to races who could not be assimilated to European ideas." This appears in a discussion of European colonialism and the victimization of Jews by Christian Europe, framing Renan’s views as anti-Semitic racism.<ref name="SaidZionism">Said, Edward W. [https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Edward-Said-Excerpt.pdf Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Victims] (from ''The Question of Palestine''), 1979.</ref>
 **But how was it possible for Renan to hold himself and what he was saying in such a paradoxical position? For what was philology on the one hand if not a science of all humanity, a science premised on the unity of the human species and the worth of every human detail, and yet what was the philologist on the other hand if not as Renan himself proved with his notorious race prejudice against the very Oriental Semites whose study had made his professional name<ref>26. The entire opening chapter-bk. I, chap. 1---of the Histoire generate et systeme compare des langues semitiques, in Oeuvres completes, ed. Henriette Psichari ( Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1947-61 ) , 8 : 1 43-63, is a virtual encyclopedia of race prejudice directed against Semites ( i.e., Moslems and Jews) . The rest of the treatise is sprinkled generously with the same notions, as are many of Renan's other works, including L'Avenir de la science, especially Renan 's notes.</ref> - a harsh divider of men into superior and inferior races, a liberal critic whose work harbored the most esoteric notions of temporality, origins, development, relationship, and human worth?<ref>Said, p. 133-4.</ref>
 *At the same time Renan wants it understood that he speaks of a prototype, not a real Semitic type with actual existence (although he violated this too by discussing present-day Jews and Muslims with less than scientific detachment in many places in his writings)<ref>Said, p. 142.</ref>

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-'''Ernest Renan''' (28 February 1823 – 2 October 1892) was a French philologist, historian, and philosopher best known for his comparative studies of Semitic languages and for popularizing the linguistic term "Semitic" in a way that was later misused for racial theories. In his seminal 1855 work ''Histoire générale et système comparé des langues sémitiques'', Renan argued that Semitic languages (Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, etc.) were structurally inferior to Indo-European ("Aryan") languages in their capacity for abstract thought and creativity. He repeatedly warned against conflating linguistic categories with racial ones, yet his writings contributed to 19th-century racial pseudoscience. By 1883 Renan had shifted his views significantly, treating Judaism primarily as a religion rather than a biological race and invoking the Khazar theory to explain the origins of many Ashkenazi (Yiddish-speaking) Jews.
+'''Ernest Renan''' (28 February 1823 – 2 October 1892) was a French philologist, historian, and philosopher best known for his comparative studies of Semitic languages and for popularizing the linguistic term "Semitic" in a way that was later misused for racial theories. In his seminal 1855 work ''Histoire générale et système comparé des langues sémitiques'', Renan argued that Semitic languages (Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, etc.) were structurally inferior to Indo-European ("Aryan") languages in their capacity for abstract thought and creativity. He repeatedly warned against conflating linguistic categories with racial ones, yet his writings contributed to 19th-century racial pseudoscience. By 1883 Renan had more to say on Judaism as a religion rather than a biological race and arguing that Ashkenazi and other Jewish populations were not Semitic.
 == Views on Semitic languages ==

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	:Renan’s perception of monotheism, the purest example of which is expressed in Islam and is quite lacking in sophistication, reflects an oversimplification of the richness of deep religiosity: “the Semitic nations…never understood variety, plurality and gender in God.”		:Renan’s perception of monotheism, the purest example of which is expressed in Islam and is quite lacking in sophistication, reflects an oversimplification of the richness of deep religiosity: “the Semitic nations…never understood variety, plurality and gender in God.”
		+	==Resources==
		+	*https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Le_Judaisme_comme_race_et_comme_religion

	== Notes ==		== Notes ==

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 == Views on Yiddish speakers and Ashkenazim (1855) ==
-In 1855 Renan explicitly included Ashkenazi (Yiddish-speaking) Jews as direct biological descendants of ancient Palestinian Hebrews/Semites. He argued, however, that they had lost much of their original "Semitic character" through centuries of assimilation into European civilisation.
+In 1855 Renan argued, that Ashkenazi (Yiddish-speaking) they had lost much of their original "Semitic character" through centuries of assimilation into European civilisation.
 The full passage reads:

← Older revision		Revision as of 11:43, 25 May 2026
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	Yiddish itself was for Renan further evidence of this Europeanisation: a Germanic dialect rather than a pure Semitic language.		Yiddish itself was for Renan further evidence of this Europeanisation: a Germanic dialect rather than a pure Semitic language.
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−	~~== 1883 Lecture: Judaism as Race and Religion ==~~
−	By 1883 Renan had evolved his position. In the lecture ''Le Judaïsme comme race et comme religion'' he argued that modern European Jews were no longer a biological race but had become a religious community shaped by history, conversion, and assimilation. He questioned whether contemporary Jews could rightly claim descent from the ancient twelve tribes and concluded that Judaism had been "denationalised."
−
−	Renan invoked the Khazar theory to explain the origins of many Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazim: “great masses of Jewish populations which have in all probability nothing or almost nothing that is anthropologically Jewish in them” lived along the Danube and in southern Russia because of the Khazar conversion to Judaism. He now viewed modern Jews as “integral members of the French ‘nation’ and ‘civilization’,” with race reduced to a civilisational rather than biological phenomenon.<ref name="RentonGidley" />
−
−	~~This marked a clear shift from his 1855 emphasis on inherent Semitic racial inferiority to a view of Judaism as primarily religious and culturally assimilated.~~

	==Criticisms==		==Criticisms==

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 :Throughout his career, Renan maintained ties with Jewish scholars, including epistolary exchanges with leading scholars of the Wissenschaf des Judentums, such as Heinrich Graetz and Abraham Geiger in Germany, and Samuel David Luzzatto in Italy. Some of these contacts involved ongoing collaborative projects. Unlike most contemporary scholars, and despite the fact that his knowledge of rabbinic literature remained mediocre at best, Renan showed an interest in later Jewish history. For instance, he collaborated with Adolf Neubauer, a Jewish scholar from Hungary living in Paris at the time, on various aspects of late ancient and medieval Jewish history. Neubauer, who published his Géographie du Talmud in 1868, also collaborated with Renan on the publication of Les rabbins français du commencement au XIVe siècle.52
-:With Salomon Munk, his successor at the Collège de France, Renan seemed to have developed a real rapport.53 The cordiality of the relationship,
+:With Salomon Munk, his successor at the Collège de France, Renan seemed to have developed a real rapport.53 The cordiality of the relationship, however, did not rule out intellectual polemics.<ref>Stroumsa, p. 123-4.</ref>
 :At a session of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres in 1859, in particular, Munk confronted Renan, criticizing his conception of Semitic monotheism, according to which the idea of God’s unity had been the (sole) contribution of the Semitic peoples to humankind.

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 In his book, “The Idea of Semitic Monotheism” (Oxford University Press, 2021) Guy Stroumsa discusses the views of Renan with respect to race and religion
-:Although Renan maintained that, with the coming of Jesus, the Jewish people had concluded its historical role in human history, and that this people was directly responsible for the death of Jesus, he considered scandalous the continued persecution of Jews. In this regard, the accusation of anti-Semitism often hurled at Renan is patently misplaced.38 His ambiguous intellectual legacy, which explains the accusation, in no way justifes it.39 At the beginning of the Second Empire, the young Renan, who tended to refrain from expressing himself publicly on political matters, objected loudly when a ministerial decree sought to prevent Jews from applying to the École Normale Supérieure.40 In a number of cases, Renan raised his voice to speak publicly against anti- Semitism. Together with Victor Hugo, for instance, in 1881 he signed a public protest against anti- Jewish pogroms in Eastern
+:Although Renan maintained that, with the coming of Jesus, the Jewish people had concluded its historical role in human history, and that this people was directly responsible for the death of Jesus, he considered scandalous the continued persecution of Jews. In this regard, the accusation of anti-Semitism often hurled at Renan is patently misplaced.38 His ambiguous intellectual legacy, which explains the accusation, in no way justifes it.39 At the beginning of the Second Empire, the young Renan, who tended to refrain from expressing himself publicly on political matters, objected loudly when a ministerial decree sought to prevent Jews from applying to the École Normale Supérieure.40 In a number of cases, Renan raised his voice to speak publicly against anti- Semitism. Together with Victor Hugo, for instance, in 1881 he signed a public protest against anti- Jewish pogroms in Eastern Europe and in the Russian Empire. His own publisher, Michel Lévy, was a Jew.<ref>Stroumsa, p. 120</ref>
 :In a lecture delivered at the Société des Études Juives in 1883, Renan spotlighted the major contribution of the Jewish people, through its prophets, to the extirpation of idolatry from the ancient world. In a sense, the “pure” religion of the future, he noted, would be a return to that of Isaiah. He also declared the opening up of the ghettos to be a task of the nineteenth century.50 In the future, the Jews, together with all liberal forces in Europe, would contribute to the social progress of humankind. “Te Bible is your true Parthenon,” he concluded, mirroring his own parallel between the Jewish miracle and the Greek one.51