| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 19 August 1892 |
| This text is not available, or incomplete, please help if you can ! |
August 19, 1892
I am studying early Christianity here, reading Renan and the Bible. Renan is terribly shallow but, as a man of the world, has a wider view than the German University theologians. Otherwise, his book is a novel, to which his comment on Philostratus can equally be applied: one can use it as an historical source just as one would use, say, the novels of Alexandre Dumas père on the Fronde period. On individual points I have caught him out in dreadful mistakes. Moreover he cribs from the Germans with unbounded impudence.