Search Results - Renan, Ernest.

Ernest Renan

Joseph Ernest Renan (; ; 27 February 18232 October 1892) was a French Orientalist and Semitic scholar, writing on Semitic languages and civilizations, historian of religion, philologist, philosopher, biblical scholar, and critic. He wrote works on the origins of early Christianity, and espoused popular political theories especially concerning nationalism, national identity, and the alleged superiority of White people over other human "races". Hannah Arendt remarks that he was “probably the first to oppose the Semitic and Aryan races as a decisive division of human genres.”

Renan is among the first scholars to advance the debunked Khazar theory, which held that Ashkenazi Jews were descendants of the Khazars, Turkic peoples who had adopted the Jewish religion and allegedly migrated to central and eastern Europe following the collapse of their khanate. On this basis he alleged that the Jews were “an incomplete race.” Provided by Wikipedia