"Vie de Jésus" by Ernest Renan is an essay published in 1863. Drawing from his archaeological expedition to the Holy Land, Renan presents Jesus as a moral figure while rejecting divine intervention and the supernatural. He applies rigorous historical criticism to the Gospels, treating them as documents to be examined like any other. The book sparked immediate scandal, especially within the Catholic Church, yet became one of Europe's major bestsellers, selling hundreds of thousands of copies and generating over three hundred written responses within months.