Note 86 — Chapter IX
Reading edition
Renan's theory of the "natural monotheism" of the Semites was first published in his Histoire des Langues Semitiques some forty years ago. Nearly every Semitic scholar of repute found some occasion or other to refute it. But with Renan's charming genius for neglecting all facts that disturb an artistic arrangement of his subject, the overwhelming evidence against the natural monotheism of the Semite has been ignored by him, and he repeats his theory unmodified in his Histoire du Peuple d'Israel, i., 31, published 1888.