Chesterton on Renan on Judaism

G.K. Chesterton quotes (from memory) Ernest Renan, the great French Biblical scholar: “But the trace of Israel will be eternal. She it was who alone among the tyrannies of antiquity, raised her voice for the helpless, the oppressed, the forgotten.”

Did Renan really say it?

Chesterton is known in British literary history as more than a little anti-Semitic. Yet he approvingly quotes Renan making this philosemitic remark. What brought about Chesterton’s shift? Or have we been misjudging the wonderful author of The Man Who Was Thursday and the Father Brown series?

Is the substance of Renan’s putative remark true? Is Judaism the only religious tradition of antiquity that “raised her voice for the helpless, the oppressed, the forgotten?” Surely there must be others. (We exclude Christianity and Islam only because they are not religions of antiquity, but branches of Judaism.) Was it not Marx himself who said “Religious suffering is at the same time an expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering.  Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.” 

Just more evidence that Marx’s theory of religion was wrong.