page_title: Ernest Renan
section_title: Birth and family
hierarchical_section_title: Ernest Renan / Life / Birth and family
caption_attribution_description: Maison musée Ernest Renan à Tréguier (Bretagne)
context_page_description: Joseph Ernest Renan was a French Orientalist, expert of Semitic languages and civilizations, historian of religion, philologist, philosopher, biblical scholar and critic. He is best known for his influential and pioneering historical works on the origins of early Christianity, and his political theories, especially concerning nationalism and national identity. Renan is credited as being among the first scholars to advance the now-discredited Khazar theory, which held that Ashkenazi Jews were descendants of the Khazars, Turkic peoples who had adopted Jewish religion and migrated to Western Europe following the collapse of their khanate.
context_section_description: He was born at Tréguier in Brittany to a family of fishermen. His grandfather, having made a small fortune with his fishing smack, bought a house at Tréguier and settled there, and his father, captain of a small cutter and an ardent republican, married the daughter of a Royalist tradesman from the neighbouring town of Lannion. All his life, Renan was aware of the conflict between his father's and his mother's political beliefs. He was five years old when his father died, and his sister, Henriette, twelve years his senior, became the moral head of the household. Having in vain attempted to keep a school for girls at Tréguier, she departed and went to Paris as a teacher in a young ladies' boarding-school.
caption: Ernest Renan birthplace museum in Tréguier
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