History of the establishment of Christianity

-Voltaire's "Letter to Doctor Pansophe" (Against Rousseau), 1766

In his final decade, Voltaire undertook the dismantling of Christianity’s origin story, stripping it of miracles, divine sanction, and institutional sanctity in History of the Establishment of Christianity (1777). This work, often praised as audacious, is in fact shaped by Voltaire’s fundamentally Protestant-inflected, futuristic Enlightenment perspective while still deeply tethered to a medieval-Aristotelian schema that saw Christianity primarily through the lens of power dynamics and moral decay, rather than genuinely interrogating the theological complexities of its rise. Despite prophetically predicting the Reason-fueled violence of non-religious movements like the French Revolution and arguing that Atheism is dangerous, he also tried to de-mysticize and individualize Christianity to make it more palpable to Materialistic Enlightnment-Protestant philosophies.

This modern Critical Reader’s Edition includes an illuminating afterword tracing Voltaire’s intellectual relationships with Enlightenment thinkers and philosophers (including Locke, Diderot, Rousseau and Newton), containing unique research into his influences and economic attachments, a comprehensive timeline of his life and works, a glossary of Enlightenment terminology, and a detailed index of all of Voltaire’s writings. This unique professional translation renders Voltaire’s sharp, satirical prose into modern language to preserve the original clarity and movement of the text. Combined with the scholarly amplifying material, this edition is a groundbreaking exploration of Voltaire’s classic works and his enduring artistic and philosophical influence, and influence on modern Protestant-Atheistic Theology.

Published in 1777, just one year before Voltaire’s death, under a shroud of anonymity and subterfuge. So incendiary was its subject – the critical examination of how Christianity took root in the world – that Voltaire issued it under a pseudonym and outside France. The treatise itself is written in a calm, analytic tone that belies its explosive implications. Drawing on scripture, apocryphal gospels, Roman historians, and church tradition, Voltaire the historian steps forward to ask: How did a small sect of disciples in an obscure corner of the Roman Empire grow into the dominant religion of Europe? In answering, he pointedly strips out the supernatural elements that ecclesiastical history would normally include.