Albert Réville (4 November 1826, Dieppe, Seine-Maritime – 25 October 1906) was a distinguished French Protestanttheologian, known for his 'extremist' liberal views.[1] He is also known for being one of the first intellectuals to join the Dreyfusard cause when the Dreyfus Affair erupted in the 1890s.[2]
He was a prolific writer on the comparative history of world religions. In addition to the history of Christianity, he published on the native religions of Central America (about which he gave the 1884 Hibbert Lectures), Chinese religion[4] and the history of the idea of the Devil.
He was a notable advocate of David Strauss' vision hypothesis, that the accounts of the resurrection of Jesus were historically due to a vision caused by nervous tension by Mary Magdalene and subsequent mass hysteria among the disciples.[6]
Storia del Diavolo, Lulu Press, Raleigh (NC), 2018, Italian version of Histoire du Diable (1870), translated by Rev. Marco Lupi Speranza, ISBN978-0-24-409658-8.
References
^See Ivan Stresnki, Theology and the First Theory of Sacrifice (2003), ch. 3.
^See his memoir, Les étapes d'un intellectuel, à propos de l'affaire Dreyfus (1898).
^Rush Rhees The Life of Jesus of Nazareth 2007 "This last explanation has in recent times been revived in connection with the so-called vision-hypothesis by Renan and Réville. Mary found the tomb empty, and being herself of a highly strung nervous nature—she had been cured by Jesus of "