Renan argued Jesus was able to purify himself of "Jewish traits" and that he became an Aryan. His "Life of Jesus" promoted racial ideas and infused race into theology and the person of Jesus; he depicted Jesus as a Galilean who was transformed from a Jew into a Christian, and that Christianity emerged purified of any Jewish influences. The book was based largely on the Gospel of John, and was a scholarly work. It depicted Jesus as a man but not God, and rejected the miracles of the Gospel. Renan believed by humanizing Jesus he was restoring to him a greater dignity. The book's controversial assertions that the life of Jesus should be written like the life of any historic person, and that the Bible could and should be subject to the same critical scrutiny as other historical documents caused controversy and enraged many Christians, and Jews were enraged because of its depiction of Judaism as foolish and absurdly illogical and for its insistence that Jesus and Christianity were superior.