Abstract EN:

In Voltaire's correspondence, familiar prose is constantly interwoven with biblical references. No other text is, by far, as present there as is the bible. Voltaire quotes the bible more than his contemporaries. He quotes from the entire bible, not from just a few well-known passages. If the bible is so omnipresent in his correspondence, this is because, far from being reserved for devotion or solemn emphasis, it pervades every subject, including the most trivial. Indeed Voltaire draws all kinds of comparisons from the bible. Referring to both persons and situations. The bible is thus divested of its sacred character. The biblical reference in Voltaire’s hands is manipulated freely or drawn into a play on words, which further accentuates the loss of its sacred character: the bible becomes an opportunity to show off his wit. The bible is also present in his literary correspondence, in which it becomes a motive, an ornament in itself. It is also a model when Voltaire takes up the New Testament epistolary form, using it for the benefit of philosophical "propaganda". The correspondence, lastly, is a brilliant and witty synthesis of Voltaire’s biblical exegesis. What this somewhat vague and disparate text lacks in plausibility, historicity and morality is constantly denounced, but in a fragmented and familiar way, as in a conversation.