Posted on 07/07/2008 6:00:09 PM PDT by BGHater
Making good on a promise to a friend to summarize his views on Christianity, Thomas Jefferson set to work with scissors, snipping out every miracle and inconsistency he could find in the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Then, relying on a cut-and-paste technique, he reassembled the excerpts into what he believed was a more coherent narrative and pasted them onto blank paper -- alongside translations in French, Greek and Latin.
In a letter sent from Monticello to John Adams in 1813, Jefferson said his "wee little book" of 46 pages was based on a lifetime of inquiry and reflection and contained "the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man."
He called the book "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth." Friends dubbed it the Jefferson Bible. It remains perhaps the most comprehensive expression of what the nation's third president and principal author of the Declaration of Independence found ethically interesting about the Gospels and their depiction of Jesus.
"I have performed the operation for my own use," he continued, "by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the matter, which is evidently his and which is as easily distinguished as diamonds in a dunghill."
The little leather-bound tome, several facsimiles of which are kept at the Huntington Library in San Marino, continues to fascinate scholars exploring the powerful and varied relationships between the Founding Fathers and the most sacred book of the Western World.
The big question now, said Lori Anne Ferrell, a professor of early modern history and literature at Claremont Graduate University, is this:
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Jefferson was a bit of a flake and in this matter he was displaying Obama-like arrogance. If one does not believe in the resurrection, the miracles and has no faith, why bother. Don’t waste time cutting and pasting like some nutjob. Just put the Bible in the drawer and let it be.
Jefferson was called an Atheist by his foes, called himself a Christian, but was not (by the most common definition). I consider him a Deist who admired Jesus, which is a damn sight better than a Deist who doesn’t! ;)
I've always understood the Jefferson Bible to have been a condensed work of the Gospel of Jesus Christ which only included quotes and references that could be directly attributed to Jesus, but maybe this means the same thing as above.
“said his “wee little book” of 46 pages was based on a lifetime of inquiry and reflection and contained “the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.”
In college we called them “Cliff Notes”.
I mean, if a bunch of Dark Ages Turkish bishops in Constantinople after the fall of the Roman Empire can decide in committee what the bible ought to have in it, why not Thomas Jefferson?
One major difference is the question of crime; the OT speaks of rape, arson, gang-banging, murder etc. as relatively minor crimes and the really big and evil crime which the book is about is making up little dolls and images to worship. The first commandment basically says "Thou shalt not commit idolatry and you need to buy and read a copy of Julian Jaynes' "Origin of Consciousness" to grasp why this was. Idolatry damned near turned the planet into an insane asylum for most of the thousand year period between the flood and the Trojan war.
I personally believe the loss of all his family except for one daughter affected him. He seemed to be extremely attached to them and their loss may have made him question God.
Good mercy, you are just wrong!
Anyone trying this approach with the Koran is unlikely to live much longer......
I’m reading Founding Faith right now. Notice that there are “fascimiles” of the Jefferson Bible. That’s because there is no original in existence. Others have tried to recreate it and of course each person trying to recreate brings his/her own bias. The author of the book I’m reading (Steven Waldman) tries really hard to keep his own bias out of what he is writing about and most of the time so far he does pretty well at navigating the culture wars. He does slip occasionally and shows a pretty strong anti Christian bias. Oh well, at least I can read what the founders actually said. I’m feeling really good about James Madison right now. Adams and Jefferson were pretty flawed but understandible in context. Washington was a giant. He was not a deist btw. He didn’t have much to say about it at all and so those who claim him as a deist are again just extrapolating.
They weren’t Turks, they were Romans, Greeks, and other Westerners. At that time, most of the Turks were still in central Asia.
Go alphabetically when you don’t know where to start.
The HBO series makes Madison into a totalitarian war monger and the opposite for Adams and TJ. History: the myth agreed upon.
You do realize that the (Eastern) Roman Empire did not finally fall until 1453, don’t you?
I'm not sure who these "Dark Ages Turkish bishops" you speak of are, but the councils that decided canon had one major difference with Jefferson: at least the councils examined the books, debated the issue, and decided what they believed to be the inspired, inerrant word of God rather than recutting existing books to their whims.
Remind you of anyone we know? :>)
Intersting comment.
Darwin too lost a child and probably affected his perceptions about faith and in what
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