[Ahban]

The so-called Jefferson Bible is not what you think it is. It was not even given that name by Jefferson. I heard a great radio program on this. His title was to have been something like "The teachings of Jesus Christ". A library of Congress employee who had possesion of the document gave it the bible title when it went to print.

Until the end of his life, Jefferson would have been a Christian. Even in the end, he "held the teachings of Jesus Christ to be divine" and thus considered himself a Christian on that basis. Since his endorsement did not enclude the writings of the apostles he was not what I would consider a fundamentalist, but neither was he the man that radical secularists would make him out to be.

[E Rocc]

Until the end of his life, Jefferson would have been a Christian. Even in the end, he "held the teachings of Jesus Christ to be divine" and thus considered himself a Christian on that basis. Since his endorsement did not enclude the writings of the apostles he was not what I would consider a fundamentalist, but neither was he the man that radical secularists would make him out to be

Jefferson considered Jesus of Nazareth to be a great moral teacher, but not divine, let alone the Son of the God. He also mocked critical Christian principles such as Jesus's birth from a virgin and the Book of Revealations. By no modern standard could he be considered a Christian:

But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer [Jesus] of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State.

-Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Samuel Kercheval, 1810.

-Eric