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
This journalistic statement undermines the truth of the Bible. Better to say "the most sacred book of mankind".
Not exactly written into stone tablets with lightning bolts atop Mt. Sinai by God Himself.
He told my Father that the King James version was very well researched and made about as accurate as they could. They studied as much original material as the could and even had non Christian scholars review it for errors.
I personally think it and the more modern version of the King James Bible may have been divinely inspired by God. The language is so majestic and the errors so few that they may not exist. Just my opinion tho.
It was actually bishops from throughout the late Roman Empire, but that's quibbling. p> Your point is on the mark. There was great debate in and amongst the early Christian Church over what constituted the true word and what was gnostic. This was a serious religious and scholarly debate and was settled in large measure at the Council of Nicea. Did they get it entirely right? I think not, but close enough for the work of tbe mortal men and sinners that they were.
I accept their canon and reject the other works that remain interesting historical documents but not worthy of being tenants of the Faith.
Jefferson was doing what many of us have done: trying to reconcile what we have read with our ability to analyze and reason. Not a useful chore on matters of faith.
Which version would you prefer to be put back in the drawer? The Old Testament or the New Improved Testament version?
I believe you mean *tenets of the faith*, not *tenants of the faith*.
Some of his writings make some harsh references to the clergy, but I think this is a reaction to the excesses of the Church of England.
That's because he believed in a Newtonian deterministic universe.
If he had been exposed to some quantum mechanics, he wouldn't have been so sure of himself.
The KJV might be a nice bit of prose but it is simply a collection of errors, abridging and editing.
It was KJV? It’s Old and New Testament. He cut out parts of the New Testament. Somehow by Divine Providence he knew which parts were falsehood and which were not. My point was, and still is, either it’s all true or none is true. Better to say you don’t believe and put it away than to cut out miracles.
Had Jesus not done the things which no other man had done, he was no more than a philosopher. Jefferson reduced him to Plato and Socrates. He was and is the Son of Almighty God.
tenets
It’s missing books.
Jefferson did not from his testimony have the faith needed to be saved while he was a great man, he probabl did not make it to heaven.
Why the Trojan War cutoff? Still plenty of paganism/idolatry for another 1800 years or so.
Is it the emergence of Israel as a nation in the Levant and the proclamation/publication of the Torah that causes the end IYO?
Didn’t Jefferson found the Democratic Party? This sounds about like modern day ‘progressive’ ‘Christians’.
What's bothered me about the Council of Nicea is that it's been portrayed as a gathering of all the bishops of Christendom to engage in serious religious scholarly debate about the Gospel of Christ. I have no doubt that they tried their best.
However, they did adopt some 20 canons of the faith ranging from priests not charging interest on loans (ursury), banning the practice of self-castration amongst the clergy, declaring various Christian sects to be heretics, dividing the regional power brokers' influence and restricting it to their own turf, and so on.
What this tells me is that it didn't even take 300 years after the death of Christ for the transgressions of swindlers, hustlers, irrational fanatics, and confidence men to cause the summoning of all the leaders of Christendom to one spot in order to clean up their act and adopt one consensus that they could all agree to go forward with.
(Cue Don Corleone calling for a meeting of the heads of the five families...)
It's only natural that mortal men would need to do so, and I don't blame them for it, but since Christian doctrine has been far more stable for the last 1700 years than it was in it's first 300, how much of the truth of what's accepted by Christians today is genuinely original and true to the events of Christ's time? And does it really matter?
Those who point to Scripture in the KJIV Bible and consider each and every word to be divine with no error or surplusage seem to forget that the roots of the Bible was decided by a committee of high elders in the old Church who were trying to get the church under some recognizable sense of control. I'm reminded of Napoleon I's quote 'History is a lie agreed upon'.
I don't think it's heresy to state this fact, or that I'm doing the devil's work in saying so, because even Christ himself told a parable about a lost sheep on the Sabbath where he got his point across about "The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath", in effect telling his followers to 'lighten up' in regards to inflexible religious law. The point being that the danger in fanatic adherence to the written scripture causes the reader to lose sight of the greater meaning because they're so engrossed in the individual words -- That they'd step over a thirsty blind man because they're too engrossed in thinking about making sure there's no chance any shellfish or pork will slip into the evening supper.
Maybe Christ was saying he'd rather mankind walk a bad walk rather to talk a great talk.
Of course those of other branches of Christianity such as Mormons, Eastern Orthodox Coptics, etc. Have different ones.
My personal belief is they got it exactly right.
Perhaps he did what ALL men do when it comes to belief/religion/philosophy and he chose that which he saw as true/useful/acceptable.
Please do not claim sainthood by saying that you follow anything exactly. You, being human, CHOOSE what you want as well.
Julian Jaynes was a psych prof at Princeton and a philologist by avocation who noticed the curious lack of decision-making in the old part of the Illiad and in other literature from the same age; at every point at which you or I would have to stop to figure out which way to proceed the people of the Illiad were being told what to do by internal voices. Working with neurophysiologists at Princeton Jaynes was able to deduce that ancients were actually using a part of the human brain which presently like the human appendix serves no purpose, and wee actually hearing real voices from those stupid idols, and the idols were commanding them to fight wars and sacrifice children.
Idolatry was the one facet of ancient religions which could definitely be singled out as false and amounting to demonology; oracles and prophets apparently served Greece and Israel well for some time before the entire paradigm which enabled them broke down. The closest thing in our modern world to any of those ancient practices is what is called EVP ( www.aaevp.com etc.). They made a movie about that a few years back called "White Noise" which on a scale of 1 - 10 for movies was no better than about a five but the special features on the DVD were interesting enough to compensate.
I don't see where I claimed Sainthood? Again, my point was that what is inspired by God and the Prophets, requires no editing by man. In that, I am claiming nothing, personally. It is all inspired by God and useful, therefore true and acceptable. I make no claims that I can live it all, or understand it all. I don't, however, cut out parts of the Bible and make my own. To me, that is a little odd and quite honestly, is sacrilegious in my view. That's me, if you see things differently, that's you.
But who would you rather do the selecting???
Some guy in 20th century? vs. someone who might
have known some of the original authors offspring?
Who would do better to analyze U.S. History?
Someone alive in the next 100 years? or someone alive
2100 years from now?
He also said that the “son of Man” is also Lord of the
Sabbath....He, as you rightly observe, was saying that
justice and mercy should not be overlooked on the Sabbath.
He was basically accusing some of the religious leaders of
the day of hypocrisy, that is, denying justice and mercy
to the needy (because they really were selfish) but justifying
themselves, by saying they were just obeying the Sabbath laws.
I don’t think he was saying that you can ignore (lighten up)
God given law however. (”inflexible” as you call it)
You’ve got to put yourself into the position of the people who were translating the KJB. They really believed that if they got it wrong they would be damned. When you consider that, it’s not so surprising that they did a good job of it.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Yes, but we shouldn't use names, to protect the guilty. :)
Excellent point.
Thomas Bulfinch, "The Architect of Boston", was a contemporary of Jefferson.
In a letter available to be read today, he begged President Jefferson for his salary when he was rebuilding the new National Capitol building after the British burned the truly-ugly original Capital building. He was my "Great-some-number" Grandfather, from whom I am directly-descended.
Bulfinch had a young son die unexpectedly, sat down, and crossed out passages of the Bible in his grief. He later died in the same chair, as did his father—a medical doctor—before him. This history was recorded in The Life and Letters of Thomas Bulfinch, by his granddaughter, Susan Apthorpe Bulfinch.
This was done after he retired to his wing chair, which I inherited and still have today.
I'd rather have inherited that Bible, though. The Queen Anne wing chair cuts off circulation to my legs, and there's too much "dying" being done in that chair!
Well that explains it :^)
Thanks for your reply.
The part about the vestigal organ i the brain was new to me and I will check out the web site you provided.
I may come back with a follow-up question or two, if you don’t mind.
No doubt there are those who will agree with you. (smile)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.