More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
January 15, 2016 - January 30, 2019
Why, then, did Jefferson edit the Gospels?
I have a view of the subject which ought to displease neither the rational Christian nor Diests, and would reconcile many to a character they have too hastily rejected. I do not know that it would reconcile the genus irritabile vatum(2) who are all in arms against me. Their hostility is on too interesting ground to be softened.
I agree with you likewise in your wishes to keep religion and government independant of each Other.
He also wanted to omit the deity of Christ. In short, Jefferson wanted Priestley to write the holy book for Jefferson’s syncretistic religion.
Jefferson, it seems, truly did not want his religious views known. Jefferson’s fear of being castigated by established religious leaders makes it even more unlikely that he ever gave his religious work to a missionary and asked that missionary to get it printed.
Jefferson thought of himself as a Christian but not in the evangelical sense as his Syllabus made clear.
Syllabus of an Estimate of the Merit of the Doctrines of Jesus, compared with those of others.
Those who claim Jefferson was an atheist and those who say he was an orthodox Christian are both wrong. Jefferson believed in a God who created and who has some kind of eternal state waiting “as an important incentive” which supplements “other motives to moral conduct.”
However, Jefferson denied the deity of Christ and even called some of Jesus’ doctrines “defective.”
In that January 29 letter, he told Priestley that a necessary component of this effort would be the preparation of “a digest of his moral doctrines.” As far as we can tell, this is the first mention of what would become his Philosophy of Jesus – Jefferson’s first effort to edit the Gospels.
In this letter, Jefferson disclosed the reason why he first wanted to edit the Gospels – for his own satisfaction.
In the letter, Jefferson said to Adams: In extracting the pure principles which he [Jesus] taught, we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms, as instruments of riches and power to themselves.
I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the matter which is evidently his, and which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill. The result is an octavo of forty-six pages, of pure and unsophisticated doctrines, such as were professed and acted on by the unlettered Apostles, the Apostolic Fathers, and the Christians of the first century.
Jefferson’s intent as expressed to Adams was to craft a document "for his own use" with no mention of Indians or evangelism.
In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.
He may have completed this work sometime in 1820; Jefferson does not say when it was done. What is known is that Jefferson had the book bound by Richmond book binder, Frederick A. Mayo. Although the date of binding is not known for certain, correspondence between Jefferson and Mayo gives a clue. According to Hannah French, who has reviewed the correspondence of Jefferson and Mayo, Jefferson wrote Mayo on October 13, 1824 with a request to bind “a volume...to be bound with as much dispatch as good pressure will admit. Do it in red morocco with gilt leaves, and two or three leaves of good
...more
Once located and acquired, the Smithsonian took charge of displaying and maintaining Jefferson’s work, a task that continues until the present day.
In summary, we find most of the claims we examined were false. The only claim which has any merit is that Jefferson did not cut out all supernatural references. Jefferson believed in life after death with rewards and punishments administered by God. He included many Gospel passages referring to the afterlife.
The evidence is overwhelming that he did not share it with anyone and had no abiding interest in sharing it with Indians or missionaries. Instead, he made the extraction for his own use and satisfaction.
Did Jefferson help finance the first hot-pressed Bible?
Cameron and David Barton in a brief discussion of late 18th century Bibles. In the clip, Barton makes a claim involving Jefferson about which he elaborates in The Jefferson Lies. In the clip, Barton shows Cameron a folio sized two-volume Bible and says, “This Bible was funded by about a dozen signers of the Constitution and signers of the Declaration as well as by President John Adams and Vice President Thomas Jefferson. They’re the guys that put up the financial backing to do this Bible.” Barton adds, “When you see this stuff, you go wait a minute. These guys…why would any atheist, agnostic,
...more
Thus, the claim is that Jefferson and a dozen or so Signers of the Declaration and Constitution financed this 1798 hot press Bible to give to every family in America. Is this true? As we demonstrate, this claim is not accurate.
Most Beautiful Production of Its Nature Hitherto Seen
At the completion of the Bible, the printers compiled a list of subscribers for placement at the end of the second volume. As noted above, according to the subscriber’s list, 1272 people paid to receive one these Bibles, with Jefferson’s name listed among the subscribers (although Adams is not listed). Barton’s narrative of a dozen or so Founders financing the Bible is misleading. Certainly, several Founders subscribed to receive a copy, but they did not finance the entire effort as Barton said.
Selling by subscription allowed journeymen printers to manage a large project, but the result was that the subscribers got what they paid for. The subscribers were not investors in the project. The investors in the project were printers, John Thompson and Abraham Small. The Bible would have been printed whether or not Jefferson and the other Founders subscribed.
If Barton had spoken accurately on Monumental, he would have answered Cameron’s question about the two volume set, by saying something like: This is the first hot-pressed Bible. About a dozen founders and over 1250 other citizens bought one of these printing masterpieces.
In summary, subscribers to the Thompson Hot-Pressed Bible bought a large keepsake edition. Some of those buyers were men who signed the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. According to the subscribers lists we have seen, President John Adams was not one of them. As one can see from the advertisement, John Thompson and Abraham Small financed the printing of the Bible in sections via subscriptions from over 1270 people. While some Bibles might have been given away by their owners, the signers of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence did not finance this work to get God’s
...more
Three • Jefferson’s Religious Beliefs
Regarding his personal faith, excellent treatments of Jefferson’s beliefs can be found in Gary Scott Smith’s Faith and the Presidency: from George Washington to George W. Bush, Edwin Gaustad’s Sworn on the Altar of God, and John Fea’s Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: A Historical Introduction.
In the Jefferson Lies, Barton attempts to discern Jefferson’s beliefs from his actions of church attendance and purchasing Bibles.
Jefferson believed there were sections of the Bible worth redeeming and advised his nephew, Peter Carr, to read the Bible as he would a work of philosophy, choosing what seemed reasonable and leaving behind that which seemed unrealistic.
Did Jefferson question Christian orthodoxy in only six of his 19,000 letters?
The Syllabus
Some might question Jefferson’s intent; did he really mean to dismiss the Trinity and divinity? Apparently, Priestley thought so. Recall that Priestley expressed “some surprise...that you [Jefferson] should be of the opinion, that Jesus never laid claim to a divine mission” when he replied to Jefferson on May 7, 1803.
Given that Jefferson called the Syllabus his religious creed and shared it with friends and family, it is striking that Barton hardly refers to it in The Jefferson Lies.
Unity of God
according to the ritual of the church in which I was educated, makes a solemn profession, before god and the world, of faith in articles, which I had never sense enough to comprehend, and it has always appeared to me that comprehension must precede assent. The difficulty of reconciling the ideas of Unity and Trinity, have, from a very early part of my life, excluded me from the office of sponsorship, often proposed to me by my friends, who would have trusted, for the faithful discharge of it, to morality alone instead of which the church requires faith.
On the subject of the Trinity, Jefferson did not merely question traditional Christian orthodoxy; he ridiculed it, as in this letter to Quaker William Canby on September 18, 1813:
Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus.[228]
He proves, also, that man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without a rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck.[233]
Good works save
I believe...that he who steadily observes those moral precepts in which all religions concur, will never be questioned at the gates of heaven, as to the dogmas in which they all differ. That on entering there, all these are left behind us, and the Aristides and Catos, the Penns and Tillotsons, Presbyterians and Papists, will find themselves united in all principles which are in concert with the reason of the supreme mind.[236]
Were I to be the founder of a new sect, I would call them Apriarians, and after the example of the bee, advise them to extract the honey of every sect. My fundamental principle would be the reverse of Calvin’s, that we are to be saved by our good works which are within our power, and not by our faith which is not within our power. [239]
I am a Materialist, he takes the side of spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance toward forgiveness of sin. I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it &c. &c..[240]
Jesus, an imperfect man
Jefferson’s rejection of the Scripture as an inspired text is clear. According to Jefferson, if Jesus really approved the “follies,” “falsehoods,” and “charlatanisms” the Gospel writers wrote about Him, then Jesus should be dismissed as an “impostor.” Jefferson liked Jesus, but only the Jesus of Jefferson’s mind was acceptable.
For Jefferson, there is no God-man of the incarnation; Jesus never claimed that status. Even so, because of his religious upbringing and his obvious natural gifts, Jesus might have falsely believed he was inspired by God in some special way.
Jefferson concluded this instruction to Short with a summary of his apology for the character of Jesus. Jefferson acknowledged that even Jesus had some flaws, but, as he had outlined, there were good reasons for them.
This letter makes it crystal clear that Jefferson believed the Old and New Testaments were simply uninspired history books, and not the inerrant and inspired word of God.
Virgin birth
