Thomas Jefferson’s Bible (UPDATED)
How you like your Founding Fathers/”Christian nation” now, Fundamentalists?
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.”
(snippy snip)
The big question now, said Lori Anne Ferrell, a professor of early modern history and literature at Claremont Graduate University, is this:
“Can you imagine the reaction if word got out that a president of the United States cut out Bible passages with scissors, glued them onto paper and said, ‘I only believe these parts?’ “
Oh, yeah, some people would utterly flip their shit.
Not endorsing or condemning cutting the Bible into little pieces, but history is much more interesting when you actually, um, learn history, as opposed to the Fundamentalist version of history (and science, and whatever else) which says “Fuck reality, I’ll believe what I want to believe!”
I’ll admit, I have my suspicions about just how literally we should take Jesus’s miracles, “conventional interpretations” be damned.
UPDATE: Oh lookie, seems like George W. Bush can’t handle Jefferson’s religious beliefs either. Gotta make sure stupid Americans keep believing the lie:
President Bush was at Monticello for a 4th of July celebration and he delivered an address. But it’s quite telling that his speechwriters, in quoting Jefferson, cut out an anti-religious statement from a long and famous quote. Here’s the way Bush put it:
Thomas Jefferson understood that these rights do not belong to Americans alone. They belong to all mankind. And he looked to the day when all people could secure them. On the 50th anniversary of America’s independence, Thomas Jefferson passed away. But before leaving this world, he explained that the principles of the Declaration of Independence were universal. In one of the final letters of his life, he wrote, “May it be to the world, what I believe it will be — to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all — the Signal of arousing men to burst the chains, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.”
Funny thing about the quote is that it was selectively edited from one of Jefferson’s letters. Here’s what’s missing:
May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.
Ed Brayton points out in his post on the subject, “Jefferson made many such statements, of course. Clearly they are best edited out by those who advocate nothing if not monkish ignorance and superstition.“
Yep. That’s about right.
July 6, 2008 at 11:29 pm
Still, many of founding fathers were Christians of varying backgrounds. Most of the rest were diests with much ascent and homage paid to the morals of the Christian religion. Thems are the facts on the ground, brudda. It really doesn’t mean much that they were…it’s just…well, they had respect for the fact that man (governments) don’t give us freedom, God does.
I’ll believe the facts I learned in college US history, in BOSTON, and use that as reality, you know? I didn’t get edumacated in the south, nor do I come from the south, so that don’t work on me…so…now what? Yanno?
I understand that I currently live in Oklahoma, and for that reason, most of the time, I purposely let my grammar slip….because well…I dun care.
As for the miracles, COME ON. If you don’t have the miracles, now what do we have? A God who can’t even heal the blind? I mean…lets be critical of the text…the many miracles that Jesus did, as written in the Gospels, were written as a series of events, not a poem, allegory, or metaphor, not even close, no one would read it that way. It’s either you believe they happened and confirm who Jesus claimed to be, or not. Faith book, right? That’s my take.
How was your Fourth btw?
July 7, 2008 at 12:03 am
I dunno, i’ve just seen some scholarship that suggests that some of the miracle language was more politically subversive in nature than we would realize reading with 20th century eyes. As usual, I plead the “i dunno” card.
The 4th was fine. Fireworks and traffic jams. The usual.
Yours?
July 7, 2008 at 12:05 am
Oh, and Jefferson openly disdained Christianity as a religious system.
July 7, 2008 at 4:17 am
I’m sure he did. Can’t win em all over…including myself, who thinks religious systems in general are a terrible idea. You know all that “the world is bad” stuff in the Bible? Little know fact that the word for “world” in greek is “kosmos” which primarily means “a system”, like of how things work. So use that most common understanding to interpret those verses…and voila…religious ’systems’ are condemned outright.
Anyways, my weekend was swell…cookouts beer and fireworks. The usual. I get more and more redneck each year, I gotta get out of here!
Peace
July 7, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Some redneck things are totally okay.
You just have to keep them in perspective.