Contributors

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Thomas Jefferson's Bible

Conservatives love to heap adulation on the founding fathers and bloviate about how they were all Christians founding a Christian nation...at least their version of Christianity. Certainly, Thomas Jefferson, our nation's 3rd president, is one of those heroes who is held up as a champion of the Right and a defender of more local government power.

I have to wonder, though, what those same conservatives think about the fact that Jefferson created his own version of the New Testament.

Thomas Jefferson, together with several of his fellow founding fathers, was influenced by the principles of deism, a construct that envisioned a supreme being as a sort of watchmaker who had created the world but no longer intervened directly in daily life. A product of the Age of Enlightenment, Jefferson was keenly interested in science and the perplexing theological questions it raised. Although the author of the Declaration of Independence was one of the great champions of religious freedom, his belief system was sufficiently out of the mainstream that opponents in the 1800 presidential election labeled him a “howling Atheist.” 

In fact, Jefferson was devoted to the teachings of Jesus Christ. But he didn’t always agree with how they were interpreted by biblical sources, including the writers of the four Gospels, whom he considered to be untrustworthy correspondents. So Jefferson created his own gospel by taking a sharp instrument, perhaps a penknife, to existing copies of the New Testament and pasting up his own account of Christ’s philosophy, distinguishing it from what he called “the corruption of schismatizing followers.” 

In some ways, Jefferson had a point but I wouldn't go as far to cut and past my own version of the Bible nor accuse Christ's followers as corrupt. They were simply trying to understand something that was way beyond them which we can understand in greater clarity today. That's why I'm hoping that in a decade or two, we can leave behind the anti-science of the Right and start a new Age of Enlightenment in which we truly do "His works and greater than these." We can't allow angry, hateful, insecure, irrational people filled with fear to bully their way into being the "official" spokesmodels for God. He is much bigger than their petty obsessions with gay sex and lady parts which, honestly, is an extension of their own sexual hangups.

I wonder what would happen if Barack Obama did what Jefferson did with the Bible...:)

3 comments:

Nikto said...

Every religion cuts and pastes from its predecessors.

The Jews copied the sun god Ra from the Egyptian pharaohs (through Akehnaten), deleting most of the other deities, but pasting Osiris back in as Lucifer. The Christians copied the Old Testament in toto, adding a New addendum that contradicted half the proscriptions and commandments in the Old.

Mohammed copied a bunch of names from the Jews and Christians, but pretty much rewrote the whole book.

Joe Smith added a third book to the Christian canon, pretending to keep the old religion but pretty much upending everything, creating a universe in which he himself would become the god of his own planet.

Like Jefferson, they all constructed a world that provided their own version of punishment and paradise.

Modern Christian sects do the same thing as Jefferson. They don't take a knife to the bible, but they either ignore the passages that don't correspond to their predilections or invent new interpretations of them to buttress their prejudices and lusts.

Religion is not alone in this. We all pick and choose the rules we live by, and the laws we obey: speeding is de rigeuer for most, tax fraud is mandatory in the conservative canon, underage consumption of drugs or booze is mandatory for looking cool.

All of us inhabit our own little universes of right and wrong, universes where our own foibles and perversions are easily excused or become virtues.

Larry said...

No, you might not do a physical cut and paste, but you certainly do seem to be adept at the mental version of it. You certainly have no problem proclaiming that the dreaded "Others" have it all wrong while you have the right of it, with just as much or as little justification (at least to an outside observer with no dog in the fight).

Juris Imprudent said...

I love how neither Jefferson nor you have any appreciation for how your interpretations just create another sect.