Politicalprof

February 24, 2012

seltaire asked: It funny Jefferson was able to cut up a Bible in the 18th Century ... I think if he did that now, he'd be burned at the stake.

Oh, you can buy a copy of the Jefferson Bible on Amazon and elsewhere. But I wouldn’t run for office today with a copy in my hand!

For those of you who don’t know, Jefferson excised the miracles from the Bible—he literally took a razor and cut them out. There is substantial textual evidence that the miracles were added later, and he wanted to focus on Jesus’ words, not those of later interpreters.

Likewise, Jefferson removed any text that appears to have been added later than the 4 apostles (there’s evidence for substantial additions later) and cut the 4 main books up and rearranged them so that they made a continuous timeline, rather than jumping around as they do.

And for anyone shocked, it should be stated that Jefferson and many of the other Framers were not Christians in the contemporary sense of the word. They were Deists who recognized a divine being but did not believe that being played an active role in world affairs. Hence Jefferson did not consider his acts sacrilegious: the miracles and the Passion/death of Christ were simply not important to Jefferson and his fellow Deists. Instead, the ethical teachings of Jesus were what mattered—and that was his words, not the other stuff.

11:35am | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZPUuPyGyW6js

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