Thomas Jefferson struggled with his Christian Faith, not because of the faith itself, but because of the negative influences he had experienced regarding religiosity. In other words, Jefferson revered the teachings of Jesus Christ, but religion had turned him off. This was true with most of the founding fathers. Religion in the form of an established religion in England, The Church of England, was a fine example of the evil men do through religious organization. The Catholic Church of the time also served as an example of the evils of religion. Even in America, when one considered, for example, the heavy theocratic hand the Puritans ruled with in states like Connecticut, the institution of religion did not exactly sit favorably with the men that labored to create this nation.
The Jefferson Bible, or as it was properly named: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, is a compilation of sections of biblical text, but much of it is also left out. Jefferson may have battled with the idea of the divinity of Christ, or at least that is the argument, so he left out the miracles, and all other supernatural aspects of the story of Jesus (including angels). He also left out a number of other parts he felt were added by some of the writers or transcribers. He created The Jefferson Bible as a way of reaching out to the Indians. He feared they may be turned off by the divinity of Christ, but he wanted them to be taught the words of Christ. Jefferson did, after all, despite the internal details of his own personal faith, respect the life of Jesus Christ.
He thought in a manner very similar to my own: Religion is man-made, but faith in Jesus Christ is God-made.
In a sense, The Jefferson Bible is Jefferson's view of what Christianity is all about, or what it should be. Jefferson compared a number of writings regarding morals and value-based principles to the Christian doctrine, and placed those comparisons in the text of his work. He took the gospels and pieced them together into a single narrative, so that elements of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all reside within the text of his book.
Jefferson never published the book during his lifetime, and shared it with only a few friends. His grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, published a fairly complete form he inherited in 1895 with the National Museum in Washington. The book was later published again by an act of the United States Congress in 1904. For a while, copies were given to new members of Congress. Last year, The Smithsonian published the first full-color facsimile of the Jefferson Bible on November 1, 2011.
The copy I have, a gift from my good friend Paul at Prying1Books, is dated 1902 by the N.D. Thompson Publishing Company.
Though many like to call Jefferson a "deist," Jefferson did not see himself that way at all. In fact, in a letter to Mr. Charles Thompson, which is reproduced in my copy of The Jefferson Bible, Jefferson wrote:
"I , too, have made a wee-little book from the same materials (The Gospels) which I call the Philosophy of Jesus. It is a paradigma of his doctrines, made by cutting the texts out of the book and arranging them on the pages of a black book, in a certain order of time and subject. A more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen. It is a document in proof that I am a REAL CHRISTIAN, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who call ME infidel and THEMSELVES Christians and preachers of the Gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its author never said nor saw. They have compounded from the heathen mysteries a system beyond the comprehension of man, of which the great reformer of the vicious ethics and deism of the Jews, were he to return to earth, would not recognize one feature."
He may have considered himself a real Christian, but his distaste for man-made religion is very evident in the text of that letter.
-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
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