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Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Thomas Jefferson Performed Data Cleansing On The Gospels
In 1804 Thomas Jefferson, one of The United States "Founding Fathers" published "The Life And Morals of Jesus of Nazareth" (online text). Today it is commonly known as the "Jefferson Bible". It was his attempt to preserve the teachings and philosophy of Jesus without the supernatural aspects and the parts that he perceived as misunderstandings and mistakes of the Gospel authors. This is one example of Data Cleansing of scripture, and remarkably, it was carried out by one of the most esteemed men in History. It seems that Thomas Jefferson would agree that "once you get the God out of Wisdom Literature, it can be enjoyed by everyone".
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5 comments:
After reading a little about this from your links, it looks like TJ has the same issues as almost everyone. He sees people missues the bible for power and finacial gain. It seems like we spend so much time trying to figue out who/what God is that we forget to figure out what is taught in scripture. Even people on opposite sides of the fence, such as you and I, can find plenty of common ground.
To me, the issue isn't so much whether Jefferson was right in his emendations but that he was of the opinion that the NT needed emendation.
Hi Richd, Mike
I'm with mike.
why take out the supernatural parts if your motivation is "power and financial gain".
Doesn't it seem like he must have had an issue with the supernatural aspects to remove the supernatural aspects?
In the letter he wrote he mentioned that specifically and I don't disagree that he had an issue with the supernatural. The letter he wrote to John Adams appears to have more motives than just removing God out of the wisdom literature. Just pulling all the words he could credit to Christ out and having left "an octavo of forty-six pages, of pure and unsophisticated doctrines." as he put it.
I wonder if things might have even been a little better if faith books were maybe not canonized.
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