Jefferson regarded Jesus as a moral guide rather than a divinity. In his unique interpretation of the Bible, he highlights Christ's ethical teachings, discarding the scriptures' supernatural elements, to reflect the deist view of religion.
Presents Thomas Jefferson's personal version of the Bible, a document in which he edited and rearranged the books of the Bible to distill the philosophy and teachings of Jesus, while removing all supernatural elements.
The life and times of a uniquely American testament In his retirement, Thomas Jefferson edited the New Testament with a penknife and glue, removing all mention of miracles and other supernatural events. Inspired by the ideals of the Enlightenment, Jefferson hoped to reconcile Christian tradition with reason by presenting Jesus of Nazareth as a great moral teacher—not a divine one. Peter Manseau tells the story of the Jefferson Bible, exploring how each new generation has reimagined the book in its own image as readers grapple with both the legacy of the man who made it and the place of religion in American life. Completed in 1820 and rediscovered by chance in the late nineteenth century after being lost for decades, Jefferson's cut-and-paste scripture has meant different things to different people. Some have held it up as evidence that America is a Christian nation founded on the lessons of the Gospels. Others see it as proof of the Founders' intent to root out the stubborn influence of faith. Manseau explains Jefferson's personal religion and philosophy, shedding light on the influences and ideas that inspired him to radically revise the Gospels. He situates the creation of the Jefferson Bible within the broader search for the historical Jesus, and examines the book's role in American religious disputes over the interpretation of scripture. Manseau describes the intrigue surrounding the loss and rediscovery of the Jefferson Bible, and traces its remarkable reception history from its first planned printing in 1904 for members of Congress to its persistent power to provoke and enlighten us today.
This volume is the first full-length book that offers a critical investigation into the composition of Jefferson’s Bible. In it, the author looks critically not only at what Jefferson includes, but also at what he chose to exclude in an effort to uncover the principles that Jefferson employed in selecting and deselecting verses. In addition to providing a full text of Jefferson’s Bible, this study places these documents within a historical, philosophical and theological context that illuminates their significance and relevance to our time.
Lists candidates for the "best" and "worst" excerpts from a variety of scriptures, including the Hebrew Bible, the Qur'an, the Bhagavadgîtâ, Buddhist sutras, and the Book of Mormon, and invites readers' opinions on the selections.
In this original and illuminating book, Denise A. Spellberg reveals a little-known but crucial dimension of the story of American religious freedom—a drama in which Islam played a surprising role. In 1765, eleven years before composing the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson bought a Qur’an. This marked only the beginning of his lifelong interest in Islam, and he would go on to acquire numerous books on Middle Eastern languages, history, and travel, taking extensive notes on Islam as it relates to English common law. Jefferson sought to understand Islam notwithstanding his personal disdain for the faith, a sentiment prevalent among his Protestant contemporaries in England and America. But unlike most of them, by 1776 Jefferson could imagine Muslims as future citizens of his new country. Based on groundbreaking research, Spellberg compellingly recounts how a handful of the Founders, Jefferson foremost among them, drew upon Enlightenment ideas about the toleration of Muslims (then deemed the ultimate outsiders in Western society) to fashion out of what had been a purely speculative debate a practical foundation for governance in America. In this way, Muslims, who were not even known to exist in the colonies, became the imaginary outer limit for an unprecedented, uniquely American religious pluralism that would also encompass the actual despised minorities of Jews and Catholics. The rancorous public dispute concerning the inclusion of Muslims, for which principle Jefferson’s political foes would vilify him to the end of his life, thus became decisive in the Founders’ ultimate judgment not to establish a Protestant nation, as they might well have done. As popular suspicions about Islam persist and the numbers of American Muslim citizenry grow into the millions, Spellberg’s revelatory understanding of this radical notion of the Founders is more urgent than ever. Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an is a timely look at the ideals that existed at our country’s creation, and their fundamental implications for our present and future.
Free-thinking Thomas Jefferson established the University of Virginia as a secular institution and stipulated that the University should not provide any instruction in religion. Yet over the course of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth, religion came to have a prominent place in the University, which today maintains the largest department of religious studies of any public university in America. Given his intentions, how did Jefferson's university undergo such remarkable transformations? In God on the Grounds, esteemed religious studies scholar Harry Gamble offers the first history of religion’s remarkably large role—both in practice and in study—at UVA. Jefferson’s own reputation as a religious skeptic and infidel was a heavy liability to the University, which was widely regarded as injurious to the faith and morals of its students. Consequently, the faculty and Board of Visitors were eager throughout the nineteenth century to make the University more religious. Gamble narrates the early, rapid, and ongoing introduction of religion into the University’s life through the piety of professors, the creation of the chaplaincy, the growth of the YMCA, the multiplication of religious services and meetings, the building of a chapel, and the establishment of a Bible lectureship and a School of Biblical History and Literature. He then looks at how—only in the mid-twentieth century—the University began to retreat from its religious entanglements and reclaim its secular character as a public institution. A vital contribution to the institutional history of UVA, God on the Grounds sheds light on the history of higher education in the United States, American religious history, and the development of religious studies as an academic discipline.
"Jefferson was a deist and his 'Jefferson Bible' left out all the miracles and included only the moral teachings of Jesus." So goes the line in much of academia today. With impeccable scholarship, Dr. Patton has carefully researched, reconstructed, and reproduced Jefferson's The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth. He convincingly demonstrates that Jefferson never intended his 'wee little book' to be a new version of the Bible; rather, it was to be a compendium of Bible verses that Jefferson especially recommended to Native Americans.Jefferson includes many significant verses in this compendium such as: Luke 3:23-38 which traces Jesus' ancestry back to Adam; Mark 14:61-62 where Jesus proclaimed that He is indeed the Son of God, the Messiah (Christ), and the great I AM of the Old Testament, Exodus 3:14; Matthew 11:4-5 where Jesus tells the disciples of John the Baptist that his Messiahship is evidenced by healing the blind, the lame, and raising the dead. Those who read Dr. Patton's book with an open mind will conclude that Thomas Jefferson was closer to orthodoxy than many have previously thought.- Colonal John EidsmoeSenior Counsel & Resident Scholar, Foundation for Moral Law - Montgomery, AlabamaAuthor of: Historical and Theological Foundations of Law (a three volume set) and Christianity and the Constitution (and many other books).Dr. Judd Patton, Dr. Mark Beliles and David Barton are to be commended for correcting the prevailing liberal view that Thomas Jefferson did not respect the Bible, and indeed cut it up and "mangled" Holy Writ?it is valuable to know?that he held the Scriptures in high regard and simply edited this [1804] version of the Gospels concentrating on Jesus' moral teachings, as a manual for missionary use to Native Americans.- Garrett Ward ShedonThe John Morton Beaty Professor of Politics, University of Virginia's College at Wise, Virginia Author of: The Political Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson, Religion and Political Culture in Jefferson's Virginia, Jefferson and Ataturk: Political Philosophies, and What Would Jefferson Say?