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During the election of 1800, Thomas Jefferson was denounced as a "howling atheist" and "a confirmed infidel" known for "vilifying the divine word, and preaching insurrection against
God". Thomas Jefferson revered Jesus as "the first of human Sages" and was, according to one biographer, "the most self-consciously theological of all
US presidents".
The book that the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History will
have on display during November 2011 is actually one of two Jefferson Bibles.
Thomas Jefferson produced the first over the course of a few days in 1804.
Not long after completing the Louisiana Purchase, he used a razor on two
copies of the Bible, intent on dividing the true words of Jesus from those put into his mouth by "the corruptions of schismatising
followers".
The result was The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth: a severely abridged text (now lost) that, like the apocryphal
Gospel of Thomas, consisted entirely of Jesus' sayings.
In this "precious morsel of ethics", as Jefferson put it, Jesus prayed to God and affirmed the afterlife, but he was not born in a manger and did not die to atone for anyone's sins.
In 1820, after
Thomas Jefferson retired from public life, he produced a second scripture by subtraction
— the book that is now being restored in Washington, D.C. In The Life and Morals of Jesus of
Nazareth, he again sought to excise passages "of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, or superstitions, fanaticisms, and
fabrications".
This time, however, he arranged his material chronologically rather than topically, and he included both the sayings and actions of Jesus.
He also included passages in English, French, Latin and Greek.
To readers familiar with the New Testament, this Jefferson Bible, as it is popularly called, begins and ends abruptly.
Rather than opening, as does the Gospel of John, in the beginning with the Word, Jefferson raises his curtain on a political and economic drama: Caesar's decree that all the world should be taxed.
His story concludes with this hybrid verse: "There laid they Jesus, and rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulcher, and
departed".
Between these points, there are no angels, no wise men, and not a hint of the resurrection.
After completing this second micro-testament, Jefferson claimed in a letter to a friend that it demonstrated his bona fides as a Christian.
"It is a document in proof that I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the
doctrine of
Jesus".
That, of course, has been hotly debated from the election of 1800 to today, and Jefferson has been called an infidel, a Deist, and more.
What is most clear is that he was not a traditional Christian. He unequivocally rejected the Nicene Creed,
that defined orthodoxy for most Christians since 381; between the main two
doctrines (Nicene and Arian) during the history of the Church, Jefferson
preferred Arian doctrine, a doctrine considered to be more in agreement
with ancient scripture. Believers in Arian doctrine do not consider
the New Testament to be part of the Bible. Thomas Jefferson was contemptuous of the
concept of the Trinity that is part of Nicene doctrine
— calling it "mere Abracadabra" and "hocus-pocus
phantasm".
None of that prevented Jefferson from claiming to represent real Christianity, or from dismissing his clerical despisers as "Pseudo-Christians"
— imposters peddling a counterfeit
faith (Nicene doctrine).
Religion is about doing good, he insisted, not abstract theologizing.
Americans have long been a people of the book. John Winthrop quoted from the Bible in his "city on the hill" sermon in 1630, and American political leaders have been quoting from it ever since. When the Jefferson Bible goes on display in November, Americans will have another opportunity to debate
their third president's faith, the religious character of the nation, and the true meaning of Christianity.
This seems as good a time as any to ponder whether the "sum of all religion" is, as Jefferson once put it, "fear God and love thy
neighbor".
Mr. Prothero is a professor of religion at Boston University. |
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