Subject: Jefferson's Supernatural Bible
Date: 8/6/2001 5:54 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: KEVIN4VFT
Message-id: <20010806205426.12533.00003002@ng-fq1.aol.com>


In message-id: <20010801015221.15377.00002360@ng-mo1.aol.com> dated: 7/31/2001 10:52 PM Pacific Daylight Time, EDarr1776 writes:

>>[Kevin:] It is a
>>DENIAL of the belief of the Founding Fathers that
>>Christianity was the true religion, and all others were
>>"false religions" (to use Madison's words). This is why
>>"Religious neutrality" is an impossibility.


> Someone (Nicolas?) said: >>Kevin, I have a question for you.  Was Thomas Jefferson Christian?  <<

> Oddly, Kevin points to the "Jefferson Bible:  >>  
I…have made a wee little book…
> which I call the philosophy of Jesus; it is a paradigma of His doctrines, made 
> by cutting the texts out of the [New Testament] and arranging them on the pages 
> of a blank book, in a certain order of time or 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 on earth, would not recognize 
> one feature.
> —TJ to Charles Thomson. Bergh 14:385. (1816.)<< [Emphasis in Kevin's original]<<

> Jefferson removed all supernatural events, all miracles, all claims that Jesus was divine.

> Jefferson treated Jesus as a philosophical teacher, perhaps along the lines of Socrate or Aristotle.

> So is it Kevin's claim that denying the divinity of Jesus is a Christian thing to do?

> Ed

Ed has not read the Jefferson Bible. I wonder if he even has
a copy. On Pages 67-68 of Jefferson's original hand-pasted
version of the New Testament, with parallel columns of Greek,
Latin, French, and English, Jefferson has Matthew 25:31ff.,
presumably because it reflects Jefferson's views of the
authentic Christ.

Matthew 25:31
31 ¶ When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:

If Jesus is a mere man, and EDarr1776 is a mere man,
then EDarr1776, after his death, ought to be able to come again
in glory, with all the holy angels, and sit on the throne of his glory.

"Angels?" Aren't those "supernatural" beings?
Ed says Jefferson removed them all from "the Jefferson Bible."
Nice try, Ed.

Jefferson's basic Christian doctrines were set out in a letter
to Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse in 1822. (Bergh 15:383)

The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man:
1. That there is one only God, and He all perfect.
2. That there is a future state of rewards and punishments.
3. That to love God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself, is the sum of religion.…But compare with these the demoralizing dogmas of . . . the false shepherds foretold
[in the New Testament] as to enter not by the door into the sheepfold, but to climb up some other way. They are mere usurpers of the Christian name, teaching a counter-religion made up of the deliria of crazy imaginations, as foreign from Christianity as is that of Mahomet. Their blasphemies have driven thinking men into infidelity, who have too hastily rejected the supposed Author himself with the horrors so falsely imputed to Him.
Had the doctrines of Jesus been preached always as pure as they came from his lips, the whole civilized world would now have been Christian
.

Anyone who did not join with Jefferson in believing in God
and in future rewards and punishments could not take an oath
in nearly every jurisdiction in America for decades
after the Constitution was ratified.

http://members.aol.com/TestOath/deism.htm#infidel


http://members.aol.com/TestOath/21atheists.htm


Continuing from Jefferson's Bible:

32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:

The "Devil?" "His angels?"
These are usually considered "supernatural" beings.
Ed says they were "all removed."

Continuing from Jefferson's Bible:

42 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

So Jefferson believed that Jesus was the Judge of the
entire world, who comes in glory and sits on his throne
of glory. Jefferson believed Jesus was the Great Shepherd
who sends all the goats off to everlasting punishment.
That's quite a feat for a
"philosophical teacher,
perhaps along the lines of Socrate or Aristotle."


Jefferson compiled "the Jefferson Bible" as a means
of teaching the Indians the life and morals of Jesus,
as a way of civilizing them.
 
What would Ed and
the ACLU say if Christians started taking over
school boards and making the Jefferson Bible
a required school text?

What would the anti-federalist Jefferson say if he could
return to America in the year 2001 and find out that Ed
and the ACLU have given the federal judiciary the power
to force municipal schools to remove
The doctrines of Jesus,
which are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man:
from their classrooms?





Kevin C.
http://members.aol.com/EndTheWall/
---------------------------------------------

And they shall beat their swords into plowshares
and sit under their Vine & Fig Tree.
Micah 4:1-7



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