Jefferson's extracts from the Gospels: "The philosophy of Jesus" and "The life and morals of Jesus" (The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Second series) [Hardcover]

Thomas Jefferson (Author)

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Language Notes

Text: English, French, Greek, Latin

Product Details

• Hardcover: 438 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press; 1st Edition/1st Printing edition (1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691046999
• ISBN-13: 978-0691046990
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,108,908 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Thomas Jefferson was the third President of the United States (1801-1809), the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), and one of the most influential Founding Fathers for his promotion of the ideals of republicanism in the United States. He envisioned America as the force behind a great "Empire of Liberty" that would promote republicanism and counter the imperialism of the British Empire.

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5.0 out of 5 stars The ultimate source on Thomas Jeffersons religion, October 19, 2001

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Jean-Francois Virey (59500 DOUAI France) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Jefferson's extracts from the Gospels: "The philosophy of Jesus" and "The life and morals of Jesus" (The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Second series) (Hardcover)

«I have ever judged of the religion of others by their lives» - Thomas Jefferson.

Thomas Jefferson was a private man, and nowhere more so than in religious matters. A believer in the «eternal divorce» of religious opinion from civil authority, he was just as wary of the curtailment of individual freedom of conscience by the tyranny of public pressure, castigating the tyrants with clean hands who «altho' the laws will no longer permit them... to burn those who are not exactly of their Creed, ... raise the Hue and cry of Heresy against them, place them under the ban of public opinion, and shut them out from all the kind affections of society.» Afraid of any undue influence on other people's opinions, and jealous of any interference with his own much abused tranquility and reputation, this man who was «in a sect of my own» refrained till the end of his life from any public disclosure of his beliefs in divine matters.

However, his silence did not extend to those among his closer friends whom he suspected to be receptive to his unorthodox opinions, and in addition to his correspondence with them, time -seconded by the efforts of the editors of the present volume- has preserved for us two remarkably revealing documents : «The Philosophy of Jesus», which he composed in 1804, and «The Life and Morals of Jesus», which produced about fifteen years later.

These two pamphlets, the former in English, and the latter in four languages (Greek, Latin, French and English), evince Jefferson's enduring dedication to what he believed to be the restoration of Christ's authentic life and message. Their method of composition, matured after reading and rereading Joseph Priestley's radical, Unitarian treatises on the subject (such as his *History of the Corruptions of Christianity* and his *History of the Early Opinions Concerning Jesus Christ*), was simply to rewrite the Gospels by cutting out anything smacking of the «idolatry and superstition» of the «vulgar», any reference to the supernatural or to Jesus's divinity, and retaining only the «diamonds» that were his sermons and parables.

These two pamphlets tell the story of a child, born to a Jewish couple, who grows up in wisdom, preaches for a short while a reformed (one is almost tempted to say «Enlightened») version of the wicked faith and morality of his people, and is put to death by the civil and religious authorities, a martyr of the unholy alliance of church and state. This man never rose from the dead nor performed any miracles whatsoever, and if he ever claimed to be divinely inspired, the error was excusable : «Elevated by the enthusiasm of a warm and pure heart , conscious of the high strains of an eloquence which had not been taught to him, he might readily mistake the coruscations of his own fine genius for inspirations of a higher order.»

Jefferson deeply regretted his revered Jewish reformer died «at about 33, his reason having not yet attained the maximum of it's energy», but he nonetheless considered the system of morality he had begun to develop to be «the most benevolent and sublime that has been ever taught ; and eminently more perfect than those of any of the antient philosophers». He saw in this system the ultimate guarantee of the one value that seemed to matter to him above all others : social «utility» or harmony, the state of generalized peace and goodwill which is achieved when men refrain from initiating force against each other and love each other as Jesus loved them. And he saw in it too, the one common denominator in all the preachings of the myriad Christian sects, the one hope of their ultimate reconciliation and of an end to centuries of religious wars and persecutions : for only dogma, that crazed concoction of corrupt, «overlearned professors» and priests, divided them.

But *Jefferson's Extracts From the Gospels* contains much more than reproductions of his heretic selections from the Evangelists. It also includes a highly competent and sensible introduction to Jefferson's religious evolution, from the influence of Bolingbroke to that of Priestley; and, perhaps my favorite section of the volume, a one-hundred-page collection of letters written by or to Jefferson from 1800 to 1825, and revealing his opinion of Plato («a Graecian sophist... dealing out mysticisms incomprehensible to the human mind»), Epicurus (whose doctrines «contain everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us») and Calvin («a madman... on whom reasoning was wasted. The strait jacket alone was [his] proper remedy») ; of the Quakers (whom we should all imitate, opting to «live without an order of priests, moralise for ourselves, follow the oracle of conscience, and say nothing about what no man can understand nor therefore believe») and the Unitarians (whose «advances towards rational Christianity» would soon convert the whole nation) ; of the Apocalypse («the ravings of a maniac») and the «incomprehensible jargon of the Trinitarian arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three.»

I would not recommend this book to anyone seeking answers to the ultimate questions, but if all you want to know is what Jefferson believed in, I cannot imagine a better source.