JEFFERSON’S BIBLE

Text: All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness, that the people of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

II Timothy 3:16

INTRODUCTION

Two summers ago, I read “John Adams” by David McCullough and “Founding Brothers” by Joseph Ellis, and re-discovered some of the well-documented history and lesser known stories about the men and women who helped to found and to form the United States in the 18^th century.

The one figure, alongside George Washington and John Adams, who comes through as the most dominant and intriguing of them all, is Thomas Jefferson. Born in Virginia in 1743, he rose to political prominence and was elected President in 1801, serving on through a second term that ended in 1809. As most of us know, he was also the author of the Declaration of Independence, the architect of the American concept of the separation of church and state, Governor of Virginia, Minister to France, Secretary of State, Vice-President and the founder of the University of Virginia. Jefferson died on the 4^th of July, 1826 at Monticello, the same day that John Adams died, and all of America mourned the loss of both men, who had been friends and adversaries and made peace with each other toward the end of their lives. All of that, of course, is an important part of our nation’s history.

But did you know that Thomas Jefferson created his own version of theBible?

I have a copy here in my hand, entitled “The Jefferson Bible: the Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth,” which took 15 years to produce and was completed in 1820 when Jefferson was 77. In a letter to his old friend Charles Thompson, Jefferson wrote:

“I have made a wee little book…of His (Jesus’) doctrines, made by cutting the texts out of the (gospels) 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.” (Written in 1816, from the Preface of “The Jefferson Bible,” by E. Forrester Church, 1989, Beacon Press, page 18).

It was not a best seller during Jefferson’s day – there was no mass printing or marketing of the book – primarily because, as Jefferson explained to John Adams, “I have performed this operation for my own use.” (Ibid, page 19)

So why did he produce his own version of the gospels? In Jefferson’s own words, he answered:

“I should proceed to a view of the life, character and doctrines of Jesus…to show a master workman, and that His system of morality was the most benevolent and sublime probably that has ever been taught…Among the sayings and discourses imputed to Him by His biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination and correct morality…and others, of so much ignorance and untruth…as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being. I separate, therefore, the gold from the dross…” (Ibid, pages 9, 27-28)

And in defense of what he had done, Jefferson wrote to another friend, Benjamin Rush in Philadelphia:

“I am a Christian in the only sense He (Jesus) wished anyone to be; sincerely attached to His doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to Himself every human excellence; and believing He never claimed any other.” (Ibid, page 30)

Well, the truth was that Thomas Jefferson had been greatly influenced by the French philosophers and the rationalism of the Enlightenment which focused on humanity and not divinity. Moreover, there were Christians in America who were suspicious of Jefferson’s religion, because he did not believe in the incarnation or the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and they said that he was actually a deist…which was right.

That is why, in the Jefferson Bible, most of the Christmas story is left out, none of Jesus’ miracles are put in and the last page ends this way:

“In the place where He was crucified, there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulcher, wherein was never man yet laid.

There they laid Jesus.

And rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulcher, and departed.” (Matthew 27:60)

II.

Now, I don’t want to sound un-patriotic, for I believe that Thomas Jefferson was a great and visionary man who helped to lay the foundation stones of freedom, justice and equality which we enjoy in this land today. Neither do I want to come across as totally critical of his faith, because Jefferson did believe in God, he respected, perhaps even revered Jesus of Nazareth and he spent 15 years of his own life in Washington, D.C. and Monticello, studying the Greek, Latin, French and English texts of the Bible and piecing together the sayings, teachings and moral precepts of our Lord.

But as he intentionally, systematically cut out and pasted in some of the words of the gospels and not others, Jefferson was, in fact, tampering with the integrity of the scriptures and with the core of Christianity. It reminds of something C.S. Lewis wrote many years later, in response to those who say, “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” Lewis replied, “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic…or else he would be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the son of God: or else a madman or something worse…But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being (just) a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” (From “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis, Macmillan Publishing Company, 1943, pages 55-56)

Well, that’s enough about Thomas Jefferson and his version of the Bible and what he thought about Jesus. If you ever want to read “Jefferson’s Bible” I’ll be glad to loan you my copy. However, it does lead us into a far more important discussion about our own version of the scriptures – not so much whether we prefer the King James or the Revised Standard or the new International Version – but rather how we read and interpret the Bible and then apply it in your life and in mine.

Our text today from 2 Timothy, chapter 3, verse 16 says:

All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the people of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

If we believe that verse is true, then perhaps the first thing we need to do is confess that most of us have not read the entire Bible all the way through. That takes a long time and a great deal of concentration, especially beginning with the begats of the genealogies in Genesis and ending with the mysterious images and myriad of numbers in the book of Revelation.

And even for those who have done it, or for people who read and study the scriptures every day, we’d probably have to make another confession, acknowledging that we prefer certain books, sections, passages and verses of the Bible over others.

After 13 years of listening to my preaching here, you have probably discovered by now that I am partial to the book of Genesis, the Psalms, the prophecies of Isaiah, the gospels, especially Luke, and the letters of Paul. I haven’t let loose with too many sermons from the book of Leviticus about the dietary laws of ancient Israel, neither have I tried to unpack the story from Lamentations about the destruction of Jerusalem, and I think I have preached only one sermon since 1990 where I mentioned the runaway slave in the letter to Philemon.

And I don’t think I’m alone in this regard. Most of you have favorite parts of the Bible too. And that is good, except when we ignore sections of the scriptures which don’t seem to suit our particular point of view…or when we take certain verses and turn them into proof texts to win an argument and knock somebody “by the side of the head” with our opinions.

I’m talking now, not only about how we read the Bible, but also about the interpretation and the implementation of these ancient and sacred words from the Old and New Testaments into our contemporary situation. You see, we need to know what the Bible says, we need to discern, discover and understand what the texts mean, and then we need to apply the Word of the Lord in the way that we live our lives.

III.

If you have been reading the headlines in our newspapers recently, you have probably come across the story about the debate and the division over teaching evolution and creation science in the public schools of Cobb County. In many ways, it is a replay of the Scopes trial back in 1925 up in Dayton, Tennessee.

My close friend, the late Robert Cleveland Holland, recalled in one of his sermons entitled “The Theory of Creation,” a brief explanation of what happened:

“At the trial…the two most widely-known…lawyers of the age met in a country courthouse in a village of fifteen hundred people. John Scopes had been accused there of teaching Darwinian evolution; and when the attorney Clarence Darrow learned that the attorney William Jennings Bryan was to be the prosecutor, he immediately offered himself as counsel for the defense. Mild-mannered John Scopes was all but forgotten in the thunder and lightning that swirled around the courtroom…The press arrived in trainloads, and the whole town became like a carnival. The case was settled with a hundred dollar fine. It was the last gasp for William Jennings Bryan (who won but) who died a few days afterward.

In the play ‘Inherit the Wind,’ which was later on Broadway and then turned into a movie, there is a scene in which Bryan himself has taken the witness chair as an authority on scripture, which he certainly was. He was an elder in the Westminster Presbyterian Church of Lincoln, Nebraska and had been a vice moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly. He was also a fundamentalist (and interpreted the Bible literally)…In the play, on the witness stand, Bryan is pushed and squeezed back into a corner by Clarence Darrow, until Bryan lashes out with an incredible statement. He says, ‘It can be deduced from the Bible, and therefore proven, that God started creating the earth on June 23^rd, 4004 B.C. at 1:00 PM in the afternoon.’

Darrow, in astonishment, says ‘Is that right? Now, was that Eastern Standard Time, or Daylight Savings?”

(From “A Theory of Creation,” a sermon preached by Dr.

Robert Cleveland Holland at Shadyside Presbyterian Church,

November 29, 1981)

Now that is a somewhat humorous story about a not-so-funny debate which has gone on for a long time and continues to divide Christians on one side or the other, and, to stir up many more people who say that they are concerned about crossing the line between the separation of church and state.

I won’t comment on the latter – the school board up in Cobb County is going to make their decision this week and no doubt we’ll hear and read all about it.

CONCLUSION

But I do want to close with this insight about the ongoing division – the battle over the Bible – which has been a reality in the Christian Church for so long that we hardly know how to exist without it.

If we truly believe, as Paul wrote long ago, that all scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness, that the people of God may be complete and equipped for every good work, then you and I as Christians will need to decide whether we want this book, the Holy Bible, to lead us to God, into a personal relationship with His Son, our Savior Jesus Christ and toward the love, peace, forgiveness and reconciliation which He can bring into our lives…or choose instead to use the Bible as an arsenal to prolong the fight, drawing the lines, taking up sides and insisting that “they” are wrong and “we” are right.

As I said a moment ago, the battle has been going on so long that we hardly know how to live without it. But what do you think would happen in the Christian Church if we actually tried on all sides to let go of it, this battle over the Bible, and to ask God to help us learn how to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15), how to read the truth, not only with open eyes but with open minds and hearts, how to hear the truth, including from someone else’s perspective besides our own, and how to know the truth and live the truth according to the diverse and many different parts of the Bible?

What do you think would happen in the church – in our congregations and denominations – if we actually learned how to do that? In the gospel of Luke, chapter 1, verse 37, which isn’t found in Jefferson’s Bible, Mary, who has been told she will be the mother of Jesus the Messiah, exclaims with astonishment, With God, nothing is impossible! Do you believe that today? If you do, then maybe it’s time for all of us to claim the promise and to find ways to draw closer together, with Christ at the center helping us to know the truth, and believing that the truth will set us free.

Do you think that’s possible? As for me, I think it’s an experiment worth trying!

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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