[Vision2020] Jefferson's Bible...
Don Kaag
dkaag@turbonet.com
Sat, 26 Jul 2003 16:44:30 -0700
Visionaries:
Copies of Jefferson's Bible are hard to come by, as most organized
Christian sects abhor what he did. He went through and edited out
everything but Jesus' words and philosophy. The original published
version was in parallel Latin, Greek, French and English, in all of
which Jefferson was fluent. He told John Adams that he was rescuing
the Philosophy of Jesus and the "pure principles which he taught," from
the "artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests,
who have travestied them into various forms as instruments of riches
and power for themselves." When he was through, the volume was pretty
thin, even with four different translations.
Actually, the present Bible was designed by a committee. It would have
been interesting to be a fly on the wall when the members decided which
books got to be in the Bible and which prophets were going to be
consigned to the Apocrypha. Maybe we could've gotten something more
interesting than the "Begats"...
Regards,
Don Kaag