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OpEdNews Op Eds    H4'ed 11/22/17

Thomas Jefferson: Christian or Jew?

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Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
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How did Christianity get separated from Judaism, when the two religions have so much in common?

That was the question pondered by three eminent scholars -- two Christian and one Jewish -- at a symposium hosted by the Center for Jewish History in New York City more than a decade ago.

It's an important question and conundrum that persists today, since Christianity is based on Jewish prophesy and lineage -- and the fact that all of Jesus' disciples and followers were Jews. And we should add to that the growing consensus among biblical scholars that Jesus lived and died a dedicated practicing Jew.

The symposium panelists -- Father Donald Senior, president of the Catholic Theological Union of Chicago; Anglican priest Bruce Chilton, author of Rabbi Jesus; and Rabbi Jacob Neusner, author of numerous books on religion and several on early Christianity -- agreed that Jesus lived and died a dedicated Jew, that he never mentioned or heard the word "Christian," and that he never proposed a new religion.

In fact, the word Christian does not appear at all in the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) of the New Testament, which cover the three years of Jesus' religious and spiritual mission. Rabbi Neusner added that almost all of Jesus' teachings were drawn from the Torah (the Five Books of Moses).

These forthright statements begged the question that I then posed to Father Senior and Father Chilton during the Q and A: "You have convinced me that Jesus was thoroughly Jewish. So why aren't you Jews or Jewish Christians?"

They squirmed a bit at my provocation, but acknowledged that they had walked into this setup. Then they gave the standard answer to the question of what divides Judaism and Christianity: "Jesus is the Son of God, the promised Messiah, who died for the salvation of mankind. With the arrival of Jesus, the new path to God and redemption is through belief in Jesus Christ."

This view asserts Jesus' divinity, further supported, from the Christian perspective, by the virgin birth (Mary, Jesus' mother, was impregnated by the Holy Spirit), the miracles that Jesus performed, and his resurrection after the crucifixion.

So how does Thomas Jefferson, a founding father and third president of the United States, fit into this story?

Jefferson, an avowed deist who loved Jesus and reportedly read portions of the Bible every night, was not a fan of many of the depictions of Jesus in the Gospels. His opposition to those parts of the Jesus story that he rejected was so strong that he deleted them in his personal copy of the Bible.

He wrote: "Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God." Jefferson called the writers of the New Testament "ignorant, unlettered men" who produced "superstitions, fanaticisms, and fabrications."

The Humanist reports that one evening in 1804, while sitting at his desk at the White House, Jefferson "took out two Bibles and opened them to the story of Jesus. Then he grabbed a razor and began cutting. Working methodically, Jefferson sliced out the parts of the Bible that he believed and pasted them onto a folio of blank pages." In cutting and pasting passages from the four Gospels, he created a single narrative.

Thomas Jefferson cut and pasted to create his bible
Thomas Jefferson cut and pasted to create his bible
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In a letter to John Adams, Jefferson wrote: "The worthy parts of the Bible were easily distinguishable from the worthless." In another letter to a friend, Philadelphia physician Benjamin Rush, Jefferson referred to his Bible as his "wee little book," and added: "To the corruption of Christianity I am indeed opposed, but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself."

The only copy of this Bible disappeared and has never been found. But in 1820 at age 77, Jefferson created a new copy in English and three others in French, Latin and Greek.

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Bernard Starr, PhD, is author of The Crucifixion of Truth, a drama set in 16th century Italy and Spain. Starr is a psychologist, journalist, and professor emeritus at CUNY, Brooklyn College. At Brooklyn College Starr taught developmental (more...)
 

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