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How jews twist the words of
Thomas Jefferson to fit their screed
Thomas Jefferson on the Talmud
"What a wretched depravity of sentiment and
manners must have prevailed before such corrupt maxims could have obtained credit! It is
impossible to collect from these writings a consistent series of moral Doctrine.' Enfield,
B. 4. chap. 3. It was the reformation of this `wretched depravity' of morals which Jesus
undertook.
"I am a real
Christian"
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/jefferson/bibliog/shuf2/shuf8090.html#179
� 1983, Frank Shuffelton, editor Print version published by Garland Publishing (New
York, 1983).
Reference: 65.
Name: Holden, , Erik.
Publication: An American Christian Bible, Extracted by Thomas Jefferson, Together with
a New Declaration of Independence for Today's Americans .
City: Rochester, WA:
Publisher: Sovereign Press,
Date: 1982.
Pages: 128.
Notes: Author claims to be the founder of the "American Christian
Church" and reprints the English portions of "The Life and Morals of
Jesus." He approves of TJ because his bible removes the implication that Jesus was a
supernatural being and, as his subsequent "New Declaration" reveals, because
TJ's text is "non-Jewish." An attempt to use TJ for the purposes of anti-Semitic and white supremacist propaganda. Distasteful,
to say the least.
[note: Erik, being pro-Christian does not immediately imply that a person is
"anti-semitic". Read: the whole world doesn't instantly agree with you]
Reference: 204.
Name: Healey, , Robert M.
Title: "Jefferson on Judaism and the Jews: `Divided We Stand, United, We
Fall!'."
Publication: American Jewish History
Volume: 73
Date: (1984) ,
Pages: 359-374.
Notes: An authoritative account organized under four headings: TJ's politics
concerning religious minorities, his personal relationships with individual Jews, his
assessment of Judaism as religious doctrine, and his version of the gospel accounts of
Jesus. TJ throughout his life advocated religious freedom for members of all faiths,
including the Jews, but while he was ready to appoint Jews
to public office, none were included in his closest circle of friends with whom he felt
free to discuss topics such as religion. In common with other
Enlightenment rationalists, he thought Judaism not significantly changed since the time of
Moses and full of corruptions and meaningless ritual. He also thought it was ethically
deficient and practically ignored the existence of an afterlife. He saw Jesus as a moral
teacher who could have reformed the corruptions of Judaism, but he did not recognize the extent to which Jesus's reforms were rooted in
the Judaic prophetic tradition. He saw the death of Jesus as an historical
tragedy, but because he did not accept the concept of inherited guilt, he refused to blame
Jews for "deicide." For all these reasons he welcomed the appearance of Isaac
Harby's 1826 discourse in favor of reformed Judaism.
[note: Robert, Christians reject all notions that jews played any role in shaping their
religion. Jesus Christ was crucified because he upheld the laws of God rather than
the "traditions of the elders"]
Reference: 179.
Name: Sanford, , Charles B.
Publication: The Religious Life of Thomas Jefferson .
City: Charlottesville:
Publisher: University Press of Virginia,
Date: 1984.
Pages: 246.
Notes: Focuses on TJ's religious ideas, seeking to project a vision of him as,
in the terms of the initial chapter, a "religious person." Attempts to discover
a TJ safe for a Christianity more conventional than his own, one in which belief and faith
are more important than reason and principle and in which TJ, "when he was not being
unduly influenced by his Enlightenment authors," recognized "higher concepts of
God." Chapters on TJ's Bibles are written without benefit of consulting Dickinson W.
Adams's work and before the publication of the Papers edition of Extracts from
the Gospels , and they are consequently dated. The fullest attempt to deal with a
significant theme in TJ's life and thought, sometimes suggestive but ultimately
disappointing.
Reference: 273.
Name: Sheridan, , Eugene R.
Title: "Thomas Jefferson"
in
Publication: The Encyclopedia of Unbelief , ed. Gordon Stein.
City: Buffalo:
Publisher: Prometheus Books,
Date: 1985.
Volume: Vol.1,
Pages: 360-63.
Notes: Claims that TJ is notable in American religious history as the primary
author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, as a pioneer in applying rationalist
criticism to the Bible, and as a champion of free thought in all areas, including
religion. Describes his movement through youthful natural religion to a demythologized
Christianity of a moralistic bent.
Reference: 484.
Name: Church, , F. Forrester.
Title: "Thomas Jefferson's Bible"
in
Publication: The Bible and Bibles in America , ed. Ernest S. Frerichs.
City: Atlanta:
Publisher: Scholars Press,
Date: 1988.
Pages: 145-61.
Notes: Account of the genesis of TJ's Life and Morals of Jesus .
Well-informed, but written before the publication of the Papers edition of Jefferson's
Extracts from the Gospels (1983) which makes this essay secondary.
Reference: 529.
Name: Amos, , Gary T.
Publication: Defending the Declaration: How the Bible and Christianity Influenced the
Writing of the Declaration of Independence .
City: Brentwood, TN:
Publisher: Wolgemuth & Hyatt,
Date: 1989.
Pages: 235.
Notes: Because he believes that "political liberty is a corollary of
spiritual liberty in Christ," the author attempts to defend the Declaration from
secularist interpretations which seem to deny its roots in "the Bible, Christian
theology, the Western Christian intellectual tradition, medieval Christianity, Christian
political theory, and the Christian influence on the six-hundred-year development of the
English common law." Also seeks to defend the Declaration from the consequent
rejections of "Christian" historians who have accepted the secular
interpretation. In the process, however, tends to treat all discourse of the Western world
as in effect commentary on the Bible and thus engaged in a continual restatement of the
same truths. Subscribes to Francis Schaeffer's thesis that Samuel Rutherford's Lex Rex (1644)
is a key text behind the Declaration. Presents TJ as a person who believed in Christian
principles "although he never confessed Jesus Christ as Lord in the evangelical
sense," and seeks to answer in the negative the question "Must a political
leader confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior to be able at all to act on Biblical
principles for government?" Offers an interesting insight into the discourse of
"Christian intellectuals," although it will be less satisfactory to those
looking for a solid interpretation of the Declaration than to those who share the author's
concerns for Christian government.
Reference: 535.
Name: Wilson. , Douglas L.
Publication: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Second Series: Jefferson's Literary
Commonplace Book . ed. Douglas L. Wilson.
City: Princeton:
Publisher: Princeton University Press,
Date: 1989.
Pages: xx, 242.
Notes: A new, definitive edition of the text which Gilbert Chinard originally
published in 1928 as TJ's Literary Bible , with supporting annotation, an accurate
rendering of the text, and a proposed dating of the entries. The dating analysis is made
on the basis of TJ's handwriting and is explained in an appendix. He seems to have entered
a substantial portion of quotations from his reading before December, 1762, and the last
principal period of activity covered the years 1768-1773. Includes an excellent
introduction, a descriptive analysis of the manuscript, a description of entries in the
manuscript not by TJ, and tables analyzing the content of the entries.
Reference: A14.
Name: Dorfman, , Joseph.
Title: "Thomas Jefferson: Commercial Agrarian Democrat"
in
Publication: The Economic Mind in American Civilization, 1606-1865 .
City: New York:
Publisher: Viking Press,
Date: 1946.
Pages: I, 433-47.
Notes: Calls TJ "the great American radical" and describes him as heir
to the moral tradition of secular Christianity that deprecated greed and also to the
tradition recognizing that commerce was the source of wealth. Argues that he reconciles
these views, gradually admitting the necessity of commerce in his later years, as in the
Austin letter of 1816.
Thomas Jefferson indicated in his autobiography that he and his fellow countrymen
viewed Jesus Christ as "the holy author of our religion".
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefAuto.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/lv4/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div0
Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy
author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus
Christ," so that it should read "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the
holy author of our religion." The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in
proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of it's protection, the Jew and the
Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.
Page 72 The absence of express declarations ensuring freedom of religion,
freedom of the press, freedom of the person under the uninterrupted protection of the
Habeas corpus, & trial by jury in civil as well as in criminal cases excited my
jealousy
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/bsuva/sb/
Reference: 743.
Name: McKenzie, , David. "Fundamentalism and Founding Faith."
Title: Religious Humanism
25(Spring,
Date: 1991), 92-101.
Notes: Responds to Tim LaHaye's attempt in Faith of Our Fathers (1987) to
present the founders as good Christians. Critiques LaHaye's methods, including his
rejection of the last fifty years of historical scholarship because it is
"secularist," but particularly his avoidance or minimizing of TJ. Against
LaHaye's contention that TJ was "a secularized politician" who got his ideas in
France, asserts that TJ combined a belief in the moral values of the Christian religion
with a rejection of a role for organized religionists in politics and government.
Describes TJ as a "religious humanist" and charges Lahaye with reading back his
own understanding of Christianity onto the 18th century founders. But admits that LaHaye
has a point against secularists reading back their own positions onto TJ and others.
Reference: 755.
Name: Russell, , Greg. "Jeffersonian Ethics in Foreign Affairs: John
Quincy Adams and the Moral Sentiments of a Realist."
Title: Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy
18(1991), 273-91.
Notes: Discusses TJ's worldview as based on a "Christianity which had
passed through the rationalism of the French Enlightenment." This view of the world
assumes that America's dual importance as a native achievement and as a universal example
requires an "element of restraint" and must respect the varieties of possible
political experience elsewhere." J. Q. Adams, then, is the epitome of such
Jeffersonian ethics.
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