Did Thomas Jefferson rewrite the Bible?

looking in here now. I'm already used to it, Chuck, Josh. Um, So the Bible has been popping up in my life a lot lately. Really, Yeah, um, you mean? And I just started subscribing to Harper's Monthly Weekly, one of those two. It's like this magazine from like eight nine, okay. Um. And in the first article of the first issue that we got, it's um there's a there's I guess notes section by a guy who says that the Old Testament is an allegory for the Neolithic revolution. Remember we went

from hunting and gathering to agriculture. And he made some really cool points, Um, like for example, Kane and Abel. Abel was a herdsman, Kane was a farmer. Kane murdered Abel, right, so he slew him, uh first murder. Ever, as far as we know, yes, um, I can't remember what he said about Adam and Eve. But basically like that's the beginning where we It was actually kind of a cautionary tale. Yeah, like like be careful, there's all this other stuff associated

with agriculture that you're not seeing. Um So, I found that intensely interesting. Then you suggest we do one on the Jefferson Bible, and I'm like, what's going on here? Right right? Third one, number three? This elderly woman by all right, she's in her eighties, nineties, spitfire ladies still though, sure, I didn't like to use a blinker When she stopped suddenly in parking lots when I'm right behind her, the um so I went around her. I was a little irritated,

and I wanted her to know it. She lays on her horn and I let's stick my head out, and I'm like, be quiet, and like you did not, I go in park and I go into the into the um, into public spe quiet. This woman comes and finds me and it's like, are you the sir, You the gentleman who went around me and traffic blah blah blah, and she's like berating me loudly in the middle of public. He said, I'm no gentleman. So finally she ends it with you need to get to church. And I was like,

I swear to God, I'm not kidding you. My friend tom My bff Tom was on the phone with me. He can verify this, and he said, Betty White is coming after me in a public I wish this was Betty White. This woman was terrifying. She was wearing like clam diggers with um white sox, pulled up black s a S shoes um. Her skin hung loose, and she had fire in her She wanted to kill me. What did you say? Did you reply anything? Or did you just sheepish sleep? Rather, I wasn't sheepish. You're not gonna

say what you said? You can tell me afterwards there, right, okay? But I was. I wasn't cheapish. I wasn't like entirely mean, but I didn't I didn't frankly, as you know, I quit the boy Scouts because I think that it's a bad idea to just give blanket respect to the old people because they're old. I've met some old jerks in my time, and this was actually one of them. So yeah, but this this week, man three, it's an exciting week. I never talked about the Bible. It never comes up,

Church never comes up. But here we are, all right, Chuck. Did Thomas Jefferson right or rewrite the Bible? Fact or fiction? Hey, that's old school, Josh. That is faction because he um, he did not rewrite the Bible, but he did cobble together his own version of the Bible that he thought was um valid and and should be read. I'll just say that, which is actually, if you think about it,

really a pretty pretentious and arrogant thing to do. This wouldn't go over well in today's president If someone said Obama, UM, put together, you know, different parts of the Bible and said that this was what I think the Bible should be, he wouldn't last too long. No, I don't think it would have ever gone over If Taft had done it, he would have been like run out of town on a rail, Like, you can't do that. It's early day,

so you away with anything. Back then, I suspect that Thomas Jefferson had um Asperger's from some of his uh, some of his um. His demeanor, the way carrying himself is incredibly high level of intellect. Um. I suspect that he had some something along those lines. Right, he might have. You can also say that he could not have cared less what people thought of him. He did his own thing.

Highly intelligent guy. Um. And like you said, if it had come out that the president had done that, a lot of people are unaware of this, that it wouldn't go over very well, which is why he didn't let it out. I don't know that that's why he didn't let it out. I think he just was doing it for himself, genuinely. I don't think he was trying to be secretive about it. But you were saying, like it

wouldn't go over well. Today, there's kind of it's kind of um fashionable in certain quarters to point out that the founding fathers were bent on founding a Christian nation. It's a very contentious thing to say, although a lot of people that's how they see the United States, right. I think Thomas Jefferson cutting up the Bible and cutting out all the miracles and what he considered gobbledygook kind of undermines that argument a little bit. Don't you think, well,

he was a deist. It's a good time to bring that up. George Washington was a deist. Benjamin Franklin and what we call founders, they are they differ from traditional Christians because they reject miracles, basically a lot of the prophecies, and they says here they embraced the notion of a well ordered universe created by God, but God then withdrew

into detached transcendence. They believe like a lot of things Christians believe, but a lot a lot of people at the time said this was a way for you to reconcile your Christianity with all these amazing new scientific findings that we're finding that kind of fly in the face of Christianity. Right in Deism was the Enlightenment religion, right um. And basically the way it looked at God is there's a creator God, but he's kind of like a clockmaker, and he created this clock of a universe wounded up

and just stood back to to watch it go. It's a great way to say. And do you remember, like in the really uber paranoid late nineties, right before the millennium. There's like kind of a concept that the universe is a u the result of an alien experiment. That's kind of like in the same vein. Actually there's some higher power that doesn't have a hand in our individual lives, but start created all this. Yeah, pretty interesting, it is. So that was That was T J m BF and

g W T Jeff. That's what his nickname today would be T Jeff. His nickname today is T Jeff as of now. So um. He also was the he pinned the Declaration of Independence, we should say, which most people know. He was also the one who co first elucidated the wall of separation between church and state. Yeah, not did not come from the Constitution. No, but he So there's this Baptist Convention of dan Berry, Yes, the Connecticut Committee of the dan Berry Baptist Association, and they wrote to

Jefferson saying, is this a Christian nation or not? Basically he basically pointed to know he said, he said, he said, no, I I I'm sure you agree with me that religion is between a man and his God and really eloquently said no, there's a First Amendment. There's a there's a clause in the First Amendment that says that that UM Congress won't um establish a religion, and so I Thomas Jefferson as president and one of the guys who wrote that, see it as a wall of separation between church and state.

He thought it was a very very personal thing. Religion was spirituality was a very personal thing. No one should step in and tell you what to think about it, right, It's so personal that he decided to craft his own Bible. Yes. And one of the reasons he did us because Um, like we said, he was a deist deist or deist daist. I think you can go either way. Now he's a Deist. And he was also very skeptical of who wrote the Bible, the Gospels in particular. He thought they were quote unlettered

and ignorant. Yeah, basically how he saw the Bible writers. Um, that's where the name comes from. Yeah, those were the Gospel writers. But they were also um Platonics. They followed Plato and wrote around the time of Plato. Um. And they remember when we were talking about like Halloween, Christmas, Easterday. Yeah, they're all pagan holidays that we've adopted and christianized in in an effort Um eastern together. Yeah, it wasn't. Yes,

spring harvest, spring um equinox, vernal equinox. I think it's what it's called right, vernal and autumnal. Yes, vernal equinox, and s Tera was a pagan goddess. Anyway, Um, this is this, This is how he viewed the the Bible being written like like there was a there was a person named Jesus of Nazareth. He walked awesome guy, philosopher, incredible philosopher, had this amazing moral code what right? Um?

And then uh and espoused it to people who remembered it, passed it down orally, and then somebody finally wrote it down. But when they were trying to write it down, they were also trying to establish a church. And Um, so they added some magic so that they could they could bring the pagans into the fold a miracles. Yes. And he also believed and this is where he really wouldn't jibe with today's UH system as a politician. He did not believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ. He did

not believe that he was the son of God. He thought that he was like Plato, essentially like a spot on philosopher. But he thought a lot of them, he said. Um. He wrote a letter to John Adams in eighteen thirteen and said that the book that he ended up putting together, which we'll get into the nuts and bolts of that, but he said he called it the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered demand. Yeah,

Jesus's philosophy. Yeah, so he clearly thought a lot of of Jesus's philosophy, and he thought a lot of the Greek um philosophers and I imagine other religious philosophers as well. But what he was saying was that what Jesus had come up with was as good as it gets. He kind of bashed Plato though, did you see that? Yeah? He read Plato in the original Greek and was like many exactly he found it lackluster. Yeah. Yeah, well, I guess he's hard to please. He read the Bible and

he cut it down to forty six pages. He did. Christopher Hitchins put it like this, You know, Hits, he's not he's not a big guy on religion. No, he kind of actively combats it. But yeah, um on, there's a forty six second clip on YouTube of Christopher Higgins debating somebody, and he describes the Jefferson Bible as what was left after Jefferson took a pair of scissors and cut out anything that could not buy any intelligent person

be believed. It makes for a slender, convenient ready. And yeah, I mean, if you take Christopher Hitchins, this is no surprise to you. If you love Christopher Hitchins, this is no surprise. Yes, But he got one thing wrong. He apparently is a razor and not scissors. Small detail. He literally he went through and was was scratching stuff out, and then I think he went back and started cutting

stuff out. Well, he probably that he found himself scratching so much out he got tiresome, and he's like, I should just see cut out what I do like instead

of scratching out what I don't like. Because all told, there are thirty one thousand, a hundred three Bible verses numbered Bible verses, right, but he was just doing the New Testament, so we're talking seven thousand and seven, right, and specifically the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, which there well there was more than that, but he he used a lot for Matthew and Luke two thousand, two hundred twenty two and Matthew and Luke and all told, he only had the Jefferson Bible only had nine versus. So

he definitely paired down quite a bit big time. He Um, he took out everything about he and he took he took out everything about um Christ's birth, the virgin birth that was gone. He left in the crucifixion, but it ends at the burial. There's no resurrection. Yeah. Basically the last verse was um John nineteen and they ended it. His book ends with they rolled the stone in front of the sepulcher and the the end. Uh. He he left a lot of the Last Supper ing but kept

the part of the Eucharist out. This is my body, my blood. Yeah. Um. So basically he just kept in basically the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth and his philosophy. Yeah. They in the article that he left what they called what he considered genuine events like the Sermon on the Mount, certain parables, the way to live your life. And see, that's always been my deal. I don't want to get too personal, but you know I

was right after the last two hundred episodes that. Yeah, I was raised Southern Baptist and it wasn't the best experience for me. But I still say, I still maintain that the Bible has is a great moral code, and there's lots of great parables that teach you how you should act as a human. And apparently I'm in Jefferson's camp,

because that's what he ended up using as Uh. He ended up calling it initially the Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth and then change that title later to the Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, right, and then uh in the edition there was a subtitle or how to get Buying Queens on a dime of day. I'll long have you been working on that one? Just now? Yeah?

Shut up? So, Um, it clearly wasn't called how to Win Friends and Influence People, because he he this probably wasn't a very popular thing to do even back then. I'm sure it would have the same effect as how to Win friends and Influence people? Though. Yeah, but he did keep it quiet it Um, he said it was for himself. Again, I don't think he kept it quiet. I think he he was just keeping it for himself. I disagree with part A of the sentence you just said,

but agree with part B. Thank you. Yea. I have a quote from him if you want to hear from the man himself. Uh, Josh is wrong. No, sorry, he said, I performed the operation for my own use by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book and arranging the matter, which is evidently his, and which is as easily distinguished as diamonds and a dunghill. That's kind of harsh, but he's saying that the stuff that really came from Jesus mouth is the gold, the diamonds in the dunghill.

So he extracted all that and that was what he believed in. Well, yeah, he thought the Platonics were sellouts that they should have just you know, maybe not added quite so much. So what happened to it, Josh? What happened to it? Was it? Basically again, he did it for himself. Um. I think I read a reference that he did it kind of on a whim or in um. Uh. In response to a question from a friend to his Dr Benjamin Rush, he said, like, how would you characterize

your view of Christianity? So he went about doing that. I think it's the idea exactly got a razor um and it was in his private library, which apparently somebody inherited, and a Smithsonian librarian came across it. What I Cerrus Adler. What I found funny was Cyrus Adler is a government employee, came across this and was like, I'm going to sell list to the Library of Congress. You know though. Yeah, they did, and they started putting it in print. Congress

ordered it in print. Um. Thomas Jefferson is considered the father of the Senate. Uh. He was the first vice president. Um. So he and he wrote the rules of the Senate that are still in use today. Uh. He just did it because it was bored. One day, asked Berger's same regin he cut up the Bible yeah, um, and so Congress Um. Congress started publishing. I think it published like nine thousand copies and even still today it's um a

customary welcome gift to new members of Congress. I find that interesting, like the same Congress who are like, this is a Christian nation. Yeah, but I mean it's still in there. That's that's the diamond. But it is very interesting that they would give an altered version of the Bible as a gift. Yeah, I mean it's it's not as odd as if they were to give like Alistair Crowley's memoirs, but it was definitely a little odd. When

I read that, I was slightly shocked. Yeah, well it kind of comes it kind of reveals a certain disingenuousness. Done that, Yeah, a little bit possibly makes you think at least well, and then lets you know what was in Thomas Jefferson's mind, and he's easily one of the most fascinating historical figures we have. You got anything else? No, if you want to know more about the Jefferson Bible, you can read this pretty cool article by McGrath. You can find it online the whole Bible. You can do both.

How about let's get some people this site first, that's true. Uh. You just type in Jefferson Bible and the handy search bart how stuff works dot com. Uh, and then after that you might as well just go read the Jefferson Bible, right, yes, yes, which leads us to listener questions. So yeah, we we put out a call on Facebook a couple of weeks ago for questions and we got bombarded. So we're actually having to do this in installments, because there are a

lot of good questions. These are the really we need new questions, man, No, no, no, no, old no. These are brand new. You're lying every two weeks ago. But there's still new because we haven't used them. So we're gonna bust a lot of these pretty quickly. Chuck says, who's taller between Josh Chuckers and Jerry. Josh is the tallest, at a robust six ft or so. I'm about on the nun about five tin, Jerry, how tall are you behind the curtain? Go ahead, I've got one from Colin.

Who would win in a fist fight? Ire a Glass or Josh? I think it would be a um we can actually size we sized him up physically in person now. I think it would be like a um, humiliating slap fight for both guys. I don't know that there would be a fight. Would be more like, um, do you remember Adam Goldberg in Daisy Confused? Yes? Do you remember when he's being pulled off or when when um Nikki Kat's being pulled off at him? Yeah? I think it would be like that, but both of us, both of

us is Adam Goldberg? Yeah? Uh? Tripp says can you finally reveal the name of the big box appliance store that UM did not do? Chuck right with his extended warty. I don't think that that would be very smart. Do you know that? Even I don't know what it is. I don't think that would be very brand smart to do, Josh. So I'm not going to thank you trip for the question, Chuck. I'm not reading this one. So here's another one from Natalie. Would you consider doing a six degrees of separation from

your listeners? I go first. My sister Kathleen went to ride Dan High School with Chuck. Kathleen egan awesome, So that's not a question. Even ends in an exclamation point. Tom says, what's it like being so old? Chuck? Tom? It is awesome? Go ahead. Okay, there's one from Hannah. Which is better cake or pie? What do you call a soft drink? I call it soda. My pubby calls it pop. That's two questions. I call it coke. I call it coke as well. I grew up calling it pop. Yeah.

What's better? Cake and pie? Actually, there's nothing better than a good cake pie. Yeah? I like cake cake pie. Brittany, Oh, this is Brittany from New York and actually, to answer that question, pies better remember Brittany britt britt Yes, Brittany says, does hippie Rob participate in the s y FK drinking game which we don't sanction? No one knows we're a hippie robbis and if so, is he the all time record holder? Uh? I don't even know that hippie Rob knows that s y s K exists, and of course

she doesn't. I don't think he does. Uh So, this one's from Bobby. What are your favorite bands of all times or your favorite songs? My favorite band of all time? Clear winner is the Pixies. Chuck really oh yeah, probably go with like the Who or Pavement. Maybe Zeppee Brianna are favorite fan. Brianna says, what were your first impressions of each other? I thought Josh was like me when I first met a Mint. It turns out he sort of is, and he's sort of not. It's not true

at all. Now I knew we were like fellow Um. I thought you were a cool guy, reformed bad boys. You know, you had that pack of cigarettes rolled up in your sleeve. That was the dig giveaway I've got one from Ebba. How does Jerry work? She doesn't? Oh, not true? Um, Christopher, what's it like living in Hotlanta? Particularly now that the summer starting? It is awful? And I grew up here and it's still awful. And it's not like you get used. It's gotten exponentially worse even

since I moved down here. You can't break, It's like you're swimming outside. Yeah, I got one more. This one is from Mark. If you could have one superpower, what would it be? Flying invisibility? Well, those are the questions. I'm not done yet. I got two more quick ones. Josh Shan says, would you like cheese with that? Always of course as the answer to that question. And Joe says, what is the best most unique piece of free swag anyone has sent you? And I think we just got

it this week. Yeah, I'm gonna have to go with the Root suit, are you? Yeah? The Root Suit, for those of you that are always sunny in Philadelphia fans, is the green Man costume that Charlie wears. And so I requested a green Man outfit and you won't take it off? And I got it, and I wrote the guy today and said thank you so much for the green Man thing. I'm really excited, and said your life, your new life begins now, your new life of leaving

absolutely nothing to the imagination. Chuck, it's disturbing. Nobody wants to see this, So if you have a question for us, go join our Facebook fan page jerk It's uh Facebook dot com, YadA YadA, stuff you should know, follow us on Twitter, s y s K podcast, and as always, you can send us an email. We still like those. It's very you know, late nineties, but still it's cute. You can send it to Stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of

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