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Some people make the Bible “say what they want it to say,” meaning they take teachings out of context, misinterpret passages, or even interpret Scripture through their own biases. But President Thomas Jefferson took this error to the extreme.
He made the Bible “say what he wanted it to say” by creating a whole new Bible!
During his first term in the White House, the man who’d written The Declaration of Independence revealed his desire to separate the inarguable sayings of Jesus from what he considered to be “extraneous matter” in the Bible. He was looking for nothing less than “the most sublime and benevolent code of morals ever offered to man.”
President Jefferson tried to enlist others to help him with the task, but ultimately, no one would comply. So, most evenings after the affairs of the nation were attended to, Jefferson worked on his “version” of the Bible…with scissors in one hand and glue in the other.
First, Jefferson reduced God’s Word to (just) the four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and then he narrowed the Gospels down even further to merely the words of Jesus, Himself. Jefferson would select which words of Jesus were the most important for his purposes and literally cut them from his Bible and arrange them in a separate book by subject or chronology. Nothing from the Old Testament, or anything miraculous, made it into Jefferson’s new book. He called his finished product The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.
Jefferson’s “Bible” can be read in its entirety in about two hours.
Why would Jefferson cut so much from the Bible? (Was he was just mad because his peers cut out parts of his Declaration of Independence?) Why did he feel that God’s perfect Word was in need of editing? Regardless of his reasoning, Jefferson found himself on the wrong side of God’s warning given through the Apostle John. At the close of the Book of Revelation, John writes:
I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book. (Revelation 22:18-19)
Though John only had in mind his “book” we now know as The Revelation, it’s a stern warning that applies to the entire “book” we now know as the Bible. There’s no need to make it say what we want it to say; it says what God wants to say.
Resource’s Origin:
The Jefferson Bible by Douglas E. Lurton. Grosset & Dunlap, 1940. Pages 5-9.
Topics Illustrated Include:
Bible
Change
Error
God’s Word
Interpretation
Jesus’ Teachings
Misrepresentation
Mistake
Morality
Perfect
Scripture
Warning
(Resource cataloged by David R Smith)
