Thomas Jefferson on the Gospels
Thomas Jefferson approached religion with common sense and reason. His writings will come as a disappointment to the religionists of today. Here’s an excerpt from a letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, dated April 23rd, 1803. He writes of Jesus and the Gospels:
The Disadvantages under which his doctrines appear are remarkable.
- Like Socrates and Epicteus, he wrote nothing himself
- But he had not, like them, a Xenephon or Arrian to write for him. On the contrary, all the learned of his country, entrenched in its powers and riches, were opposed to him, lest his labors should undermine their advantages; and the committing to writing his life & doctrines fell on the most unlettered & ignorant men; who wrote, to, from memory, and not till long after the transactions have past.According to the ordinary fate of those who attempt to enlighten and reform mankind, he fell victim to the jealosy and combination of the altar and the throne, at about 33. years of age, his reason having not yet attained the maximum of its energy, nor the course of his preaching, which was but of 3. years at most, presented occasions for developing a complete system of morals.
- Hence the doctrines which he really delivered were defective as a whole, and fragments only of what he did deliver have come to us mutilated, misstated, and often unintelligible.
- They have been still more disfigured by the corruptions of schismatising followers, who have found an interest in sophisticating and perverting the simple doctrines he taught by engrafting on them the mysticisms of a Grecian sophist, frittering them into subtleties, and obscuring them with jargon, until they have caused good men to reject the whole in disgust, and to view Jesus himself as an imposter.
Tags: Christianity, Jesus, religion, Thomas Jefferson