[Vision2020] Jefferson's Bible...

[Don Kaag]

Visionaries:

Copies of Jefferson's Bible are hard to come by, as most organized 
Christian sects abhor what he did.  He went through and edited out 
everything but Jesus' words and philosophy.  The original published 
version was in parallel Latin, Greek, French and English, in all of 
which Jefferson was fluent.  He told John Adams that he was rescuing 
the Philosophy of Jesus and the "pure principles which he taught," from 
the "artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, 
who have travestied them into various forms as instruments of riches 
and power for themselves."  When he was through, the volume was pretty 
thin, even with four different translations.

Actually, the present Bible was designed by a committee.  It would have 
been interesting to be a fly on the wall when the members decided which 
books got to be in the Bible and which prophets were going to be 
consigned to the Apocrypha.  Maybe we could've gotten something more 
interesting than the "Begats"...

Regards,

Don Kaag