Monday, March 24, 2025

Carefully Collating Canon: The Jefferson Bible

No Miracles Allowed

The Jefferson Bible: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth (This is not the original, but it's much more readable transcription and the ASV isn't that different from the KJ translation Jefferson used.)

Summary: Do good stuff, even if you're not magic.

Commentary: I first heard about the Jefferson Bible years ago. Long story short, it's the Gospels with all the miracles cut out. As I was working on my Synopticon reading list, I wondered if the angels had made it through or not. (No angels appear, but some references survive.) Some of the cuts are kind of awkward (Luke 2, when Mary and Joseph lose him at the temple cuts Jesus explaining why he stayed, but keeps Mary asking him). He still whips people out of the temple. He travels around a lot (most paragraphs start with something like, "And then they went to X" or "And then it was Y". The Beatitudes (Blessed are the meek, etc.) survive more or less intact. It's all the Gospels together, so some of the repeats (The Lord's Prayer, various lost and found parables, divorce, etc.) are more obvious than they'd be in the regular Bible. 

I could, unsurprisingly, fill a whole post with all the famous sayings in here.

It'd be interesting to see a reconstruction that marks what was kept and cut, although it's reordered to be chronological as well, which might make it a bit harder.

I spent a lot of time whining about how awful the Old Testament was next year. There's surprisingly little to object to here (the parable of the talents isn't great, but it's no almost making a guy kill his son). 


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