The deist way of thinking was absolutely foreign to the established religions.  The old way of thinking consisted of the principle that the Bible is the word of God and the sole truth.  It was believed that every question could be answered by the text of the Bible.  Priests and certified officials were the only people allowed to read and decipher the text, due to the fact that it was in Latin and that it was believed they were the only ones that could find the true meaning in the text.  Deism blew all of that out of the water, it is a much more free way of looking at the Bible and religion in general.  Deism proposed that everyone was able to read the text for themselves and get from it what they may.  It also did away with the idea that all questions are answered through the Bible enabling people to start asking questions that they would have been shunned or looked at for asking before (165).  It introduced the more realist way of thinking while still staying religious and spiritual.

Jefferson’s Bible was created as a type of cleansing of the scriptures for the deist religion. Jefferson took the texts that he felt were the most truthful and real from the original bible and sorted them around to create a biblical story that made the most sense to him and his way of thinking. He removed entirely the Old Testament, which almost gives Jesus less importance because with that gone, he is no longer the Son of God or a prophet; He is just another man, which was interesting to think about. Jefferson had a certain way of looking at things and I liked his ideas. 

Lambert’s article brings the subject of Deism into his writings using Jefferson as an example.  Deism is a religious
philosophy that uses reason and observation that can be explained by the natural world.  According to Deists, there is a religious practice but God does not intervene in human affairs or suspends the natural laws of universe. 
Those who believe in this philosophy typically reject supernatural events such as prophecy and miracles.  The idea of new learning was created by the Deists as opposed to those who practiced old learning.  People who practiced old learning believed, the Bible was the absolute truth and you have to be a special person to be able to understand it. New learning was more a deist way of asking questions and wanting to know the answers to unnatural events in the Bible (165).  Therefore they do not believe that a person has to be unique to be accepted by God.  Instead they believe if you live a normal life you are acceptable to the Kingdom of God.  They did not believe in the miracles or the miraculous stories of Jesus. 

A very popular deist is Jefferson.  In his bible he takes out all the supernatural thoughts and makes a manuscript of science explained events in the bible.  It is strictly a bunch of writings from each of the Gospels about important life events and has taken out all the propaganda to allow people to make their own judgments and faith (174). 

    The Jefferson Bible is basically a cut-and-paste Bible created by Thomas Jefferson.  He put it together by taking out the parts of the New Testament he didn’t necessarily believe in and only keeping the passages which he thought were reasonable.  Another difference between the Jefferson Bible and a normal Bible is that he puts the passages in his own order.  He is not only trying to rationalize the life of Jesus Christ as our savior, but to map the life of Jesus in a historical manner.  Jefferson was a member of the new school of Deism, which I see as more of a philosophy about religion than an organized religion in itself.  Deists believe in reason above pure faith.  They believe God created the world was created by God and then he stepped back and took no divine intervention after the initial creation. Accordingly, Jefferson removed all seemingly miraculous occurrences from his version of the Bible.  This includes Mary’s virgin birth, all of the miracles Jesus performed, and especially his resurrection.  Since none of these things can be proven in a scientific manner, or by using reason, Jefferson deleted them from his account of the Bible.  To me, the formation of Jefferson’s Bible and the role his Deist beliefs played in it are clear:  if it cannot be proven by reason, common sense, or science, it cannot be found in Jefferson’s Bible.  Also, intervention by God is not seen because of the belief that God did not take an active part in the world once he was finished creating it.

        In Lambert’s article, he writes a section on the idea of the Enlightenment principles which come from the “New Learning” ideas of the scriptures (165). This “New Learning” looks at the Bible with a perspective of reason, logic, and rejection of traditional thoughts challenging the church established beliefs (165). Deists are people who believe in the Enlightenment principles; the idea of the principles is looking at God as the creator of the world, but not someone of power in the world today. The idea of “Natural Religion” is promoted by Deists because looking at the world as a natural cause, not influenced by God, is something Deists value. Thomas Jefferson believed lightening was a natural phenomenon and tested his theories on the idea, something Deist’s believe to be true (168). 


         The Jefferson Bible takes apart the New Testament, leaving out miracles of Jesus. Jefferson also leaves out the faith based verses which are used to structure the idea of Jesus being the Son of God. Jefferson makes Jesus less of a fulfillment of prophecies from the Hebrew Bible and more of just a man following God and claiming to be Christ (144). Jefferson depicts Jesus’s birth as something normal (37, 38), taking out the passages such as “Christ the Lord”and “glorifying and praising God” (Lk 2:11, 20). Jefferson also leaves the dialog in Matthew 3 out of his Bible and just says “and Jesus cometh from Galilee to Jordan to be baptized by John” (39). When Jesus is crucified, Jefferson mocks the idea of Jesus being King of the Jews making his version seem like Jesus was arrogant (141).  Jesus still cries out to God as he does in the Bible, (Mt 27:46; 145) making Jesus seem less of a hero when he does not perform miracles; the Jefferson Bible leaves out the “Savior” aspect of Jesus. 

_ Deists were very motivated by the concept of “reason over revelation” meaning that they believed strongly in logic and empirical evidence.  They were very influenced by the works of Bacon, Newton, and Locke, whose research and work “were full of optimism that human beings through their own reason and observation could unlock the laws of nature” and then have some sort of control over it (162).  Previously, natural phenomena and disasters were considered punishment by God for wrongdoing (167-168).  These concepts, along with others, influenced many of the Founding Fathers and helped lead to the First Amendment. 

Jefferson’s Deist principles weighed heavily on his approach to understanding the gospels.  With the concept of “New Learning” instilled in his beliefs, Jefferson questioned the doctrine of Christianity.  He believed there were major flaws in Christian tradition that needed to be addressed and that the Bible was “far from containing divine truth” but was a guideline for moral instruction and filled with superstition and deviation from truth (174).  Jefferson believed that anything that could not be explained with reason and logic must be thrown out as it had no legitimacy.  With this thought, he completely ousted the Old Testament due to the fact that “the god it revealed was an angry, spiteful, vengeful deity” and also removed all of the miracles and unrealistic stories from the New Testament (174).  Jefferson’s Deist thoughts are clearly evident when it comes to the birth, baptism, and resurrection.  Most notable is the fact that the resurrection is omitted in its entirety.  In the birth and baptism of Jesus, there is no mention of God’s intervention or presence in the scene as it is described in the gospels.  The Deist thought processes of Jefferson include the fact that, in their eyes, Jesus was not divine but just a morally upstanding teacher.  Jefferson, considered a great philosopher even today, portrayed a Jesus in his own image with his edition of the Bible.

Deism was the ideology that fused Enlightenment thinking with religious doctrine.  During the late 18th century and early 19th century, Deists fought the Puritan and Anglican way of thinking about the Bible and religion.  Lambert associates and categorizes the Anglicans and Puritans with the “old learning” and “new learning” with Deists.  Each was a worldview at odds with one another.  Old learning asserts that the Bible is absolute truth and only people with God-given gift of interpretation could know or teach its truth.  Church and state in the old learning society were bedfellows, resulting in persecution of dissenting religions and intolerance.  New learning arrived on the scene during this time in America inspired and found on reason, deductive logic, and natural laws from Locke, Bacon, and Newton.  New learning empowered the individual to experience God not through the clergy but through personal understanding.  This idea broke the power relationship of the church and state.  This idea is emphasized in the Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom and the First Amendment. 

Jefferson constructed his view of Jesus through deism and enlightenment thinking.  The deist belief that God is the ultimate architect who created the world and mankind but does not intervene in the world is seen in Jefferson’s omission of supernatural events.  Jefferson’s Bible excludes miracles, virgin birth, and resurrection.  Jefferson like the “new learners” trusted that the cosmos could be explained by natural law, so miracles are unbelievable because they cannot be explained by science.  This is why Jefferson truncated them from his retelling of the gospels in search for not the historical Jesus but the intelligent Jesus, who is the greatest moral philosopher.  The deist belief in no trinity along with right behavior is necessary for salvation is evident in Jefferson’s account with the absence of God’s conversations with Jesus like after baptism.  The story does not mention how God is pleased with Jesus and loves him because a deist would not see the father-son relationship as important.  Jesus is not divine or the son of God just a teacher with a great set of moral instruction.  It is no wonder Jefferson keep the Sermon on the Mount because Jefferson’s worldview permits it because the path to true religion is not revelation but reason and moral truth.  Jefferson’s Bible represents how one individual equipped with his own worldview and ideology interpreted the Scriptures resulting in a Jesus shaped in Jefferson’s own image. 

Deists believe that God does not interfere with everyday life. God is the creator of the world, but does not intervene with it and break natural laws. God gave people options and the ability to reason. Therefore, Desist reject the idea of miracles and supernatural powers. Deists also reject people and texts that claim to have the word of God. They are very rational and rely on natural law to explain everything.

Using these principals, Thomas Jefferson created his own interpretation of the Bible. In it, Jefferson rejects the virgin birth of Jesus basically because it goes without reason. He and other deists took the approach that people cannot be born from virgins now, so they couldn’t in Jesus’ time either. The rules don’t change for Jesus. As for the baptism of Jesus, Jefferson says that John the Baptist did baptize people around Jerusalem. He also baptized Jesus in the Jordan, but dismisses all verses of the gospels that contain the idea of baptizing with water of repentance, the Holy Spirit and fire. Jefferson also does not include God’s voice saying “This is my son” when Jesus is baptized. This goes back to the principals of deism. God created the world, but does not intervene it, come down from heaven, or talk to people. He simply lets things happen.

Lastly, Jefferson excludes all accounts of a resurrected Jesus. Jefferson instead depicts the events after his death concluding with Jesus being placed in a sepulcher with a great stone rolled in front of it. Jefferson’s Bible ends there. Mary Magdalene and others don’t come back to find the tomb empty, and Jesus doesn’t go around talking to his disciples and the public. Again back to deism principals, people do not come back to life. Once you are dead, you are dead. Jesus is not excluded from the laws of nature.

Jefferson practiced and believed in Deism, which was a relatively new method of thinking that arose from the enlightenment period.  Put simply, Deism puts emphasis on reason over religion.  In the old method of learning, people recognized the bible as an “absolute truth” where everything in it was correct and true.  Only some people (such as priests) were able to read and interpret the bible and what the bible’s meaning is for our lives.  This implies that there is a correct method of reading the bible.  New learning puts emphasis on reason and logic.  Through the use of inductive reasoning, this logical way of reading the bible began to reject some things the church was teaching about miracles and resurrection of Jesus.  People such as Lock, Bacon, and Newton supported these ideas.  Jefferson, being a Deist, decided to reject all of the stories in the bible that couldn’t be considered logical and realistic.  By cutting out all of the miracle stories, resurrection story etc., Jefferson believed he was getting at the true story of Jesus, putting Jesus in his true and high light by keeping all of his sayings.  The story of Jesus’ life and sayings from beginning to end develops into a story of how Jefferson believed we were to live morally correct.  Jefferson believed that good moral behavior was of utmost importance.  

Deism is an ideology that was brought about by the new thinking of the Enlightenment period. Deists’ philosophy emphasized reason and nature over revelation. The main religious belief that Deists put forth was the idea that man could enter the kingdom of God by being a moral being. This directly contradicted the thoughts of Puritans and other established churches, which thought that only certain people were called to read and understand the Bible, and the only way to enter God’s kingdom is through the exclusive belief of Scripture. Deists also believed that there were certain laws of nature that had not changed since the time of Jesus and therefore the stories written in the Gospels that did not follow these laws were not true. Jefferson framed his entries included in his Bible around these ideas of reason. This is why Jefferson excluded any mention of the virgin birth, miracles, and the resurrection because they simply could not follow the laws of nature. Jefferson and deists alike were thought to doubt authority and question the Scripture; some recognized deists as being nonreligious and a dangerous group. Deists however still believed that God existed; in fact they believed that God had created us, but in contrast to Christian beliefs God did not interfere with our lives afterward. These ideas are what guide our religious beliefs all over the world today, in that people are free to seek their own religious truth through reason and their moral conscience.