Ryan Carroll- The Jefferson Bible

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.