The Jefferson Bible - Scott Funck

The ideas expressed in natural theology focus mainly on empiricism, or being able to prove concepts with rational observations.  This is easily seen in Jefferson’s work on the Bible.  He eliminated all the miracles or direct interventions from God.  This includes dreams, talking through prayer and angels and even when God speaks to Jesus after the baptism.  The frameworks for those stories are left in though, as well as some portions that can be considered normal.  The most curious of those is the meeting of the blind and the sick.  This gives moral stories but Jefferson stops before the miracle of healing happen.  The same happens with the feeding of the people.  Jefferson leaves in most, if not all, the parables, including duplicate copies from the different gospel accounts.  I believe this is because of the possible importance he sees in repeating the moral stories they have.  In the end, Jefferson creates a strange combination of sayings of Jesus, like Gospel of Thomas or Quelle, and historic events that have no miraculous connections.  All of the actions left in are easily explained with reason with a few that have comments on the coming of the Kingdom.  The moral guidelines suggest that Jefferson sees the Kingdom as an earthly one that is in place now, but I feel that the fact that he left in the bulk of Matthew 22 Jefferson feels that an end time does exist.