Sunday, October 22, 2006

Thomas Jefferson and the Bible

Andrew Sullivan has more of the letter, but....
I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should read
all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics
have decided for us, to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists.
Because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration, as much as the
others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, and not by
the reason of those ecclesiastics. Most of these are lost. There are some,
however, still extant, collected by Fabricius, which I will endeavor to get and
send you," - Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, August 10,
1787.

Thomas Jefferson knew of what he spoke. If a faith is based on such things that mean one is scared that it will fail through an exploration of the pseudoepigraphia and other early christian and anti-christian writings, then I have to question whether the faith is build on rock or sand.

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