Critically Reading the Scripture

THOMAS JEFFERSON, who not only was not a Christian, but had the audcaty to take a copy of the Holy Bible, cut it into shreds, seperate what he thought were beneficial passages from those he considered primtive, barbaric, or downright wrong, and and then to publish his own version of the Christian scripture, which he called something like "A Narrative of teh Life of Jesus of Nazareth", but which we tend to call today simply "The Jefferson Bible." Any good unversity library has a copy. As the old TV ad used to say: "Try it, you'll like it". Arguably, Jefferson's version is much better than the "original", in terms of quality, if not quantity. the way he described it when somebodoy sked him what the heck he thought he was doing with his tatterd, ripped apart Bible and a pair of scissors, dreamy Tom replied: "I am removing diamonds from a pile of dung". Yes, it seems tha tour nation's third president and principle author of the Declaration of INdependence did indeed call the Holy Book, or at least most of it: a "pile of crap." Jefferson, like most of America's founders was passionate about science, far more devoted to and trusting of science than to religion, did not like stories and anecdotes involving miracles, or any events which to him blatantly contradicted the known laws of nature, such as, say, folks walking on water and mountains and oceans obeying human commands. His harshest judgement he reserved for the best and last, the infamous "Book of Revelation", which Jefferson described as "the rantings of a lunatic". Arguably, john of Patmos was a tad......how to say this...touched? Maybe drug addled?... Today the best, most scientific, factual scholar of early Christian history and the Bible is Bart Ehrman, Dean of religious studies at North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The author of many seminal books on the topic, his most recentis titled "Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End". without giving away any spoilers about what Ehrman says the Bible really says about the end, one can derive from hsi writings certain general conclusions. One, he seems to agree with Jefferson, that book number sixty six of sixty six is indeed the work of a troubled mind, or maybe a troubled God.