ringingtruenet

Not Stephen King

I lived the life of a Road Warrior for several years. At first, it was pretty cool because I wound up traveling to many interesting places that I would not have considered vacation possibilities: the Mississippi Delta, West Virginia coal country, Minneapolis in the dead of winter, Baltimore in the thick of summer humidity. I also went to great places like Fenway Park, delighted in the architecture of downtown Pittsburgh and took my first of many trips to New York City courtesy of the company expense account.

As the years dragged on and I ran out of baseball parks I hadn’t seen, travel became a drag. I’d work all day, eat dinner alone, then trudge back to that sterile hotel room and try to survive the empty hours until bedtime without going nuts. The problem was I wanted to be home with my woman, with my stuff, in touch with the rhythm of daily life in San Francisco. I’d finally crawl into bed, turn off the light, then turn, twist, kick off the blanket, try the other side, turn on the TV, flip through the channels and eventually fall asleep watching the usual nothing that is always on.

It was during that period that I discovered the Holy Bible. No, it wasn’t like that. The Bible didn’t kindle my faith, give me comfort or otherwise change my world view. No, the Bible gave me something much more important than my soul.

Blessed sleep.

No sleeping pill, no version of warmed over milk and no herbal remedy can put me to sleep as quickly as a page or two from the Holy Bible. I’d pull that sucker out of the night stand, turn to a page at random and within twenty verses or so I was snoring like a log.

Thank you, Lord.

A few weeks ago I was scanning my Amazon recommendations and happened on what is commonly known as The Jefferson Bible. According to Wikipedia, “The Jefferson Bible, or The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth as it is formally titled, was Thomas Jefferson’s effort to extract the doctrine of Jesus by removing sections of the New Testament containing supernatural aspects as well as perceived misinterpretations he believed had been added by the Four Evangelists.”

The possibility of obtaining a clear explanation of the philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth intrigued me, and since it was a cheap download (95 cents), I loaded it onto my Kindle. I read it during lunch hours and finished it in about a week.

The review in brief: Jefferson took out the miracles but forgot to take out The Boring.

"Hey! There's that boring guy!"

Prior to using the Bible as a cure for insomnia, I had read significant portions of it in the context of my life as an English major. The Bible is the most referenced work in Western literature, so it’s hard to appreciate Shakespeare, Milton, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky without some research into the scriptures. I thought it was boring then, I think it’s boring now and Jefferson may have accomplished his own miracle by making it even more boring.

It’s not the archaic King James language, irritating as it is. That’s the language of the time of Shakespeare and Milton, whom I adore. The Bible is simply a badly-written, disconnected, contradictory book with a patched-together narrative and numerous undesirables in leading roles.

So, to be fair to Jefferson, he didn’t start with prime literary material. The problem is that when you strip out the magic, there’s not much left in the way of dramatic interest.

Take Lazarus, for example. Everybody knows Lazarus rose from the dead. His name has become synonymous with the comeback. True or not, his resurrection works as a story line. In Jefferson’s version, Lazarus is a beggar who dies “and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom.” Lazarus can’t come back because a “great gulf fixed” makes it impossible.

You can hear the thud all the way to Galilee.

Jefferson’s treatment also results in a much colder, rule-oriented, whiny Jesus. The character suffers through the stripping of Luke’s storytelling talent and John’s cosmic positioning.

My disappointment in Jefferson was not unanticipated. I’ve always considered him to be the most overrated American of all: the ultimate hypocrite who sang a message of equality while enslaving human beings. He was also a lousy President whose pro-French orientation nearly split the union through the Embargo Act of 1807 and whose weird policy of cutting defense spending while tweaking the nose of the British lion left his friend James Madison with the huge bag of crap we call the War of 1812.

If you’re looking for a secular interpretation of Christian philosophy, H. G. Wells’ version in The Outline of History is a far superior effort. Alternatively, if you’re tired of shelling out the co-pay for your Xanax supply, The Jefferson Bible is a superior sleep aid priced just under a buck.

Related articles

• 5 Founding Fathers Whose Skepticism About Christianity Would Make Them Unelectable Today (chasdarwin.com)
• Jefferson Bible conserved and digitized (prayerfullivingnewsblog.wordpress.com)
• The Jefferson Bible Edits Jesus’s Words, Not Just Miraclesrds (freethoughtblogs.com)