Akashic Books presents a thought-provoking series of early writings from United States Presidents, starting with George Washington and moving chronologically forward to John Adams, Thomas Jefferson (in this volume), and beyond. Each slim book offers an introduction by a groundbreaking contemporary writer. This series is unlike any other Presidential commentaries in print, and is characterized by a critical viewpoint that will provide a counterpoint to the more staid analyses that have traditionally accompanied Presidential writings.
Thomas Jefferson’s original title page.
All rights reserved. No part of this book’s introduction by Percival Everett may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written consent of the publisher.
The statue of Thomas Jefferson on the cover of this book stands in the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. It was cast by Rudulph Evans between the years of 1945 and 1947.
Published by Akashic Books
Introduction ©2004 Percival Everett
ISBN: 978-1-888451-62-7
e-ISBN: 978-1-61775-219-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2004106238
Akashic Books
Brooklyn, New York, USA
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Table of Contents
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Introduction by Percival Everett
Thomas Jefferson Letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush
Thomas Jefferson Letter to William Short
Introduction
Perhaps more than any American historical figure, Thomas Jefferson represents our desired belief that, at least in the past, the intellectual had a place in our political system. Of course, legends are tricky things at best, playing both sides of the truth/falsehood coin. I am bound by several influences, my education for one, my desire to believe in the inherent good of democracy another, to admit to the eloquence of the Declaration of Independence, the document of which Jefferson was the primary author. But not far behind, if not right alongside or slightly ahead of my acceptance of the political correctness of the Declaration, is the gnawing idea that the document’s beauty lies in its being a remarkably outstanding example of sophistry, if not an outright, self-serving lie.
Some of Jefferson’s most famous quotes remain hauntingly resonant today:
“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
“The government is best which governs least.”
“I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.”
“War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying loses.”
The first two have remained as right-wing and now Republican battle cries. The second two are hardly mentioned. But it is no wonder that Jefferson is the Founding Father so beloved and frequently quoted by the armed hideaways and hooded American extremists.
Jefferson remains impressive as someone interested and engaged in the world. He has sometimes been called the “father of archaeology” for his role in devising excavation techniques. Instead of haphazardly digging straight down until something was uncovered, he instead insisted on cutting a wedge out of the Indian burial mound he was desecrating; this allowed him to walk into the site and observe the disturbed remains without having to bend over. A wine lover, a gourmet, a thinker, he was strongly influenced by the Enlightenment and so he approached the world with a “scientific” eye, a desire, a need to present his beliefs with the benefit and support of so-called reason and scientific method.
Jefferson’s recasting of the four Gospels of the New Testament—“The Jefferson Bible,” completed in 1819—was an interesting (or not) bit of play intellectualism. Many claim his “translation” amounts to little more than a paraphrasing of the parts of the Bible with which he agreed. In fact, a glance at the Geneva Bible of 1557, the Rheims Bible of 1582, and the Anglican Authorized version of 1611, along with, of course, the King James Bible, might lead one to agree with this assertion. Still, he took it upon himself to do it, whatever it was he did. He decided that the rules of the club to which he wished to belong were not the rules he wanted to play by. So instead of changing clubs, he changed the rule book by literally cutting and pasting together only the sections that he found relevant to his interpretation.
The cover of Jefferson’s creation bore the words, “The Morals of Jesus,” though the title page elaborated: “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth Extracted textually from the Gospels in Greek, Latin, French & English.” In the eighty-one-page document, translations in all four languages are positioned side by side.
Jefferson was greatly influenced by some of the Unitarian thinkers of his day, as well as by the Enlightenment philosophers and their new appeal to reason. For Jefferson, Paul was the villain of Christianity, reducing the religion to the worship of a man as a god rather than focusing on the teachings of Jesus; this hardly sat well with rational thought and led to the superstitious character of Christianity that Jefferson detested. There is in fact no reference to the divinity of Jesus in the Jefferson Bible, and at the end of the story, once the big rock is rolled in front of the tomb of Jesus, well, that’s it. There is no rising from the dead and therefore no doubting Thomas. Except for the one who happened to write his own version of the text some 1500 years later.
Jefferson wrote, “I am a sect by myself, as far as I know.” He claimed he was not a Jew, as he did not accept “their theology,” in particular the part that supposes God punishes the sins of the fathers upon their children. One can well imagine. More importantly, he believed that words and ideas were inadequate for the defining of God. For Jefferson, Jesus said that God was perfect and good and did not define him.
In fairness to Jefferson, he admitted that his version