The Life and Teachings of Jesus of Nazareth
Having spent most of my adult life as an atheist, I’m familiar with the sort of mental block against mystical language that many secular people have. For these people, they can’t really appreciate Christ’s moral teachings because they’re buried under what they perceive to be patently superstitious nonsense.
This is where the Jefferson Bible can prove useful. It proved useful in my own journey. Thomas Jefferson sought to separate the moral teachings of Jesus of Nazareth from Pauline Christianity as an experiment. He used a razor blade on a King James bible, literally cutting and pasting together a sparse and singular narrative from the Gospels of His life and teachings. The final result is more accessible to the lay reader than the canonical translation, if admittedly lacking in certain respects.
I have taken that Jefferson Bible and created a revised edition of it, my American Basic Christian translation, that may prove useful:
- I have replaced the KJV translation used by Jefferson with the contemporary English WEB translation. I have also attempted to arrange it into an easily readable paragraph form rather than as a sequence of excerpts.
- I have taken the footnotes from the WEB translation and integrated them as asides throughout the text.
- I have included timeless artwork depicting the events from the Art Renewal Center, an admirable project to promote realist art in the highest European tradition.
- Every passage is hyperlinked to the original KJV, for those who are curious about the context from which Jefferson plucked a specific line.
I’ve now become comfortable with the kind of spiritual and esoteric language that this translation removes, but I still find myself coming back to this from time to time because it’s so concise and direct. Maybe it’s cheating or some kind of sacrilege to turn to my homemade Cliff Notes of His teachings. I don’t know. But I do know that I wouldn’t have made it past my mental block against thinking spiritually had I not had Jefferson’s curious little project as a stepping stone.
Matt Parrott
mindweapon
I’ve read about the Jefferson Bible for years, but never took the opportunity to actually explore the text. Thank you for sharing your annotated translation.
Can we explore here the gifts of Christianity? Can we write about the forebears that thought it totally separate from Judaism, like Marcion of Sinope who taught early on that the teachings of Jesus were totally incompatible with the Old Testament?
What was the revolution of consciousness? Indeed there was one.
Lena,
Yes. I’m hoping we can have some serious discussions about religion in general and Christianity in particular. Bring it on! While I intend to welcome a broad range of backgrounds and beliefs, I’m hoping to move past the “dead Jew on a stick” and “my religion is science” garbage that pervades a lot of our movement.
Lena,
Oh. And by the way…
Was it a coincident that we both brought up The Lizard King last week, or did my Intervention post inspire your two excellent posts on the subject?
Matt,
It was an odd coincidence that I even mentioned to my partner! Not only that, I have been talking about doing a post on the conspiracy theorists and how they obscure truth with such outlandish stuff – alien technology, HARP and so on, but you beat me to that too! Pretty funny.
I think you can monitor a really interesting discussion on Christianity, and I would like to contribute. Most people really do miss the revolution of conscious that happened, how radical it really was, and how totally different it is then the Pagan world view. We have cult/pop figures like Joseph Campbell who tried to compare Christ to the Heroes of the ancient world and it is not at all the same. Also, Aldous Huxley wrote a subversive book titled, “The Perennial Philosophy,” which tried to make all religions, one. It is a lie that attempts very subtly to erase all the spiritual glory and depth of one race. I am hoping to touch upon some of that in my next blog post. I really do not know how you put together such a great blog so quickly. Good luck to you. I think you are about to discover just how many people really like you and your work.
I’d like to see a discussion on Christianity here, too. Good suggestion, Lenahoneybee.
Never even heard about the Jefferson Bible until now. I am not criticizing your monumental achievement, but I prefer the KJV over the WEB. It is beautiful even where it’s hooey.
I’ve never read The Perennial Philosophy and I wonder if Huxley mentioned the Bahais. Just as Ali Mohammad proclaimed himself The Bab, so too one could claim that Jesus Christ had delusions of grandeur and importance. “I and the Father are One.” Well, so was Moses One with the Father, having ascended straight into heaven without any of that death & burial business. I wouldn’t blame St. Paul for any of that.
As I see it, it’s all middle Eastern stuff. Ask yourselves, why did Jesus Christ incarnte to a certain tribe instead of to the peoples of the Americas, Pacific islanders, ancient Germanic tribes, Asians, etc. Because they didn’t need his message, that’s why.
I met a nice young Bahai couple (white North Americans in their 30s – quelle surprise) a few years ago. They said their Bahai belief system teaches “the unity of all religions”. So I asked what they thought of violence. They were against it. I said, suppose someone physically attacks you. They said – hee hee – that they would raise their arms to ward off the blows but never strike back. This is what whites have come to, compliments of yet another middle eastern religion.
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It is curious that Huxley promoted the idea that all religions are one and the “Bahai” faith is officially promoted at the UN. Huxley’s book, “The Perennial Philosophy,” is a mass of quotations, strung together. It is vapid, just like the Bahai faith. The Bahai faith believes we are all equal. Men, women and the races, all constitute the spook, “humanity.” It is dangerous because we are not all equal and if you end up with your guard down somewhere, well, you will be killed by people who consider their real brother, their actual brother, you know, and you the outsider. It tells us all religions are equal, that Jesus was just a Prophet, like any other Prophet. This is blasphemy.
Another vapid belief of Bahai: Science and religion are in harmony. “Science” has utterly destroyed religion. Darwinism set out specifically to destroy Christianity and more specifically to remove morality from war and economics. Science has been used as a tool to undermine religion and every obscenity has been born – genetic engineering of seeds, cannibalism where stem cells from babies are used to keep sick people alive, total environmental degradation, poisons and toxins in water and food, making people sick and on and on, not to mention war machines that level cities and murder entire populations of people.
Oh, and anther vapid belief of the Bahai, and a very telling one – “our economic problems are linked to our spiritual problems.” Yeah, right. So if you are rich you are blessed I guess, and if you are poor, well you must deserve it.
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If I were in a position to do so, if Jesus Christ were to came back to earth in human form and attempted to cross the border into my land and apply for residence permit, I would deport him and put him on a plane back to the Middle East where he belongs. Maybe being Jewish, Israel would take him. He certainly doesn’t belong in my country. I wish King Olaf had done the same to the Pope’s representative instead of force-converting all of us into that universalist and communistic faith. Maybe if my people still had our own religion, tied to our blood and land, we wouldn’t be so concerned about the care, feeding and “souls” of Haitians and concerned enough about ourselves not to allow them as refugees here.
Maybe if my people still had our own religion, tied to our blood and land, we wouldn’t be so concerned about the care, feeding and “souls” of Haitians and concerned enough about ourselves not to allow them as refugees here.
If Pre-Christian Europe were as culturally confident and martial as you fantasize it to be, then they wouldn’t have submitted (both physically and spiritually) to this supposedly “invasive” religion. Is Christianity to be damned for its cruelty or damned for its weakness? Both?
And what is your counter-proposal? Reviving heathenism? Atheism?
Matt: “If Pre-Christian Europe were as culturally confident and martial as you fantasize it to be, then they wouldn’t have submitted (both physically and spiritually) to this supposedly “invasive” religion. Is Christianity to be damned for its cruelty or damned for its weakness? Both?”
Is the US a shining beacon of freedom and opportunity? Or a becoming police state at home (I flew in, out and around there recently) and warmongering imperialist corporatistic state abroad, exporting all over the West its plastic, demeted, degenerate “culture”? (We get Jerry springer and Disney, et. al. on the TV here but least our MacDonalds employees are competent and polite (the 90% who are native Swedes, anyway) and you can get a decent cup of coffee at the 7-11)
There is one version for the sheep and another for the shepherds and yet another for the shepherds’ shepherds.
Matt: “If Pre-Christian Europe were as culturally confident and martial as you fantasize it to be, then they wouldn’t have submitted (both physically and spiritually) to this supposedly “invasive” religion.”
You could say the same about the US settlers’/colonisers’ descendants, as well as the rest of the Western peoples and the supposedly invasive Frankfurt Marxism/Holocaustianity which has replaced Christianity as the de facto state religion. I lay the blame for both at the elites who saw in the case of Christianity a way to pacify the people they ruled over, plunder ordinary peoples’ wealth and revive the Roman Empire (no Constantine = obscure, whacked out cult).
Matt: “And what is your counter-proposal? Reviving heathenism? Atheism?”
That’s a tough question. I’m not so sure it would be easy to resurrect and modernise Paganism and make it popular among any but a narrow group of people (though neopaganism seems to be more popular among young people). Atheism only appeals to the 10-20% who are constitutionally incapable of faith in any kind of gods. Perhaps we need a new metaphysics and a new religion (which draws from the old religions’ wisdom) which is exclusive and particular to us and attractive to its potential converts but proselytise, doesn’t hold that there’s something wrong with them if they don’t join and doesn’t “worship” a god or gods.
And let the atheists be atheists. Because of the nature of its beliefs, that seems to be harder for Christians to do than the other way round. Make it a new article of the white version of Christian faith that a member of your extended family, who is loyal to such but who rejects Jesus and goes atheist is infinitely more worthy and valuable person than a towelhead that converts from Islam to Christianity.
Should have written “doesn’t proselytise” above.
John,
White America is assuredly degenerating, but as I suggest in the Intervention article, my love for it and loyalty to it is unconditional. I haven’t argued anywhere that I’m satisfied with the direction we’re going.
We appear to both believe that Christianity was merely another existing institution for the corrupt elites to pervert and invert against the people. From a purely objective standpoint, I don’t see why an entirely new metaphysics and an entirely new religion are necessary when rehabilitating ethnic nationalism within a Christian framework is clearly the path of least resistance.
Christianity and ethnic nationalism have had a symbiotic relationship throughout most of history and still have such a relationship throughout the Eastern Orthodox world.
“I don’t see why an entirely new metaphysics and an entirely new religion are necessary when rehabilitating ethnic nationalism within a Christian framework is clearly the path of least resistance.”
Where does that leave the sizeable number of (even in America) people who “see through” Christianity as clear as they do as the politically prescribed non-theistic ersatz religion? Would one need to be a Christian to belong to the resulting nation?
That might work on your side of the pond but in Europe people have abandoned Christianity in droves (and many Christians have, predictably, told me that that’s the sole cause of all the world’s problems).
John,
I don’t presume to dictate specific policy decisions for the hypothetical future regime. We have enough fights to be had in the here and now without traveling into the future to find more. I see Christianity becoming America’s public religion once again, with individual states and localities having the autonomy to carry on their affairs in a manner commensurate with the will of the local denizens. While I would like to see atheists and neopagans brought back into the fold, I don’t believe that those who belong to my ethnonational extended family ought to be forcefully converted, deported, or treated unfairly by the state on account of their conscience.
The situation is a bit different in Europe, though I believe you would be surprised how many people on both sides of the pond will be willing to embrace an invigorated, confident, and nationalist Christianity. Either way, I work closely with both atheists and neopagans in the movement and am not proposing that WN become exclusively Christian.
“Ask yourselves, why did Jesus Christ incarnte to a certain tribe instead of to the peoples of the Americas, Pacific islanders, ancient Germanic tribes, Asians, etc. Because they didn’t need his message, that’s why.”
God is either universal or particular. If God is universal then the superior status jews attach to themselves through judaism is a blasphemy and anti-God. In which case the truth is much more likely to come from someone from within that tribe reacting against jewish particularism than anyone else. Even more so if that individual had been influenced by hellenistic ideas and the conflict between them sparked the revolt.
As I see it, there is nothing in Christianity that cannot be found either in Graeco-Roman philosophy OR religion. The genius of Christianity is that it found a way to blend the two into one single religious-philosophical life teaching. Naturally Christianity is a synthesis in such a way that it is something new rather than just a rehash of the old in new packaging; but nonetheless I think Christian apologists tend to overstate the case. Brotherly love, charity, love of babies (Sparta may have practiced infanticide but most Romans erected tombstones for their stillborn), and so many things that are supposedly exclusively Christian are in fact not found lacking in the pre-Christian Hellenes and Romans.
I don’t see a true Christian revival as a realistic possibility. Just as Christianity was a synthesis of previous Graeco-Roman philosophical and religious ideas with Judaism and other Near Eastern elements, whatever our next worldview shall be (if it shall come to exist) will almost certainly have Christian elements; but as a coherent worldview, Christianity and modern materialist-empiricist scientific worldviews both find themselves in a crisis they cannot escape from, just as ancient religions of the Roman Empire and Graeco-Roman philosophy could not escape their crises except by by reborn in Christian guise.