Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was the third President of the United States (1801–1809), the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776).In his Notes on Virginia (1781), Jefferson wrote: "Millions of innocent men, women and children since the introduction of Christianity have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned. Yet have we not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth. . ." The Deist wrote: "The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter." (Works, 1829 ed., Vol. IV, p. 365).
Jefferson's conclusions about the Bible are noteworthy. He considered much of the new testament of the Bible to be lies. He described these as "so much untruth, charlatanism and imposture". He described the "roguery of others of His disciples", and called them a "band of dupes and impostors" describing Paul as the "first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus", and wrote of "palpable interpolations and falsifications". He also described the Book of Revelation to be "merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams". While living in the White House, Jefferson began to make his own condensed version of the Gospels, omitting Jesus' virgin birth, miracles, divinity, and resurrection, primarily leaving only Jesus' moral philosophy, of which he approved. This compilation was published after his death and became known as the Jefferson Bible.[46]
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