T*****n
发帖数: 2456 | 1 哪位辛苦一下翻译翻译介绍给国人？其实内容不是很多。很多copypaste就可以了。
http://www.angelfire.com/co/JeffersonBible/
Amazon上好像还挺热的，其中有一个介绍很不错，不过比较长，有兴趣读杰佛逊版圣经
的人可以参考一下：
Thomas Jefferson was no Christian. Like many of the most famous of the
founding fathers, he was a Deist, and counted himself a Unitarian, but he
often said he was the sole member of a sect including no one but himself. He
had confidence in his own reason and conscience. He did admire Jesus,
saying, "Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him by his biographers,
I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most
lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance, so much
absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it
impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same
being." It was Jefferson's view that he himself could sort the truth from
the imposture, for he felt that the real words applicable to Jesus were "as
distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill." He thought about the process of
doing so for many years, did a quick job around 1800 and did a thorough one
in 1820. His purpose was to make his own version of the gospels, an
extraction that would summarize Jesus's life and morals, for "I hold the
precepts of Jesus, as delivered by himself, to be the most pure, benevolent,
and sublime which have ever been preached to man. I adhere to the
principles of the first age; and consider all subsequent innovations as
corruptions of his religion, having no foundation in what came from him."
It was not enough for the polyglot Jefferson to make such a distillation
from the King James Version; he also bought a couple of Greek, French, and
Latin versions to use, two volumes of each, for his plan was to cut and
paste the parts that he found useful into one volume, but using all four
languages. The resultant volume is called The Jefferson Bible, although his
own handwritten title page gives "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth,
Extracted textually from the Gospels in Greek, Latin, French & English." He
apparently studied the volume of his own manufacture nightly before going to
bed, but he was horrified at the idea that it be published, feeling that
his political enemies would use his ideas against him (his lofty Deism had
produced against him charges of atheism) and that this product of his own
conscience was his own comfort. His descendants did not know that the volume
existed until after his death.
The English extracts of the book were printed by the Government Printing
Office in 1904 in a small booklet, and a tradition began of having the book
be presented to newly sworn in congressmen. Currently in print is an edition
from the Beacon Press in Boston, which is entirely fitting, as this is the
printing house for the Unitarian Universalist Church.
Naturally it is fascinating to go through the little volume and to see what
was important to the genius of Jefferson and what was not. He left out all
the Old Testament, of course, and all of Paul's additions (he felt that Paul
was the "first corruptor of the doctrines of Jesus"); the Apocalypse, upon
which so much of current prophetic beliefs are founded, he said was "merely
the ravings of a maniac." He must have felt that only the life of Jesus was
worthy of study.
But even the life does not start out in the way in which we are familiar.
The first sentences of Jefferson's Bible have to do with Joseph and Mary
going to Bethlehem to be taxed. There is no Annunciation, indeed, no
implication that Jesus had any sort of miraculous birth; Jefferson
distrusted miracles. Having seen the beginning, I turned to the final pages;
I knew how the story turned out, you see, so I did not really risk ruining
it for myself. The end is just as worldly; "They rolled a great stone to the
door of the sepulchre, and departed." (Matthew 27:60) There is no magical
resurrection in this version. The life and teachings were apparently enough.
There is a similar lack of miracles throughout. The story in the ninth
chapter of John is cut short, when being presented with a blind man and
asked who had sinned, he or his parents, to bring on the blindness, Jesus
only gives the comment, "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but
that the works of God should be made manifest in him." This sounds a bit
enigmatic to me, and although the blind man may have taken comfort that his
condition was not the product of sin..., I cannot think he would be happy at
being a display for the works of God. A sighted man would be a better
display. Anyway, the episode does not climax with Jesus making mud with his
spittle and putting it on the blind man's eyes to bring him vision. One
looks in vain in this volume for healed lepers, risen corpses, strolls on
the waters, or renewed wine cellars. Such stories were not important to
Jefferson; only the life and teachings were.
And those teachings, though familiar, are magnificent. Jesus causing the mob
self-examination when it was about to stone an adultress is one of my
favorites, and of course it is here. There are higher values than obedience
to old laws, he makes plain. The widow still gives everything she has, thus
giving more than the large sums from the rich. Jesus encouraged love of
others, as much as we love ourselves; the love extended to those who have no
love for us. The beseechings to do good make me painfully aware that I fall
short of the sort of ideal Jesus would want: "When thou makest a dinner or
a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor
thy rich neighbors; lest they also bid thee again and a recompense be made
thee. But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the
blind." Surely he was being hyperbolic, but even so, I don't come close.
I think the exaggeration does not serve him in many cases. "Take no thought
for tomorrow" I think of as exceedingly bad advice. I hold that there is
much to be said for thinking about the here and now, but only a fool never
plans for the future. Similarly, the enjoinings to abandon one's family or
to give away everything one has to the poor are so far removed from the way
my world works (and surely from the way the Nazarene's did, as well) that
such exhortation is not only futile but argues against itself.
Jefferson has eliminated some of the verses that gave me ammunition against
Biblical literalists. He includes the story about Peter denying Christ three
times before the cock crows, but omits the pesky Mark 14:66-68 which shows
Peter got only one denial in before the crowing. He leaves out the Holy
Spirit or any verse that would show Jesus to be divine. He does not include
any verses that show Jesus speaking with a short temper to his mother, as at
Cana. Jesus certainly does not invite anyone to eat his flesh.
I was disappointed at some of the inclusions. It is surprising that the
naturalist Jefferson allowed Jesus to go on saying that the mustard seed is
the biggest of all seeds and that it grows into a plant bigger than all
other herbs. Jefferson had no misgivings over having Jesus speak of a
literal Noah: "Noah entered the ark and the flood came and destroyed them
all." Not only does this seem to countenance a holocaust worse than any
subsequent one (and against a world of poor animals, too), it makes clear
that Jesus took the Old Testament myths literally.
The biggest disappointment is that although Jefferson saw fit to cut the
story before any ascendancy of Jesus into heaven, he retains many of Jesus's
parables of what the afterlife is like. This is not so bad in the
descriptions of heaven, but also included are Jesus's warnings about hell...
It is indeed a shame that Jefferson's admiration for the ethical system
proposed by Jesus includes all of his verses that warn about being burned or
tortured forever. Jesus's words make clear he countenances such a system.
That's not morals, it's monstrosity.
I did like the Jefferson Bible, though, for its brief summation of the
stories that have changed the world. I like most of all the idea of Thomas
Jefferson with scissors and paste finding what was meaningful for himself in
the gospels and cutting out his own version. This was the Jefferson who
encouraged, "Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if
there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of
blindfolded fear." His Bible was an act of audacious redaction: he refused
to accept the book as divinely inspired holy write, and determined that he
would examine it carefully to see in it what his own conscience and reason
showed was good, and follow that good, and ignore the rest. Would that
others would do the same.
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很喜欢他说的这句话：“Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him by his
biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality,
and of the most lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance,
so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to
pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from
the same being.”
能从古书里提取精华部分，绝对是自己智力的一个锻炼。 |
