A few years later, Thomas Jefferson resolved these difficulties quite simply in his “harmonized” account of the life of Jesus. The Jefferson Bible ends with the crucifixion and burial: “There laid they Jesus: and rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed.” The End. No Resurrection.
So, yes, Jefferson stood exactly in that century-old Deist tradition.
And you will see why I am very skeptical when I read that nineteenth or early twentieth century critics were so daring in their criticism of Biblical orthodoxy ”“ for example, in the US during the years of the Briggs controversy of the 1890s and the rise of Fundamentalism. Those ideas were already very familiar indeed before Jefferson was born in 1743.
Here’s a thought. Maybe the most important theme to highlight in any history of Biblical criticism is that of serial amnesia.
Great big books written on English deism influencing the rise of historical criticism at German Universities. Is Jenkins saying we are not aware of this fact?
I think Jenkins is saying that we should be aware of this fact but that collective amnesia prevents people from seeing it. And so you have people today talking about ‘bold new’ ways of thinking that aren’t really all that bold and new.