John – Has Barton changed his view of Jefferson all of a sudden? Last week he told Beck that Jefferson left in the miracles of healing, feeding the multitudes and raising the dead. Did he recant on those claims?

I read the introduction and first chapters of Warren’s and Michael Coulter’s book in the amazon preview. I too was taken aback by the way Barton characterized academia, inventing terms like “academic collectivism” and crudely transposing philosophical and literary theories on history. I too got a big kick out of how he described “Minimalism,” which sums up exactly what he is doing in “The Jefferson Lies.” I can only assume this little introduction is to marginalize historians and present himself as above such “posturing.”

What I find curious about the interview Warren linked above is the repeated references to Joseph Ellis’ American Sphinx by Beck. Barton also mentions Ellis by name in his book, one of the few historians he actually singles out. It seems that this book may have been the genesis for Barton’s book, but he rather coyly avoids any direct references.

Instead, Barton brandishes a parchment which he claims to be the original 1803 treaty with the Kaskaskia Indians, signed by Jefferson and Madison, as if to demonstrate to gullible viewers that he explored only first source material in his book. I thought Warren did an excellent job illustrating how this treaty came about, and what its intent actually was. Needless to say, it had nothing to with “evangelizing” the already converted Kaskaskia Indians, but rather to restore land that had been stripped from them in the wake of an earlier massacre.

It seems incredibly important to Barton to make Jefferson into an Evangelical, holding up the flimsiest of “evidence” to support his case. This reminds me of Gavin Menzies attempt to prove the Chinese first came to the Americas in 1421, by clinging to a literal handful of “evidence,” and the making a number of wild speculations as to how the Chinese achieved this. Both seem to rely exclusively on gullible readers or faithful followers, as the case may be.

And do you allow that Jefferson’s notes put in the Second Coming from Matthew 25:31-46?

That’s far more important and interesting than Barton blowing Matthew 10, which he did.

Barton lazily accepted second-hand research instead of doing it for himself, but that’s the whole damn problem on all sides. Me, I think there are a lot of professional scholars out there who never did the spadework on Jefferson’s bible stuff, and so are too embarrassed to enter the fray as well.

I’m tired of the culture war where Barton ignores half the truth but then his critics ignore the other half. I’ve admired the thoroughness of your work and hope that the people without an agenda can find the diamonds in Barton’s dunghill, so to speak.

That Jefferson included the Second Coming of the Son of Man and heaven and hell and all that stuff in Matthew 25 is no small diamond. It’s a Big Deal.

This is no mere “deism” on Jefferson’s part, or Jesus cast as a mere moral teacher, which frankly, was “common knowledge” about Jefferson I had no reason to doubt until I looked this all up for myself this morning.

And you’re also correct about Barton astoundingly citing several miracles in Matthew 9: I can’t find Mt 9 in Jefferson’s notes atall. Nor the loaves and the fishes: I searched for each of the 4 accounts of that but they’re not in Jefferson’s notes. I spent the afternoon on this, doing my homework to hold up my end of this colloquy. I’m not here to fight.

Neither do I think the private Jefferson necessarily believed the the Biblical account of the Second Coming. I’d bet he didn’t. But the public Jefferson put it out there and that matters, perhaps more than the private Jefferson does.

Thank you for your time and good faith, Warren. I’d like us all to put our flags and banners away and to take this stuff out of the hands of the haters, if we can.