Comments on: David Barton Uses Jefferson Quote He Says is Unconfirmed

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 30 May 2018 18:22:43 +0000

David Barton’s suggestion that Evanglicals start Good News Clubs as a response to the Sandy Hook massacre is macabre. The Good News Club–and there are already over 3500 of them in America’s public schools–teaches children that they “deserve to die” (their exact words) for their sins. See http://www.goodnewsclubs.info. With over 5000 references to sin and thousands more to (dis)obedience, punishment, and death, the Good News Club curriculum promotes a religious form of traumatic bonding and psychological abuse.

By: oft

oft — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 18:43:39 +0000

TJ wrote religion was left to the States, meaning the majority could establish and teach Christianity any way they wanted. The focus on this one man is regrettable; especially a man in comparison not as important as the others, who had nothing to do with the Constitution and only wrote down principles in the DOI already hackneyed out in Congress.

By: oft

oft — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 13:43:39 +0000

By: sbh

sbh — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 03:44:25 +0000

David Barton’s unconfirmed quotations list is not a good source by any standards; some of his “unconfirmed” quotations are perfectly legitimate quotations obscured by sloppy research, minor inaccuracies or the like (the Samuel Adams, John Quincy Adams, and (probably) the Noah Webster are examples); others are out-and-out fakes (both Madison quotations and one of the Patrick Henry quotations are examples), and others, like the Jefferson quotation under consideration here, are attributions by others made long after the supposed date of the saying. Further, as I’ve commented elsewhere, there are a number of quotations (like Jefferson saying that religion is deemed incompatible with good government in other countries) that ought to have been on his list of bad quotations, but weren’t.
Daniel Webster’s letter, dated 1852, first appeared in print in the 1850s to combat the notions of Jefferson’s “atheism”. The National Magazine of August 1858, for example, observed of it

Some there have been who have labored hard to prove that the sage of Monticello was an infidel, and that he ignored all religion but that of nature, and lived in the atmosphere of a blank and cheerless atheism. The testimony above given by so eminent a witness must be received as conclusive on this point.

The letter, in other words, was specifically selected for a purpose, and we have no way of knowing how accurate or complete the transcript is. (All subsequent reprintings of the letter that I’ve seen go back to the 1850s printed version.) If the 1858 editor chose to alter or omit anything, we have no way of knowing what it was. Such alterations were not uncommon in even scholarly 19th century publications; popular periodicals were even less likely to be scrupulous in printing a document.
Even supposing that what we have is a complete and accurate transcript, it should be kept in mind that Daniel Webster was not trying to write a full and accurate account of a day spent with Thomas Jefferson many years before, but rather he was writing “Professor Pease” (possibly Calvin Pease (1813-1863)) about the importance of the “sabbath-school” movement, and throwing in something he remembered Jefferson saying on the subject. He was, in other words, cherry-picking from his memories. Quite possibly Jefferson had more to say on the subject than Webster chooses to recall; we have no way of knowing.
Here’s a link to my piece on the subject some years ago: http://fakehistory.wordpress.com/2009/07/05/questionable-quotes-jefferson-and-the-sacred-volume/

By: Ron

Ron — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 00:18:54 +0000

Jon, the unconfirmed quote seems pretty unlikely given the confirmed letter that Jefferson wrote to his nephew and ward, Peter Carr. In that one, he instructed young Peter to weigh all claims of scripture by the same standard of reason and critical questioning. “Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear…. But those facts in the Bible which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined with more care, and under a variety of faces. Here you must recur to the pretensions of the writer to inspiration from God. Examine upon what evidence his pretensions are founded, and whether that evidence is so strong, as that its falsehood would be more improbable than a change in the laws of nature, in the case he relates…. The pretension is entitled to your inquiry, because millions believe it. On the other hand, you are astronomer enough to know how contrary it is to the law of nature that a body revolving on its axis, as the earth does, should have stopped, should not, by that sudden stoppage, have prostrated animals, trees, buildings, and should after a certain time gave resumed its revolution, & that without a second general prostration. Is this arrest of the earth’s motion, or the evidence which affirms it, most within the law of probabilities? You will next read the New Testament. It is the history of a personage called Jesus. Keep in your eye the opposite pretensions: 1, of those who say he was begotten by God, born of a virgin, suspended & reversed the laws of nature at will, & ascended bodily into heaven; and 2, of those who say he was a man of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic mind, who set out without pretensions to divinity, ended in believing them, and was punished capitally for sedition, by being gibbeted, according to the Roman law, which punished the first commission of that offence by whipping, & the second by exile, or death in fureâ… Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you. If you find reason to believe there is a God, a consciousness that you are acting under his eye, & that he approves you, will be a vast additional incitement; if that there be a future state, the hope of a happy existence in that increases the appetite to deserve it; if that Jesus was also a God, you will be comforted by a belief of his aid and love. In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable, not for the rightness, but uprightness of the decision….” http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/jefferson_carr.html
[Indeed, such disciplined treatment of scriptural authoritarianism might indeed lead people to be better citizens, but I seriously doubt that Jefferson would have recommended anything less. — Ron]