While looking for obscure connections between Thomas Jefferson and gnosticism, I happened across an interesting discovery. It seems that around 1820, Jefferson undertook the task of creating his own version of the Bible. He set out to remove all of what he considered to be inauthentic material which had been added for political or persuasive reasons, and which did not reflect the true teachings of Christ, as he perceived them to be. There’s a very short article here about it from PBS. For anybody interested in checking out Jefferson’s version, I tracked down a site which has the text freely available: The Jefferson Bible. Interesting stuff, I’ll have to come back and look at this in more detail. Just for my own sake, I’d also be interested in seeing somebody do a comparison between this and some of the gnostic Christian texts, especially the likes of the Gospel of Thomas, seeing as that name takes on special relevance with Jefferson’s own version of the gospel.