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Stephen Mitchell,
The Gospel According to Jesus, Part One
One of the icons on the walls of my study is a picture of Thomas
Jefferson, an inexpensive reproduction of the portrait by Rembrant
Peale. The great man looks down over my desk, his longish, once-red hair
almost completely gray now, a fur collar draped softly around his neck
like a sleeping cat, his handsome features poised in an expression of
serenity, amusement, and concern. I honor his serenity and understand
his concern. And I like to think that his amusement -- the hint of a
smile, the left eyebrow raised a fraction of an inch -- comes from
finding himself placed in the company not of politicians but of saints.
For among the other icons on my walls are the beautiful, Jewish,
halo-free face of Jesus by Rembrandt from the Gemaldegalerie in Berlin;
a portrait of that other greatest of Jewish teachers, Spinoza; a Ming
dynasty watercolor of a delighted bird-watching Taoist who could easily
be Lao-tzu himself; a photograph, glowing with love, of the modern
Indian sage Ramana Maharshi; and underneath it, surrounded by dried rose
petals, a small Burmese statue of the Buddha, perched on a
three-foot-tall packing crate stenciled with CHUE LUNG SOY SAUCE, 22
LBS.
Because Jefferson was our great champion of religious freedom, he was
attacked as a rabid atheist by the bigots of his day. But he was a
deeply religious man, and he spent a good deal of time thinking about
Jesus of Nazareth. During the evening hours of one winter month late in
his first term as president, after the public business had been put to
rest, he began to compile a version of the Gospels that would include
only what he considered the authentic accounts and sayings of Jesus.
These he snipped out of his King James Bible and pasted onto the pages
of a blank book, in more-or-less chronological order. .
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