One winter evening, the president sat at his desk in the White House. He’d finished his work for the day and was ready to do something to help him get his mind off government. He took out two Bibles and opened them to the story of Jesus. Then he grabbed a knife—or perhaps a razor—and began cutting up one Bible, then the other. Working methodically, he sliced out the parts of the Bible that he believed and pasted them onto a folio of blank pages. The rest—the parts he didn’t believe—he left behind in two maimed, mutilated Bibles. Who was this Bible bludgeoning president? Donald Trump? No, it was Thomas Jefferson. The year was 1804.

            Thomas Jefferson was editing the Bible, a book regarded by most of his fellow Americans as the Word of God. The act was presumptuous, perhaps even blasphemous. But Jefferson found that the worthy parts of the Bible were easily distinguishable from the worthless—as he later described in a letter to John Adams, “as diamonds in a dunghill.”

            Using the passages from his dissected Bibles, Jefferson created a new book, which he called, “The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth.” He had it bound but he never published it, and he told only a handful of close friends about it. His copy—the only copy that ever existed—later disappeared and is now lost to history.

            But sixteen years later, he created another. In 1820, retired from politics and living at Monticello, Jefferson sat down again, at the age of seventy-seven, to edit the Bible. He purchased six Bibles—two in English, two in French, and two containing both Latin and Greek—and cut them up, creating a second edited version of the New Testament, in four languages.

            In this book, he kept the words of Jesus and some of his deeds, but he omitted the supernatural and any suggestion that Jesus is God. The virgin birth is gone. So is Jesus walking on water, multiplying the loaves and fishes, and raising Lazarus from the dead. Jefferson’s version ends with Jesus’ burial on Good Friday. There is no resurrection, no Easter Sunday. Jefferson called this version “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.”

            That book has survived. It’s smaller than you might expect—roughly five by eight inches—with a faded red leather cover. Conservators at the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History in Washington, DC, painstakingly repaired rips and restored the book. It’s currently on display at the museum, along with two of the Bibles that Jefferson cut up to create it.

            The exhibition has generated questions: Why did one of America’s Founding Fathers cut up Bibles? Was it an act of piety or of blasphemy? Was Jefferson a Christian or a heretic? And what does this book, commonly known as the “Jefferson Bible,” tell us about America’s religious heritage?(Peter Carlson, The Humanist. 18 February 2012)

            The “Jefferson Bible” is arguably the most controversial religious book produced in the American founding era. Although some popular Christian writers have tried to claim Jefferson as a Christian, he was actually a Deist whose contempt for traditional Christian beliefs became clear in his retirement. 

            Jefferson did consider himself a Christian though. He wrote in 1803 that “to the corruptions of Christianity, I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence, & believing he never claimed any other.” In other words, Jefferson revered Jesus’s teachings but did not believe that he was divine. He praised Jesus for his moral precepts, but he rejected Jesus’ supernatural power. (Thomas Kidd, The Gospel Coalition, 17 December 2007)

            Unlike many of Christianity’s critics today, Jefferson was deeply familiar with the Bible. He had to be in order to produce the Jefferson Bible. But Jefferson clearly put his own standards of rationality above the authority of Scripture. Rather than conforming his life to the Scriptures, he conformed the Scriptures to suit his Deistic worldview. Many people subconsciously cut out the parts of the Bible they don’t like, but Jefferson did it consciously. 

            Do you know people today who pick and choose the Scriptures they like, and they disregard the rest? I’ve actually heard people make comments like, “I like the New Testament but not the Old Testament. The God of the Old Testament is a God of wrath; the God of the New Testament is a God of love.” Likewise, I’ve also heard people say, “I love the teachings of Jesus, but Paul, not so much!” Or “I believe what the Bible says about heaven, but I don’t believe in hell.” And the cut and paste list goes on and on.

            Do you struggle with any parts of the Bible? Are there any biblical teachings that rub you the wrong way? Do you wish you could cut out certain books or passages of the Bible? Even if we believe that God inspired the Scriptures, how do we know which books are actually the God-breathed Scriptures? Have you ever looked at the table of contents in your Bible and wondered how these sixty-six books became recognized as sacred Scripture? And what about other books? These are questions concerning the canon of Scripture, which is simply defined as the list of all the books that belong in the Bible.

            Why is the canon of Scripture so important? Well, if we are to trust and obey God, we must have a collection of words that we are certain are God’s own words to us. If there are any sections of Scripture about which we have doubts whether they are God’s words or not, we will not consider them to have absolute divine authority and we will not trust them as much as we would trust God himself. (Grudem 54) Therefore, let’s take a look at the Old and New Testament canons respectively! 

The Old Testament Canon
            We may ask, “Where did the idea of a canon begin—the idea that the people of Israel should preserve a collection of written words from God? Scripture itself bears witness to the historical development of the canon. The earliest collection of written words was the Ten Commandments. Thus, the Ten Commandments form the beginning of the biblical canon. God himself wrote on two stone tablets the words which he commanded his people: “And he gave to Moses, when he had made an end of speaking with him upon Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God” (Ex. 31:18) Again we read, “And the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tablets” (Ex. 32:16).The tablets were placed in the ark of the covenant and constituted the covenant relationship between God and his people.

            This collection of authoritative words from God grew in size throughout Israel’s history. Moses himself wrote the Torah, or the first five books of the Bible. These are sometimes even referred to as “the books of Moses.” After the death of Moses, Joshua also added to the collection of the written words of God: “Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God” (Josh. 24:26). Later, others in Israel, usually those who fulfilled the office of prophet, wrote additional words from God. Here is a small sampling:

• Samuel told the people the rights and duties of the kingship; and he wrote them in a book and laid it up before the Lord. (I Sam. 10:25)
• The acts of King David, from first to last, are written in the Chronicles of Samuel the seer, and in the Chronicles of Nathan the prophet, and in the Chronicles of Gad the seer. (1 Chron. 29:29)
• Now the rest of the acts of Jehoshaphat, from first to last, are written in the chronicles of Jehu the son of Hanani, which are recorded in the Book of the Kings of Israel. (2 Chron. 20:34)
• Now the rest of the acts of Uzziah, from first to last, Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz wrote. (2 Chron. 26:22)
• Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Write in a book all the words that I have spoken to you. (Jer. 30:2)

            The content of the Old Testament canon continued to grow until the time of the time of Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi—after the Persians liberated Israel from Babylonian exile and allowed them to return to their homeland. After this, the Old Testament canon closed and there were no more books of divinely inspired Scripture written for 400 years, until the coming of Jesus Christ and the dawning of the New Testament era. 

            We can be confident that we have the correct books in the Old Testament canon because Jesus and the New Testament authors quote various parts of the divinely inspired Old Testament Scriptures almost 300 times, but not once do they quote from any of the books from the collection called the Apocrypha. (Grudem 54-57) 

            The Apocrypha is a collection of 14 books that were written during the 400-year period between the closing of the Old Testament canon and the opening of the New Testament canon. This is one of the areas where the Roman Catholics and Protestants disagree. The Catholic Church considers these books as part of the Old Testament canon, while the Protestant Church rejects them as inspired Scripture. 

            I don’t have time in this sermon to fully explain why the Protestant church rejects these books but let me highlight a few reasons. First, none of these books claim the same kind of authority as the Old Testament books. Second, we don’t know who authored many of the apocryphal books, so their prophetic authority is dubious. Third, even the Roman Catholic church didn’t recognize these books as canonical until the Council of Trent in A.D. 1546. Fourth, and most important, these books contain passages that support doctrines that contradict the rest of the Bible. For instance, these books promote purgatory, prayers for the dead, and justification by faith plus good works, not by faith alone. 

            Although St. Jerome, who completed his Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible in A.D. 404, included these books in his canon, he did not consider them to be inspired or on par with the 39 books of the Old Testament. These books are helpful for understanding this era of Israel’s history, but the theological and historical evidence leads us to reject these books from the Old Testament canon. This is why our Bibles contain 39 books in the Old Testament canon.

The New Testament Canon
            The development of the New Testament canon begins with the writings of the apostles. It is primarily the apostles who were given the ability from the Holy Spirit to recall accurately the words of Jesus and write them correctly for future generations. The apostles were seen to claim an authority equal to the Old Testament prophets, and authority to speak the very words of God. They do this to record, interpret, and apply to the lives of believers the great truths about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Here are a few good examples of this:

• I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles. (2 Peter 3:2)
• He [Paul] writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. (2 Peter 3:16)
• Did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people it has reached? If anybody thinks he is a prophet or spiritually gifted, let him acknowledge that what I am writing to you is the Lord’s command. (1 Corinthians 14:36-37)

            In addition to the apostles, there were a few other authors who were closely associated with the apostles whom God inspired to write some of the books in the New Testament. James and Jude were Jesus’ biological brothers and were leaders in the early church. They were obviously eyewitnesses to Jesus’ life and ministry. There was also the two gospel writers Mark and Luke, both of whom assisted the Apostle Paul on his missionary journeys.  

            As the New Testament books circulated with other books at the time, the early church leaders carefully examined the books and were able to recognize the authentic marks of inspiration by the Holy Spirit. Although this process took a few hundred years, by A.D. 367 the early church father Athanasius put forth the list of 27 books that we have in our New Testaments today. Thirsty years later, in A.D. 397, the Council of Carthage codified these 27 books as the authoritative New Testament canon of the Christian church.  C

            Now that we have a better understanding of the canon of Scripture, I hope we will all have even more confidence that the 66 books of the Bible really do constitute the divinely inspired and authoritative Word of God. God has proved his love for us by giving us everything we need for life and godliness in these books! And I know that you have heard me say this hundreds of times, but here it is again! Read and heed the Bible! Don’t neglect one of God’s greatest gifts to us! May all 66 books nurture our souls and give us the guidance we so desperately need for life!