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JEFFERSON ON THE BOOK OF REVELATION
>Eyler, Thanks for the last note. What was Jefferson's perspective on "The >Second Coming?" On the Second Coming specifically, I'm not sure. But on the Book Of Revelation (which embraces that and other similar doctrines), this is what Jefferson wrote: "It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it, and I then considered it as merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams... I cannot so far respect [the extravagances of the composition] as to consider them as an allegorical narrative of events, past or subsequent. There is not coherence enough in them to countenance any suite of rational ideas... What has no meaning admits no explanation... I do not consider them as revelations of the Supreme being, whom I would not so far blaspheme as to impute to Him a pretension of revelation, couched at the same time in terms which, He would know, were never to be understood by those to whom they were addressed." --Thomas Jefferson to Alexander Smyth, 1825. ME 16:100 [The ellipses omit portions related to a specific book manuscript Smyth sent to TJ.] Based on that, he probably didn't think much of the idea. He thought *very* highly of the moral teachings of Jesus, but compared picking those out of the remainder of the Gospel teachings to "picking diamonds out of a dung hill." Best wishes, Eyler