What would Jesus have cut? Part Two

In last week’s column I introduced you to the so-called “Jefferson Bible,” to the “cut-and-paste” Bible, to The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, to Thomas Jefferson’s 86-pages-long filtering of what he took to be the most salutary, the most believable passages from the four Gospels of Luke, Mark, Matthew and John.

Jefferson having revealed its existence virtually on his deathbed in 1826, how...