An Edited Bible

 Thomas Jefferson made his own Bible, cut-and-pasted from the original:

Making good on a promise to a friend to summarize his views on Christianity, Thomas Jefferson set to work with scissors, snipping out every miracle and inconsistency he could find in the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Then, relying on a cut-and-paste technique, he reassembled the excerpts into what he believed was a more coherent narrative and pasted them onto blank paper — alongside translations in French, Greek and Latin.

“I have performed the operation for my own use,” he continued, “by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the matter, which is evidently his and which is as easily distinguished as diamonds in a dunghill.”

We maybe should all make our own Bibles, cutting-and-pasting from the wisdom literature of our choice.  Here's a passage from the Leaves of Grass U of Iowa site that connects a well-know Psalm to one of Whitman's core tropes: 

An Iraqi theater director once told me that on a visit to New York City he deliberately bumped into several people on the sidewalk to gauge their reactions. Americans, he concluded, always apologize—an observation that might have amused Whitman, who would likely not have begged forgiveness, and might well have surprised the stranger by embracing him. “O taste and see that the Lord is good,” the Psalmist sings—an imperative that Whitman follows according to his own lights in his psalm of the democratic self, substituting Life for Lord, seeing things in this section through the agency of touch, tasting the world. He does not shy away from anyone.   link