I am an atheist, and have a great respect for the founding fathers. I would love to take this quote at face value that Jefferson was saying the story of Jesus was entirely false, but I fear that would be dishonest. Reading the entire quote makes me believe what he was saying was the miraculous conception part was an unnecessary addition to an already profound story. I would agree that the virgin birth was definitely a tack on, since Jesus was just the next in a long line of "savior" deities to have such a creation attributed to him, but as everything else about Jesus was clearly plagiarized from religions twice as ancient to him as he is to us, I would go further to say that there is no value what so ever in any of the new testiment, other than to show the gullibility of ignorant people.