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 he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; and believing he never claimed any other.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1803
WITH THESE WORDS, WRITTEN TO A PERsonal friend, America’s third president and the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, began one of the most extraordinary religious experiments in the nation’s history-one that intermittently occupied his energies, including his term in the White House, for the next seventeen years.
His experiment was this: Jefferson collected several copies of English, French, Greek, and Latin editions of Scripture and literally cut-and-pasted the moral philosophy of Jesus Christ, as recorded in the gospels, into one compact statement. He purposefully omitted any references to the virgin birth, miraculous healings, demonic possession, resurrection of the dead (including of Jesus himself), and supernatural events of any kind. Jefferson’s aim was to distinguish the philosophy of Christ from the religion that was later created around Christ.
“In extracting the pure principles which he taught,” Jefferson wrote in 1813, “we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms, as riches and power to themselves.”
Jefferson believed that he had framed the ideas and precepts that genuinely belongedto Jesus himself-and which, as compared with other portions of Scriptur, were as “easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dung-hill.” So radical was his reckoning of Christ’s philosophy that Jefferson made no attempt to have it published during his lifetime, and circulated it only among trusted friends.
Jefferson’s project, composed of select columns of passages from the gospels, did not see publication until 1895, when his original pages were made available by the National Museum in Washington. The book soon became colloquially known as “The Jefferson Bible.” It was a term Jefferson himself had never used-he called his “little book” The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. In 1902, the book was reset and issued by a Chicago press, and two years later it was published by Congress-and for several years thereafter was presented as a gift to every new legislator.
This Tarcher/Penguin hardcover replica edition of The Jefferson Bible restores to print a beautiful, immensely readable version of Jefferson’s manifesto, as it was publishedfor general readers in 1940 by publisher Wilfred Funk, and reissued ten years later by Grosset Dunlap. This rediscovery volume includes the original 1940 foreword by editor Douglas E. Lurton, which provides a greatly engaging introduction to the history behind Jefferson’s effort. Jefferson’s selections appear here as they were re-composited in 1940 in an immensely readable style, presented with compactness and clarity. This volume represents a distinctly accessible edition of a religious and moral classic, one that every thoughtful seeker should read.