Jefferson Bible

The so-called Jefferson Bible ( Jefferson Bible ), The Life and Morals originally of Jesus of Nazareth, is a book written by Thomas Jefferson, which is the life story and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It consists of excerpts from the New Testament that Jefferson rearranged, which he left out all the passages that tell of supernatural phenomena or in his opinion, historical errors contained. The original edition of Jefferson created by cutting single verses from multiple Bible in Greek, Latin, French and English and rearranged. This was Jefferson, even if the work was not published during his lifetime at an early representative of the historical Jesus research.

Structure and content

Jefferson divided the four Gospels and mixed them by bringing the events in a chronological order and combined into a single narrative, which he divided based on the structure of the Bible in 17 chapters, each with numbered verses. His version begins with the birth of Jesus according to Luke 2:1-7 SLT and ends with a combination of Jn 19 SLT ​​and SLT Mt 27,60, the description of his funeral and the closing of the grave.

The resurrection is not part of the report. Nor is taken in Jefferson's version on miracles, prophecies or pronouncements by Angel reference. However, the concepts of heaven and hell play a role, and some described in the Old Testament events such as the Flood are mentioned as time information. The references to God remained, but not the references to the Trinity, and Jesus is not well characterized as divine, or known as the Son of God.

Creation and publication history

A first version created Jefferson 1804. Through its work on it, he reported in his letters to his friends, including Benjamin Rush and John Adams. He named the book The Philosophy of Jesus. In a letter to Charles Thompson on January 8, 1816, he described it as the most beautiful piece ethics that he had ever seen, and a proof that he was a true Christian who follow the pure doctrine of Christ. This doctrine must - as he wrote some years later - are filtered out of the extravagant descriptions of his biographers, where many claims were added over time, which could not be justified by the fact traditional words of the historical Jesus of Nazareth. In line with the philosophy of the Enlightenment distant Jefferson all reports about events that he did not think rationally explicable, and tried to the historical person of Jesus to get to the bottom.

Between 1819 and 1820 put Jefferson at his home in Monticello its final version of the book together by six different copies of the Bible - Two Greek-Latin, two French and two English in the King James version - with a razor the selected passages clipping and pasted into a blank book. He gave her the title The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.

The note "for the use of the Indians" on the title page of the first, later rejected the draft was the occasion for the occasionally held view, Jefferson 've compiled the Bible verses for the evangelization of the Indians. From other sources, however, it appears that Jefferson had provided the book for his personal use and planned to share with his closest friends. Jefferson never tried to publish the book, on the one hand because he was of the opinion that his religious beliefs his private affairs were, on the other, as he had feared most, that his unorthodox use of the Bible would be used by his political opponents against him.

Cyrus Adler, who was from 1892 to 1909 librarian of the Smithsonian Institution, was told by a biographer of Jefferson from the book, which was at that time owned by Jefferson's granddaughter Carolina Randolph. 1895 bought the Smithsonian Institution, the " Jefferson Bible " for their library, where it is kept since then, and the two English versions of the Bible, which Jefferson had used.

1902 was decided by the Congress of the United States to be produced 9,000 lithographs of the " Jefferson Bible" which were handed despite complaints from Christian institutions in the years to all new members of Congress as a welcome gift.

2009 started a project for the restoration and preservation of the book, in cooperation with the National Museum of American History. The pages were released from their bond, stabilized and re- bound. This is because all pages have been digitized to make them accessible to the public. The restored edition was presented in May 2012 in an exhibition. Meanwhile, several print editions of the " Jefferson Bible" have been published; the text is also available in the public domain in the internet.

Expenditure ( selection)

• The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. Extracted Textually from the Gospels in Greek, Latin, French, and English by Thomas Jefferson. Washington, G.P.O. 1904 ( with an introduction by Cyrus Adler ).
• The Jefferson Bible. The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. Beacon Press 2001, ISBN 0-8070-7714-3 ( with an introduction by Forrest Church).
• The Jefferson Bible, Smithsonian Edition. The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. Smithsonian Books 2011, ISBN 978-1-58834-312-3.