Why Rewrote the Bible without Jesus' and

ERIN BLAKEMORE 8/1/19

Our third president had a secret: his carefully edited version of the .

Thomas Jefferson, in his years as an ex-president, would spend time bent over his Bible---using a razor and scissors to carefully cut out small squares of text---and soon, those squares of text would live in their own book, hand bound in red leather, and ready to be read in his private moments. Each cut of a page had a purpose, and each word was carefully considered. And as he worked, Thomas Jefferson pasted his selections—each in a variety of ancient and modern languages that reflected his vast learning—into the book in neat columns.

Thomas Jefferson, of course, was an inventor and tinkerer. And he was tinkering this time with something held sacred by hundreds of millions of people: the Bible.

Using his clippings, our third president created a New Testament of his own—one that most Christians would hardly recognize. This Bible was focused only on Jesus….but none of his miracles….and it didn’t include major events like the resurrection or Jesus’ ascension into ….or his miracles like turning water into wine, or walking on water. Instead, Jefferson’s Bible focused on Jesus as a man of morals, a teacher whose truths were expressed without the help of miracles or the powers of God.

He made this Bible for his private use, and it was kept secret for decades. This 84-page Bible was the work of a man who spent much of his life grappling with, and doubting, religion.

It was prepared near the end of the ex-president’s life….and the “Jefferson Bible”, as it is now known….included no signs of Jesus’s divine nature. In two volumes, “The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth”…. and “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth”, Jefferson edited out biblical passages that he considered over-the-top or that offended his Enlightenment- era sense of reason. And what he left behind was his own carefully condensed vision of the Bible—one that says a lot about his own complex relationship with Christianity.

The book was kept private for a few reasons. Jefferson himself believed that a person’s religion was between them and their god. He wrote in 1813: “Religion is a matter between every man and his maker, in which no other, & far less the public, [has] a right to intermeddle.”

But there was another reason for Jefferson to keep his revised Bible private. In the early 19th century, taking a knife to the Bible was an extremely radical thing to do. If the book had been known about---argues Mitch Horowitz---who edited a re-issue of Jefferson’s book, “it likely would have become one of the most controversial and influential religious works of early American history.”

Jefferson’s editorial work happened in a United States that was deeply rooted in state-sponsored religion….and although many emigrants had come to America to get away from religious persecution….laws about religious practice were part of pre-Revolutionary life….and even after the founding of the United States and the ratification of the First Amendment- --which guarantees freedom of religion…. states used public funds to pay churches, and also passed laws upholding various tenets of Christianity for over a century after the passage of the Bill of Rights. Massachusetts, for example, didn’t do away with its official state religion, Congregationalism, until 1833.

Jefferson was a believer in rational thought and self-determination….and had long spoken out against such laws, while keeping his own views on religion fiercely private. During his political career, Jefferson’s religious views drew fire from his fellow colonists and citizens. The Federalists charged him with atheism and rebellion against Christianity during the vicious 1800 election.

Jefferson continued to wrestle with his own views on Christianity after his presidential term ended. His personal letters often dealt with religion and religious freedom….and in 1820, when he was 77 years old….he began literally “cutting out” the portions of the New Testament that he found unnecessary.

“Even with his edits, Jefferson managed to maintain Jesus’ role as a great moral teacher, but not a miraculous healer. And he didn’t intend for the Bible to be read by others. He created it for himself.

During Jefferson’s life, few people knew about his revised Bible, which he willed to Martha Randolph, his eldest daughter. But in the 1880s, a Johns Hopkins University student, Cyrus Adler, found the cut-up books---the source of the clippings of text---in a private library….and when he learned they were Jefferson’s, he started searching for the book that they became.

In 1895, Adler finally got access to Jefferson’s Bible. By that time, the first volume, The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth, was lost. But Jefferson’s great-granddaughter agreed to sell the second volume, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, to the Smithsonian.

Now the world knew about Jefferson’s private Bible, and from 1904 to the 1950s, incoming Senators received their own copy of the Bible….but that practice ended once the government-sponsored printing ran out….but in the 1990s, economist Judd W. Patton revived the tradition, and began mailing it to each member of Congress. And today…. Jefferson’s secret Bible is held by the Smithsonian, and they’ve digitized it for anyone to read.