SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN HISTORY/CREATIVE COMMONS ZERO (CC0)
Which U.S. President created his own version of the New Testament Gospels?
Answer: Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) was known for many things—politics, philosophy, even archaeology—but one thing he shied away from was religion. The Founding Father and third U.S. President rarely spoke publicaly about his religious beliefs for fear they would become fodder for rivals and the press.
Thankfully, Jefferson’s personal writings were passed down by his family, and many of his thoughts on religion have been preserved in memoirs. One of the more unique expressions of his religious ideas was his book The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, written after Jefferson had retired from public life. Also known as the “Jefferson Bible,” it is essentially an 84-page redacted version of the New Testament Gospels. He painstakingly used a penknife and glue to cut out sections of the Gospels in English, French, Latin and Greek, and then pasted them back together, creating his own version of the sacred text.
Not believing in the divinity of Jesus but holding him up as a paragon of moral teaching, Jefferson removed all miracles, supernatural elements, and repeated stories from the text to create a chronological biography of Jesus’s life, words, and deeds. He never intended his work to be widely read, however; in his will, he left the text to his daughter Martha. Years later, in 1895, Jefferson’s great granddaughter sold it to Smithsonian librarian Cyrus Adler. Nine years after that, Congress decreed the text be published and made available to the American people.
Today, the Jefferson Bible is in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History but is currently not on view. A published version of Jefferson’s work, however, can be purchased or viewed online, or obtained from many libraries.
Which U.S. President created his own version of the New Testament Gospels? Answer: Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) was known for many things—politics, philosophy, even archaeology—but one thing he shied away from was religion. The Founding Father and third U.S. President rarely spoke publicaly about his religious beliefs for fear they would become fodder for rivals and the press. Thankfully, Jefferson’s personal writings were passed down by his family, and many of his thoughts on religion have been preserved in memoirs. One of the more unique expressions of his religious ideas was his book The Life and Morals of Jesus […]
