The Jefferson Bible
2020 marked the 200th anniversary when
Thomas Jefferson published the Jefferson Bible known as “The Life and Morals of
Jesus of Nazareth.” This Bible that
first appeared in 1820 was different from his original attempt in 1804, when he
created a single copy of “The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth.” While in Washington at the White House
Jefferson used a knife or razor cutting up an original Bible to formulate the
latter.
But the 1820 version was formulated in his later
life at the age of seventy-seven by once again revisiting his earlier work, and
using Greek, English, French, and Latin editions of the Bible to accomplish his
second edition. Jefferson was an
original, who wanted to present his own understanding to Scripture. He saw Christ’s teaching as an extraordinary
moral compass provided to mankind. He
reasoned that to return to the original precepts of Jesus’ teaching he had to
remove the superstitions and fabrications of the biblical text.
What therefore evolved was the Jefferson Bible
without the Virgin’s birth, no miracles like Jesus walking on water, multiplication
of loaves and fishes, healing of the leper, the raising of Lazarus from the
dead, nor that of Christ’s resurrection.
What remained in Jefferson’s second text were morals and Jesus’s teachings
- the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount, and the Lord’s Prayer. Jefferson thought the men who had compiled
the Bible were ignorant and illiterate, and he wished to give Scripture its
true perspective. It was however hard to
classify his religious beliefs. Some
thought of him to be a deist, others a Unitarian, evangelical, or even an
agnostic.
In 1957, Frank Church a newly elected senator from
Idaho used the Jefferson Bible to take the oath of office. Senator Church later gave this Bible to his
son Forrest, who later became a prominent Unitarian Universalist minister, and
the editor of an edition of the Jefferson Bible.
No comments:
Post a Comment