DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Thomas Jefferson's Bible:
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- Description of Pictures: Jefferson's Bible: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth
November 11, 2011 – July 15, 2012
In 1820, Thomas Jefferson assembled a private text using excerpts from the Four Gospels of the New Testament in Greek, Latin, French, and English. His aim was to tell a chronological version of Jesus’ life, distilling his moral teachings and excluding those aspects which appeared to him “contrary to reason.” On view is Jefferson’s The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, which was recently conserved, together with two English editions of the New Testament that Jefferson used to clip passages and a copy of the 1904 U.S. Government Printing Office edition of the book. Visitors can explore each page of the bible at a special web kiosk and view short videos about the bible’s history and conservation.
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- Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
- TJBIB_120212_07.JPG: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth,
created by Thomas Jefferson in 1820
- TJBIB_120212_09.JPG: "I am a Christian, in the only sense in which 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
Jefferson's Bible
At seventy-seven years of age, Thomas Jefferson constructed his book by cutting excerpts from six printed volumes published in English, French, Latin and Greek of the Gospels of the New Testament. He arranged them to tell a chronological and edited story of Jesus's life, parables, and moral teaching. Left behind in the source material were those elements that he could not support through reason or that he believed were later embellishments, such as the miracles and the resurrection.
The act of cutting and rearranging passages from the New Testament to create something fresh was an ambitious, even audacious initiative, but not an act of disrespect. Through this distillation Jefferson sought to clarify Jesus's teachings, which he believed provided "the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man."
- TJBIB_120212_13.JPG: Jefferson's Bible
"I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know."
-- Thomas Jefferson, 1819
The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, created by Thomas Jefferson in 1820, is an 84-page assemblage of passages from the first four books of the New Testament. It was the work of Jefferson's own hands and a product of his extraordinary mind. It was a personal exercise in understanding Jesus's moral teachings separated from religious doctrine. The resulting work represented a meeting of Enlightenment thought and Christian tradition as imagined by one of the great thinkers of the Revolutionary Era.
Jefferson made no plans to publish this work; it was solely for his own reading and reflection. He knew that his beliefs would offend some religious authorities and be used against him by his political rivals.
The book remained privately held throughout his life. Its existence was only known to a few of his closest circle of friends. The book remained in his family until his great-granddaughter sold the volume to the Smithsonian Institution in 1895.
Over the years, the book's condition became so fragile that it could no longer be safely handled or displayed. In 2011 the Museum completed a complex and challenging conservation project, which has made it possible to present the newly restored volume to scholars and the general public.
- TJBIB_120212_16.JPG: "No man can conform his faith to the dictates of another. The life and essence of religion consists in the internal persuasion or belief of the mind."
-- Thomas Jefferson, 1776
A Private Endeavor
Jefferson insisted that religious beliefs were purely of personal and private concern. He grew up in a world where political rulers routinely established a single faith as the official orthodoxy. He promoted religious freedom in order to secure the rights of dissenting denominations and to protect individuals who belonged to no sect at all.
In accordance with this view of religion, Jefferson kept silent about his own beliefs in most public writings. When he ran for the presidency, he refused to reply to opponents who attacked him as "anti-Christian" and "an infidel." Yet he did discuss Christianity, the Bible, and moral philosophy with a small circle of friends. From the 1790s he conversed and corresponded with Revolutionary Era colleagues, including Dr. Benjamin Rush and John Adams, and with English scientist and theologian Joseph Priestley. These men shared Jefferson's desire to secure tolerance for religious dissent as well as to forge a moral compass for the new American republic. Out of such conversations emerged the project of extracting Jesus's teachings from the New Testament to create this private volume.
- TJBIB_120212_19.JPG: "Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear."
-- Thomas Jefferson, 1787
A Revolutionary Act
To Jefferson, no tradition was so sacred as to escape reconsideration in the light of new discoveries and the progress of knowledge. Jefferson viewed the gospels through the lens of the Enlightenment, a flowering of scientific experiment and rational enquiry in the 18th century.
Reworking parts of the New Testament was an extension of his revolutionary spirit. Jefferson had challenged the authority of the monarchy, questioned the sovereignty of Parliament, and opposed aristocratic privilege in American society. He had drafted the Declaration of Independence, taken part in revising the laws of Virginia, and helped establish new legal principles and educational institutions. In religion as in politics, he imagined liberating contemporary minds from inherited misconceptions and superstitions.
- TJBIB_120212_22.JPG: Cyrus Adler and the Jefferson Bible
As a young student of Semitic studies at Johns Hopkins University in 1886, Cyrus Adler discovered in a private library two cut-up copies of the New Testament. A curious attached note stated that these were the English volumes used to create Thomas Jefferson's The Life and Morals of Jesus. At the time Adler made an unsuccessful attempt to locate Jefferson's book. Years later, serving as the Smithsonian Institution's librarian and serving as a curator of world religions, Adler renewed his search. In 1895 he located the volume, still in the possession of Jefferson's great-granddaughter, Carolina Randolph, and purchased the book for $400.
- TJBIB_120212_36.JPG: English Source Books
Jefferson literally extracted the passages he wished to include from these two volumes of Jacob Johnson's 1804 imprint of the King James New Testament. In 1920, the Cohen family donated the books, which Adler had located in their relative's library many years before.
- TJBIB_120212_38.JPG: 1904 Edition
In 1904 the Government Printing Office published a facsimile of the Jefferson Bible with an introduction written by Cyrus Adler. The Office distributed 9,000 copies to the two chambers of Congress. In the following years, newly elected senators received a copy of the book until the supply ran out in the 1950s.
- TJBIB_120212_41.JPG: "We must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus... There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man."
-- Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, October 12, 1813
- TJBIB_120212_45.JPG: Conservation
Time and use caused Jefferson's volume to become so fragile that the museum could no longer make it available to researchers or the public. Because the adhesive Jefferson used to glue the clippings caused the paper to become stiff and inflexible, the pages cracked and tore as the book's equally inflexible binding was opened. The goal of the conservation project was to physically and chemically stabilize the book and make it accessible once again.
Jefferson's book presented complex conservation problems. It contains twelve different types of paper, six printing inks, four manuscript inks, two adhesives, linen thread, silk thread and goatskin leather. A team of conservators conducted materials analysis, assessed the benefit versus risk of potential treatment options, and established documentation of the materials' current condition for future comparison.
To repair the artifact, the cover was removed intact. Jefferson's pages were physically stabilized with conservation repair tissue and reversible adhesives. High-resolution digital images were captured to ensure public access. The pages were rebound in the historic cover in a manner sympathetic to the original, but with slight modifications to prevent the same damage from recurring.
In addition to the generous support of our donors, the exhibition and conservation received assistance from several departments across the Institution. They include the National Museum of the American Indian, the Museum Conservation Institute, Smithsonian Institution Archives, and Smithsonian Institution Libraries.
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