Friends: This week we take a look at the so-called “Jefferson Bible.” Was American founding father Thomas Jefferson trying to re-write Christianity?  Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #971

June 24, 2025

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Declaring Truth, Part 2   

By Bob Walters

“In the first place, there actually is no Jefferson Bible.” David Barton, The Jefferson Lies

For those familiar with the existence of “The Jefferson Bible” – and I have the handsomely bound, red leather modern Smithsonian edition of the volume right here on my desk – this statement of Barton’s on page 103 seemingly contradicts reality.

But at issue are what the title of the work properly is, what Jefferson intended both of them for – he wrote two, actually – and how historical and cultural fashions have paved an uncomplimentary lane for Jefferson’s lasting influence on scriptural matters.

Jefferson twice, in 1804 and again in 1820, spliced together collections of Jesus’s words from the four Gospels. His intent was to boil down, or “abridge,” Jesus’s teachings on moral issues to serve as a primer for “the system of morality [that] was the most benevolent and sublime ever taught.” Jefferson’s focus was morality, not miracles.

Modern American cultural inertia has been pushing away from biblical Christianity for the past century, so it shouldn’t be surprising that the Smithsonian Institution’s curation of an artifact like this particular Jefferson work is framed not in “Christian” terms, per se, but in the language of heretical inference that Jefferson rejected the Bible’s central thrust of human salvation in Jesus Christ.

Jefferson was a scholar of many classic and pagan systems of ethics and morality, and was well immersed in his own modern day Enlightenment philosophical and deistic views that often – but not always – challenged the continuing presence of God. Nonetheless, Barton demonstrates, Jefferson considered the teachings of Jesus superior to all. His abridged “Bibles” focused on philosophy, not Christian dogma.

Barton can say “The Jefferson Bible doesn’t exist” because neither volume Jefferson laboriously clipped and pieced together from actual Bibles were titled as such.  The 43-page, 1804 effort Jefferson titled “The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth: Extracted from the Account of His Life and Doctrines Given by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; Being an Abridgement of the New Testament for the Use of the Indians, Un-embarrassed [Uncomplicated] with Matters of Fact or Faith beyond the Level of their Comprehensions.” He published this while he was the third American president (1801-1809) intended for the use of Indians both for learning to read and to learn about Jesus.

No copies survive, and some think “Indians” is merely code for political enemies.

Later in life, in 1820 (Jefferson died July 4, 1826), Jefferson completed a more thorough, 84-page paste-up titled “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth Extracted Textually from the Gospels in Greek, Latin, French, and English.” This was mainly for his own reference but he had a few copies published to share with family and friends. The book generally disappeared from public view until Jefferson’s eldest grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph sold the family copy to the Smithsonian in 1895. An act of congress in 1905 caused 900 volumes to be printed, which were given as gifts to members of the United States Senate until the supply was depleted in the 1950s.

Various efforts by the Smithsonian over the last 50 years have yielded a clear, digital reproduction of the work, complete with modern commentary denying Jefferson’s Christianity and promoting his deism in an apparent effort to undermine America’s Christian underpinnings. It is a consistent and misleading theme of academic America.

I thank Barton for sharing a much needed understanding of, and nod to, the truth.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) finds the whole discussion, and books, fascinating. It is obvious Jefferson, publicly, anyway, kept his most deep Christian beliefs to himself.