The Guardian reports on a fascinating story from across the Atlantic, where an imprint of Penguin USA has reprinted Thomas Jefferson’s Bible.
The book is a based on a copy of the Gospels kept by the third President of the United States between 1803 and 1820, from which he expunged those passages which he could not accept. It would appear, at first glance, that Jefferson placed moral philosophy above the miraculous. He called the book ‘The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth’, and redacted the supernatural elements of Christ’s life from his volume. Gone are the virgin birth, the resurrection and the ascension. This choice might suggest that Jefferson’s rationalism could not accommodate the Holy Spirit; but, equally, the suppression of the divine serves to emphasise Christ’s very humanity — the Word made flesh, as it were, which is of vital theological importance to Christianity.
Jefferson famously helped to found God’s Own Country, only to separate church from state in the constitution. That consideration owes more to notions of freedom of conscience than it does to fundamental distrust of religion. ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’ is unequivocal in that regard. The right to believe in Christ but not the virgin birth might fall into one of those three categories — even if the notion left the believer as a sect alone, as Jefferson once described his beliefs.
Jefferson referred to himself in his correspondence as a ‘real Christian’ (which is not necessarily the same as what we might regard as a ‘literal Christian’). The view that a highly personalised Bible is proof of profound scepticism on Jefferson’s part is just airy speculation in such uncertain territory.
For those who visit Washington in the next few months, the original Jefferson Bible is being exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution.
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