February 16, 2009 • 12 mins
Thomas Jefferson, one of America's founding fathers, was a very unorthodox thinker. His revision of the Bible was one of his most controversial projects -- tune into this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn why.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined by staff writer Jane mcgraf
either gambs. Hey, Jane, we have got another Thomas Jefferson
(00:21):
topic for all of you today, and not just because
I love him. I know a lot of you out
there are very passionate about Jefferson. You've got a lot
to say, You've got a lot to weigh in on
about Jefferson and the ways that we've portrayed him. And
today we're going to talk about something that is pretty controversial,
but hopefully it will invite lots of feedback from you
guys and not as many corrections because we have researched
(00:44):
this one into the ground. That's right, and it's a
really interesting aspect of Jefferson. One thing that you might
not know about him is that he really championed the
idea of separation of church and state, and the idea
really came from him. Some people think this idea came
from the Constitution itself. The Constitution, of course, says you
shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or
(01:06):
prohibiting the free exercise thereof. But the idea of separation
of church and say, actually comes from a letter that
Jefferson wrote. This makes sense with his character and what
he thought about religion and how religion shouldn't be dictated
by traditional churches or by anyone. Really, he thought that
religion was between a man and his God, and that's
it right. He thought it was very personal, and he
(01:27):
also conceived a religion in a very rational way. And
scholars don't there for certain whether Jefferson was a deist
or not, but if we look at some of his
works and his thoughts, we can see a little bit
of the influence of deist philosophy. And just to recap
that for those of you who may not be familiar
with deism or you may need a refresher. Basically, it's
(01:50):
the idea that we only need rational thought, not faith
to understand God and religion. And deists the the term
sort of classifies a broad range of people in the
ways that they identify themselves. It could be everyone from
um an atheist to a Christian rationalist. And I got
(02:11):
a lot of great information about Dealism from the Dictionary
of the History of Ideas, And ironically enough, this came
from the University of Virginia. And we know, of course
Jefferson founded University of Virginia, So make of that what
you will. But Deists put morality above any other sort
of human action, and morality and behaving in an ethical
(02:34):
and responsible way is first and foremost not believing in
religion or miracles. And furthermore, uh Deists believe that the
world is ordered by God. And if you've heard of
the Great Clockmaker or Great Watchmaker theory, the idea is
that there's a divine being, a God who put the
(02:56):
universe in order, gave it all of its parts, all
of its gears, and said into motion, and then left
it to operate on its own. And so what's interesting
about Jefferson is that we know for a fact he
was an Enlightenment thinker, and a big part of the
Enlightenment were the scientific discoveries that great men of the
time we're making. If we look at Isaac Newton's discoveries
(03:19):
and laws of gravity and laws of motion, it's sort
of hearkens back to this idea of of the watchmaker.
Once you have the tools and the gears that can
operate independently on their own, do you really need someone
to keep guiding them, so the universe could be a
self sustaining place. And what deists would argue is that
you can understand the world by thinking about it in
(03:42):
these parts and not necessarily the person who created it.
So pretty interesting, Huh, that is really interesting, and it
makes a lot of sense with what Jefferson believed. And obviously,
if you're a deist still like Candas describe a clockmaker God, um,
but you believe in that, um, you don't think that
God sent his sundown into the earth to to you know,
heal the sick and cure the blind and etcetera. He
(04:05):
wouldn't have done that. He he doesn't meddle at all
in human affairs, obviously as a clockmaker God. And so
Jefferson sort of rejected all of this orthodox belief of
Jesus being the son of God. He did actually think
that Jesus was a pretty fascinating figure, and he thought
that whoever said these things, the beatitudes, uh, these certain parables,
(04:29):
he thought that whoever said this must have been an
amazing philosopher. And we're talking up there with Aristotle and
Socrates and Plato, and Jefferson really respected it. What he
didn't what he didn't respect, were the evangelists, and these
are basically the gospel writers who we call Matthew, Mark, Luke,
and John. He thought that these men were particularly unqualified
(04:51):
for for writing down jesus life. He thought they were
unlettered men. They were just you know, not educated. Maybe
they forgot a lot of stuff about what they heard
Jesus said. Um. And also he thought that perhaps these
guys actually intentionally invented certain things about jesus life, like
miracles in particular, and the idea of the virgin birth
(05:12):
and the idea of the resurrection in particular, because these
things all all are at the core of what Christians
think make Jesus the son of God. Almost like propaganda
trying to get people to ascribe to this religion, that's right.
And he rejected what he thought was propaganda. And Jefferson,
as we know it was very well read and very
(05:33):
well versed, spoke many languages, read and wrote in them too,
and so we know, you know, it wouldn't have been
unusual for him not to hold men like the apostles
and high esteem. And the thing about Jesus said Jefferson
respected the most was his morality, and he actually said
that jesus morality was more perfect direct quote than any
(05:54):
other philosopher that he'd read, and again drawing out their
parallel between deism and and Jefferson and his religious beliefs,
is that, above all, if there is a creator who
put this universe in order and created morality is like
the highest level of being, then that creator must also
be a rational thinker too, So by thinking rationally you
(06:17):
can understand him. So you can imagine that when Jefferson
sat down with the Bible, when he would have read
the miracles like the Last Supper with the Eucharist and
the Resurrection and the virgin birth, these things didn't exactly
correspond with his rational way of conceiving religion, that's right,
And so he had this idea in his mind that
he wanted to basically rewrite the Bible. It's kind of
(06:40):
inaccurate to say that, though, because he didn't want to
change anything that was the that the evangelist said that
Jesus said. He just sort of want to cut out
parts that he didn't think that that Jesus would have said,
and keep in the parts that he thought were very
inspired and very brilliant things to say. So what he
did was literally a cut and pace job, and he
(07:00):
got a couple of Bibles, and he he had to
take two because obviously you need the both sides of
a page sometimes, and he actually literally cut out the
verses that he felt re legitimate and genuine and he
would then pace those in order into a blank book
to this day has been known as the Jefferson Bible.
And what it's actually called for jefferson title that originally
(07:21):
was um The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth, and then
over time he changed that title to The Life and
Morals again Morality of Jesus of Nazareth and all. I
think he included about nine verses from the Bible, and
he later translated it into Greek, Latin, and French. And
to put this in context with other things that would
(07:43):
have been going on in Jefferson's life. He started the
project in the winter of eighteen sixteen, and we know
he held his presidential terms from eighteen o one to
eighteen o nine, so he would have been retired from
the presidency, but as we know from earlier podcasts about Jefferson,
he was still very much involved in politics and people
still look to him as a man of great wisdom
(08:05):
who would have guided them and influenced them. And that's
why he purposefully didn't publicize the Jefferson Bible. It's interesting
and even though he cut out a lot of things
about what they say Jesus did, he put together what
comes out to be still a narrative. And you follow
Jesus from when he's born. Of course they don't mention
the virgin birth, but when he's born, and you know
(08:27):
when the story of when he was a boy, and
Mary and Joseph lose him for a while and find
him in the temple, and and things like this, and
it comes up to he is crucifixion, of course, leaving
off before the resurrection, but in between he leaves out
certain parable certain things of course the miracles and uh,
the he has the less Supper, but he leaves out
(08:48):
the part of this is my body and this is
my blood, which Catholics of course take take literally and
they uses the Eucharius in their mass, and of course
Jefferson wouldn't have agreed with that. But things that he
leaves in or really interesting as well, such as the
be attitude, and this tells us a lot of things
about what Jefferson believed as a faith because he was
obviously he did believe in God, and the idea that
(09:10):
he would leave in the be attitude shows that he
believed in an afterlife, which is really interesting, right, And
so the Jefferson Bible is more than the debate today
where some Christians interpret the Bible as a literal text
and sound like to interpret it to apply to a
more modern lifestyle. He really did come through it with
(09:30):
a very discerning eye, and he kept these very uh
astute morals and philosophies that he thought people should live
their lives by. But he knew that what he was
doing was radical. And so you may be wondering, if
what he did was so radical and so incredibly private
as Jefferson oftentimes was, how do we know about the
Jefferson Bible today? And back in Smithsonian librarian named Sears
(09:57):
Adler found a collection of the documents, and he found
evidence of the Bible verses and the cotton paste job,
and he put it together. In by four the Jefferson
Bible was put on display in the United States National Museum.
That's right, and the Congress was able to buy the
rights back. Uh, and now today it's in the public domain,
so you can find it basically in bookstores and museums
(10:19):
and libraries, and uh, you can fund it online even
and there's some really helpful sites out there that actually
um lay out the parts that not only that Jefferson included,
but the parts that he left out as well, which
is uh, which is just as um insightful I think
about about Jefferson's life. So really it's not just a
philosophy text, but it's a tool for historians to study
(10:39):
Thomas Jefferson by That's right. And Uh, like you said,
Jefferson was often very secretive. There's this theory that came
about that he actually wrote the book in order to
help educate American Indians. Some sources say that this might
may have been sort of a planned cover up, Like
if if the press really got a hold of of
the Bible that he was working on, and they and
if they gotten sensed they or you atheists, what are
(11:00):
you writing here? He could have said, Oh, I'm just
writing it for the American Indians. It doesn't reflect what
I believe in his private writings. He really did did
he really did? Um specify that he wrote it for
his own purpose, so he could study it himself, and
I think in his lifetime he may have, in fact
shared copies of it with close friends. And today it's
(11:20):
actually a custom for recently sworn in members of Congress
to receive copies of the Jefferson Bible. So that's a
fun fact. And speaking of swearing in bibles, we have
another interesting fact for the rest of you. So as
far as other swearing in texts that are important in
our nation's past, you may have seen in the news
pretty recently that Barack Obama requested to be sworn in
(11:44):
with the Lincoln Bible and some other texts that were
used not too long ago. Bill Clinton actually used a
family Bible both times that he was sworn in, and
George Bush Senior used the Washington Bible. And George W.
Bush used the Washington Bible once like his dad and
wanted to use it again. But the second time there
(12:04):
were some pretty bad weather and people were worried about
damage that might be incurred by the very ancient book,
well not very ancient, that's not accurate by the esteemed
an old book. So he used a family libel dot time.
Very interesting, yes, indeed, so for even more information on
our nation's presidents and maybe even a few of their secrets.
(12:25):
Be sure to visit how stuff works dot com, and,
as always, if you have suggestions for future shows or
any feedback for us, email us at History podcast at
how stuff works dot com. For more on this and
thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined by staff writer Jane mcgraf
either gambs. Hey, Jane, we have got another Thomas Jefferson
(00:21):
topic for all of you today, and not just because
I love him. I know a lot of you out
there are very passionate about Jefferson. You've got a lot
to say, You've got a lot to weigh in on
about Jefferson and the ways that we've portrayed him. And
today we're going to talk about something that is pretty controversial,
but hopefully it will invite lots of feedback from you
guys and not as many corrections because we have researched
(00:44):
this one into the ground. That's right, and it's a
really interesting aspect of Jefferson. One thing that you might
not know about him is that he really championed the
idea of separation of church and state, and the idea
really came from him. Some people think this idea came
from the Constitution itself. The Constitution, of course, says you
shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or
(01:06):
prohibiting the free exercise thereof. But the idea of separation
of church and say, actually comes from a letter that
Jefferson wrote. This makes sense with his character and what
he thought about religion and how religion shouldn't be dictated
by traditional churches or by anyone. Really, he thought that
religion was between a man and his God, and that's
it right. He thought it was very personal, and he
(01:27):
also conceived a religion in a very rational way. And
scholars don't there for certain whether Jefferson was a deist
or not, but if we look at some of his
works and his thoughts, we can see a little bit
of the influence of deist philosophy. And just to recap
that for those of you who may not be familiar
with deism or you may need a refresher. Basically, it's
(01:50):
the idea that we only need rational thought, not faith
to understand God and religion. And deists the the term
sort of classifies a broad range of people in the
ways that they identify themselves. It could be everyone from
um an atheist to a Christian rationalist. And I got
(02:11):
a lot of great information about Dealism from the Dictionary
of the History of Ideas, And ironically enough, this came
from the University of Virginia. And we know, of course
Jefferson founded University of Virginia, So make of that what
you will. But Deists put morality above any other sort
of human action, and morality and behaving in an ethical
(02:34):
and responsible way is first and foremost not believing in
religion or miracles. And furthermore, uh Deists believe that the
world is ordered by God. And if you've heard of
the Great Clockmaker or Great Watchmaker theory, the idea is
that there's a divine being, a God who put the
(02:56):
universe in order, gave it all of its parts, all
of its gears, and said into motion, and then left
it to operate on its own. And so what's interesting
about Jefferson is that we know for a fact he
was an Enlightenment thinker, and a big part of the
Enlightenment were the scientific discoveries that great men of the
time we're making. If we look at Isaac Newton's discoveries
(03:19):
and laws of gravity and laws of motion, it's sort
of hearkens back to this idea of of the watchmaker.
Once you have the tools and the gears that can
operate independently on their own, do you really need someone
to keep guiding them, so the universe could be a
self sustaining place. And what deists would argue is that
you can understand the world by thinking about it in
(03:42):
these parts and not necessarily the person who created it.
So pretty interesting, Huh, that is really interesting, and it
makes a lot of sense with what Jefferson believed. And obviously,
if you're a deist still like Candas describe a clockmaker God, um,
but you believe in that, um, you don't think that
God sent his sundown into the earth to to you know,
heal the sick and cure the blind and etcetera. He
(04:05):
wouldn't have done that. He he doesn't meddle at all
in human affairs, obviously as a clockmaker God. And so
Jefferson sort of rejected all of this orthodox belief of
Jesus being the son of God. He did actually think
that Jesus was a pretty fascinating figure, and he thought
that whoever said these things, the beatitudes, uh, these certain parables,
(04:29):
he thought that whoever said this must have been an
amazing philosopher. And we're talking up there with Aristotle and
Socrates and Plato, and Jefferson really respected it. What he
didn't what he didn't respect, were the evangelists, and these
are basically the gospel writers who we call Matthew, Mark, Luke,
and John. He thought that these men were particularly unqualified
(04:51):
for for writing down jesus life. He thought they were
unlettered men. They were just you know, not educated. Maybe
they forgot a lot of stuff about what they heard
Jesus said. Um. And also he thought that perhaps these
guys actually intentionally invented certain things about jesus life, like
miracles in particular, and the idea of the virgin birth
(05:12):
and the idea of the resurrection in particular, because these
things all all are at the core of what Christians
think make Jesus the son of God. Almost like propaganda
trying to get people to ascribe to this religion, that's right.
And he rejected what he thought was propaganda. And Jefferson,
as we know it was very well read and very
(05:33):
well versed, spoke many languages, read and wrote in them too,
and so we know, you know, it wouldn't have been
unusual for him not to hold men like the apostles
and high esteem. And the thing about Jesus said Jefferson
respected the most was his morality, and he actually said
that jesus morality was more perfect direct quote than any
(05:54):
other philosopher that he'd read, and again drawing out their
parallel between deism and and Jefferson and his religious beliefs,
is that, above all, if there is a creator who
put this universe in order and created morality is like
the highest level of being, then that creator must also
be a rational thinker too, So by thinking rationally you
(06:17):
can understand him. So you can imagine that when Jefferson
sat down with the Bible, when he would have read
the miracles like the Last Supper with the Eucharist and
the Resurrection and the virgin birth, these things didn't exactly
correspond with his rational way of conceiving religion, that's right,
And so he had this idea in his mind that
he wanted to basically rewrite the Bible. It's kind of
(06:40):
inaccurate to say that, though, because he didn't want to
change anything that was the that the evangelist said that
Jesus said. He just sort of want to cut out
parts that he didn't think that that Jesus would have said,
and keep in the parts that he thought were very
inspired and very brilliant things to say. So what he
did was literally a cut and pace job, and he
(07:00):
got a couple of Bibles, and he he had to
take two because obviously you need the both sides of
a page sometimes, and he actually literally cut out the
verses that he felt re legitimate and genuine and he
would then pace those in order into a blank book
to this day has been known as the Jefferson Bible.
And what it's actually called for jefferson title that originally
(07:21):
was um The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth, and then
over time he changed that title to The Life and
Morals again Morality of Jesus of Nazareth and all. I
think he included about nine verses from the Bible, and
he later translated it into Greek, Latin, and French. And
to put this in context with other things that would
(07:43):
have been going on in Jefferson's life. He started the
project in the winter of eighteen sixteen, and we know
he held his presidential terms from eighteen o one to
eighteen o nine, so he would have been retired from
the presidency, but as we know from earlier podcasts about Jefferson,
he was still very much involved in politics and people
still look to him as a man of great wisdom
(08:05):
who would have guided them and influenced them. And that's
why he purposefully didn't publicize the Jefferson Bible. It's interesting
and even though he cut out a lot of things
about what they say Jesus did, he put together what
comes out to be still a narrative. And you follow
Jesus from when he's born. Of course they don't mention
the virgin birth, but when he's born, and you know
(08:27):
when the story of when he was a boy, and
Mary and Joseph lose him for a while and find
him in the temple, and and things like this, and
it comes up to he is crucifixion, of course, leaving
off before the resurrection, but in between he leaves out
certain parable certain things of course the miracles and uh,
the he has the less Supper, but he leaves out
(08:48):
the part of this is my body and this is
my blood, which Catholics of course take take literally and
they uses the Eucharius in their mass, and of course
Jefferson wouldn't have agreed with that. But things that he
leaves in or really interesting as well, such as the
be attitude, and this tells us a lot of things
about what Jefferson believed as a faith because he was
obviously he did believe in God, and the idea that
(09:10):
he would leave in the be attitude shows that he
believed in an afterlife, which is really interesting, right, And
so the Jefferson Bible is more than the debate today
where some Christians interpret the Bible as a literal text
and sound like to interpret it to apply to a
more modern lifestyle. He really did come through it with
(09:30):
a very discerning eye, and he kept these very uh
astute morals and philosophies that he thought people should live
their lives by. But he knew that what he was
doing was radical. And so you may be wondering, if
what he did was so radical and so incredibly private
as Jefferson oftentimes was, how do we know about the
Jefferson Bible today? And back in Smithsonian librarian named Sears
(09:57):
Adler found a collection of the documents, and he found
evidence of the Bible verses and the cotton paste job,
and he put it together. In by four the Jefferson
Bible was put on display in the United States National Museum.
That's right, and the Congress was able to buy the
rights back. Uh, and now today it's in the public domain,
so you can find it basically in bookstores and museums
(10:19):
and libraries, and uh, you can fund it online even
and there's some really helpful sites out there that actually
um lay out the parts that not only that Jefferson included,
but the parts that he left out as well, which
is uh, which is just as um insightful I think
about about Jefferson's life. So really it's not just a
philosophy text, but it's a tool for historians to study
(10:39):
Thomas Jefferson by That's right. And Uh, like you said,
Jefferson was often very secretive. There's this theory that came
about that he actually wrote the book in order to
help educate American Indians. Some sources say that this might
may have been sort of a planned cover up, Like
if if the press really got a hold of of
the Bible that he was working on, and they and
if they gotten sensed they or you atheists, what are
(11:00):
you writing here? He could have said, Oh, I'm just
writing it for the American Indians. It doesn't reflect what
I believe in his private writings. He really did did
he really did? Um specify that he wrote it for
his own purpose, so he could study it himself, and
I think in his lifetime he may have, in fact
shared copies of it with close friends. And today it's
(11:20):
actually a custom for recently sworn in members of Congress
to receive copies of the Jefferson Bible. So that's a
fun fact. And speaking of swearing in bibles, we have
another interesting fact for the rest of you. So as
far as other swearing in texts that are important in
our nation's past, you may have seen in the news
pretty recently that Barack Obama requested to be sworn in
(11:44):
with the Lincoln Bible and some other texts that were
used not too long ago. Bill Clinton actually used a
family Bible both times that he was sworn in, and
George Bush Senior used the Washington Bible. And George W.
Bush used the Washington Bible once like his dad and
wanted to use it again. But the second time there
(12:04):
were some pretty bad weather and people were worried about
damage that might be incurred by the very ancient book,
well not very ancient, that's not accurate by the esteemed
an old book. So he used a family libel dot time.
Very interesting, yes, indeed, so for even more information on
our nation's presidents and maybe even a few of their secrets.
(12:25):
Be sure to visit how stuff works dot com, and,
as always, if you have suggestions for future shows or
any feedback for us, email us at History podcast at
how stuff works dot com. For more on this and
thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
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