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INTENT AND INITIAL ATTEMPT Prior to the "Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth," Jefferson had made an earlier abstraction of the words of Jesus entitled "The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth," the purpose of which he mentions in a letter to John Adams dated 13 October, 1813: "In extracting the pure principles which he taught, we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms, as instruments of riches and power to themselves. We must dismiss the Platonists and Plotinists, the Stagyrites and Gamalielites, the Eclectics, the Gnostics and Scholastics, their essences and emanations, their logos and demiurgos, aeons and daemons, male and female, with a long train of … or, shall I say at once, of nonsense. We must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus, paring off the amphibologisms into which they have been led, by forgetting often, or not understanding, what had fallen from him, by giving their own misconceptions as his dicta, and expressing unintelligibly for others what they had not understood themselves. There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man. I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the matter which is evidently his, and which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill." {Link without Title} Jefferson frequently expressed discontentment with this earlier version, however. "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth" represents the fulfillment of his desire to produce a more carefully assembled edition. CONTENT Jefferson arranges selected verses from the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in chronological order, mingling excerpts from one next to those of another in an attempt to unite them in a single narrative. Thus he begins with Luke 2 and Luke 3, then follows with Mark 1 and Matthew 3. He provides a record of which verses he selected and of the order in which he arranged them in his "Table of the Texts from the Evangelists employed in this Narrative and of the order of their arrangement." . PURPOSE AND USE After completion of the "Life and Morals", Jefferson shared it with a number of friends, but he never allowed it to be published during his lifetime. His reluctance appears to be based upon his conviction that religion was a private matter as well as his desire to avoid slander and criticism. The book was first published in 1903 for the United States Congress . For many years copies were given to new members of Congress. The text is now freely available on the Internet since it is in the Public Domain . SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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