The Jefferson Bible is basically a distilling of the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, removing (most of) the miraculous acts and focusing instead on the words and teachings of Jesus. In this it succeeds quite well, though the language is old and in some places a little hard to follow. The one thing I felt really hampered the book was the amount of repetition; when reading the New Testament, you don't really get a feel for how often Jesus says the same things over and over again, but nearly each parable related is told twice, making it a tad bit monotonous.Over all, it is a good, short refining for those more interested in the message Jesus spent his life trying to convey; almost an early American "Cliff's Notes" of the Bible, more than a treatise on the scripture itself. I would like to see it modernized a bit, with the language brought up to date and the repetition cut down. ( )

In compiling a stripped down version of the New Testament, Jefferson omits all supernatural references and compiles excerpts from all four Gospels into one chronological tome.

Jefferson admired Jesus' system of morals and abhorred what he saw as the corruption of the doctrines of Jesus so he set out to ". . . place the character of Jesus in its true and high light, as no impostor Himself, but a great Reformer of the Hebrew code of religion . . ." (from http://www.angelfire.com/co/Jefferson...)

Thus, The Jefferson Bible is familiar and yet strange. It ends, abruptly for those of us acquainted with the supposed divinity of Jesus, with his burial.

For Jefferson, the point was not what Jesus' followers made of his life and death but what Jesus himself did and said.

"They [Jefferson's views of Christianity] are the result of a life of inquiry and reflection, and very different from that anti-Christian system imputed to me by those who know nothing of my opinions. To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed, but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished anyone 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." (from http://www.angelfire.com/co/Jefferson...) ( )

An interesting inner view into the workings of the mind of Jefferson.

The gospels according to noted deist, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson took the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, arranged them in chronological order to form a single narrative and expunged the miracles, creating an interpretation of the life of Jesus as a guide and teacher, not necessarily as the son incarnate.

There's virtually no introduction to this edition; no historical context provided by the editor. Would've been nice to have one. ( )

Thomas Jefferson was a Deist who believed in a distant "watchmaker" God. He revered Jesus as a great teacher, but rejected the supernatural events added to the gospels by authors who lived after Jesus died and never met him. "I hold the precepts of Jesus, as delivered by himself, to be the most pure, benevolent, and sublime which have ever been preached to man," Jefferson wrote. "I adhere to the principles of the first age; and consider all subsequent innovations as corruptions of his religion, having no foundation in what came from him."

Jefferson endeavored to find a way to read Jesus's teachings without being irritated by the parts of the Bible he considered false. So with scissors and paste he cut the gospels up and made his own version of the Bible that included only the words attributed to Jesus, without the miracles or other supernatural trappings.

The result is a small book of elegant simplicity and much worth. ( )