In last week’s column I introduced you to the so-called “Jefferson Bible,” to the “cut-and-paste” Bible, to The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, to Thomas Jefferson’s 86-pages-long filtering of what he took to be the most salutary, the most believable passages from the four Gospels of Luke, Mark, Matthew and John.
Jefferson having revealed its existence virtually on his deathbed in 1826, how do we come to know this work? How do we come to know great books in the first place?
We can thank two men primarily, two men whose intellectual chops and networking skills made something of this great find. Cyrus Adler, the first, who grew up as the son of a Jewish Arkansas shopkeeper, became eventually a full Professor of Semitic Languages at Johns Hopkins University. He served from 1888 to 1908 as a Curator, a Librarian and a Director of the Division of Religion at the Smithsonian Institution. He wrote in his memoirs that he was tasked by his employers with “seeking out and collecting unique examples of the material culture of American religion,” and boy, would he! He remembered that he had once been called on to catalogue a private library that had been heavy in Hebrew-language materials. He remembered “two copies of the New Testament, mutilated”; surely his ears had perked up when he encountered a note of provenance about such.
Armed with a fancy new title and institutional letterhead, Mr. Adler importuned the Jefferson family about the rumored mutilations and paid $400 to Jefferson’s great-granddaughter, Carolina Ramsey Randolph, to secure them. Cyrus Adler didn’t make Thomas Jefferson newly famous all on his own, however. An Iowa Congressman John Fletcher Lacey had been tasked by Congress to give the once-over to Jefferson’s library for its purchase by the U.S. Congress in 1815 for the Library of Congress. Lacey met Mr. Adler and the two began a long and fruitful working arrangement to bring out the Jefferson Bible. The former brought it to the attention of the House Committee on Printing and urged it to publish this long-forgotten, apparently mutilated religious text.
They decided on a U.S. government-funded initial press run of 9,000 copies--3,000 copies for use in the Senate, another 6,000 for use in the House--and that would be reproduced by means of photolithography. Mr. Adler was tapped to write a 25-page Introduction. The $3,227 estimate was considered too steep. Would Jefferson’s Bible ever see the light? Reach me at svafinebooks@gmail.com or http://www.svafinebooks.com.
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