The article discusses the origins, content, and meaning of two editions of the New Testament constructed by Thomas Jefferson in 1804 and 1819. He had launched these editions in accordance with his views on the interrelatedness of religion and reason, of the freedom of conscience, and the right to interpret the New Testament through the prism of one's own life experience. The article analyses the sources of Jefferson's perception of Christianity, the influence of the thinkers of the European Enlightenment upon him, as well as contemporary scholarly research on The Jefferson Bible. The author indicates that the religious views of Thomas Jefferson remain the subject of a fierce debate, which expresses a variety of positions: from labeling him as an atheist to imaging him as a deeply religious person. The intensity of these discussions proves that the issue of whether Jefferson could be regarded a Christian and in what sense, as well as what he himself

Stepanova E. "The most sublime and beneficial moral code that was ever offered to people": disputes around the "Jefferson Bible" / / State, Religion, Church in Russia and abroad. 2017. N 2. pp. 172-196.

Stepanova, Elena (2017) "'The Most Sublime and Benevolent Code of Morals Which Has Ever Been Offered to Man': Debates on The Jefferson Bible", Gosudarstvo, religiia, tserkov' v Rossii i za rubezhom 35(2): 172-196.

1. From T. Jefferson's Letter to John Adams, October 12 (13), 1813 In: Cappon, L. J. (ed) (2012) The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams. 1812-1826, p. 384. UNC Press Books.

page 172
meant by that, goes far beyond the specifics of the historical period of the formation of the USA. According to the author, Jefferson's interpretation of the New Testament is a remarkable example of the conflict between individual and institutional religiosity that manifested itself in the Enlightenment and escalates today. Jefferson's interpretations prove that there are still no simple answers to the critical inquiry Christianity faced over two centuries ago.

Keywords: Thomas Jefferson, Christianity, New Testament, Enlightenment, rationalism, morality, deism, interpretation, demythologization.

THOMAS Jefferson (1743-1826) - one of the founding fathers of the United States of America, one of the authors of the Declaration of Independence, the third president of the United States-is known not only as an outstanding political figure and philosopher of the Enlightenment2, but also as an original religious thinker and reformer who made a unique contribution to the institutional justification of the principle of freedom of conscience. In this capacity, Jefferson at different times of his life carried out two revisions of the New Testament (his own versions of the two Gospels), which reflected his understanding of the Christian religion and the peculiarities of the evangelical image of Christ.

The existence of these two editions became known in the mid-nineteenth century, but their serious scientific research began only after the Princeton University Press published them in 1983, edited and annotated by Dickinson Adams.3 Surprisingly, the very problem of the influence of religious views of American presidents on their political beliefs and actions is still considered insufficiently understood in the research literature.4 Religious organizations

2. Sogrin V. V. Jefferson: man, Thinker, Politician, Moscow: Nauka, 1989; Sheldon G. Political Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson, Moscow: Republika Publishing House, 1996.

3. Adams, D.W. (ed.) (1983) Jefferson's Extracts from the Gospels: "The Philosophy of Jesus" and "The Life and Morals of Jesus". Princeton University Press; Gaustad, E.S. (1996) Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of Thomas Jefferson, p. 123. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing.

4. Smith, G.S. (2015) Religion in the Oval Office: The Religious Lives of American Presidents, p. 1. Oxford University Press.

page 173
Even today, Thomas Jefferson's views remain a subject of fierce debate, with a wide variety of points of view expressed, from accusing him of atheism to presenting him as a deeply religious person. As for the Russian-language scientific literature, the story of Jefferson's editing of the New Testament text has not yet received sufficient coverage.5
What follows is a discussion of the background to Jefferson's approach to New Testament editing, the history, content, and meaning of the revisions, as well as their coverage in some of the studies on the subject. The main purpose of the article is to analyze the principles laid down by Jefferson in the basis of his reading of the New Testament. This story is considered as a vivid example of individual religiosity that is not related to a particular religious affiliation and dogmatic preferences - a type of religiosity that is widespread in the modern world.

Before turning to such an analysis, it is necessary to outline some significant points in Jefferson's attitude to religion in general and to Christianity in particular.

The formation of Jefferson as a religious thinker took place during the most important period for Western Christianity, the heyday of the Enlightenment in Europe and the United States and the formation of a secular socio-political structure and a corresponding worldview. Under the influence of new scientific and geographical discoveries, as well as fatigue from the endless destructive conflicts between Catholics and Protestants, Enlightenment thinkers abandoned the old theological metaphysics and turned to a rational study of nature, society and man. The age of Enlightenment was marked by passionate disputes: on one side were deists who defended the principle of natural religion, atheists and agnostics who considered religion superstitious; on the other side were religious figures and thinkers who defended orthodox Christian dogma in its reformed or traditional form. In the American Enlightenment, in contrast to the Western European Enlightenment, the rationalist critique of Christianity was significant.-

5. See, for example: Kosmach P. G. Religious representations of Thomas Jefferson // Веснік БДУ. 2010. Ser. 3. N 2. pp. 15-18.

page 174
relatively less popular. Nevertheless, as D. Adams notes, the central theme of Jefferson's religious worldview, which was intellectually much closer to the European Enlightenment than to the American one, was "the contradiction between the spirit of critical analysis and the tenets of traditional Christianity." 6
From birth, Jefferson belonged to the Anglican Church, which during his childhood and youth was the dominant Christian denomination in his native state of Virginia, as well as the most important symbol of English rule over the American colonies. Even after independence and the conversion of the Anglican Church to an Episcopal Church in the United States, it remained for some time the only Christian church that was supported by state taxes, despite the presence of other denominations.7 In 1779, Jefferson wrote" The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom", which became law in 1786 and influenced the content of the First Amendment to the American Constitution, which established the principle of freedom of conscience in the country. When Jefferson composed his own epitaph at the end of his life, he mentioned only three of his achievements: the authorship of the Declaration of Independence of the United States and the "Statute on Religious Freedom" and the founding of the University of Virginia. This epitaph is carved on a monument on Jefferson's grave at his Monticello estate in Virginia. [8]

Jefferson's phrase about "the wall separating church and state"9 is widely known, formulated in response to-

6. Adams, D.W. (1983) "Introduction", in D. Adams (ed.) Jefferson's Extracts from the Gospels: "The Philosophy of Jesus" and "The Life and Morals of Jesus", p. 5. Princeton University Press.

7. Bell, J.B. (2008) A War of Religion: Dissenters, Anglicans, and the American Revolution. Palgrave Macmillan.

8. "Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom & Father of the University of Virginia" ("Jefferson's Gravestone", Monticello [https://www.monticello.org/site/ research-and-collections/jeffersons-gravestone, accessed on 15.08.2016]).

9. "I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State" [Dreisbach, D.L. (1997) "Sowing Useful Truths and Principles: The Danbery Baptists, Thomas Jefferson, and the 'Wall of Separation'", Journal of Church and State 39(3): 468].

page 175
in a letter to Baptists in Connecticut, he was informed of cases of religious discrimination in the state. As F. notes: Humburger, today the majority of Americans perceive this phrase as a vivid symbol of religious freedom.10 However, at the beginning of the 19th century, Jefferson's position was perceived as more radical than that of most of his contemporaries: while the First Amendment to the US Constitution prohibited the federal government from establishing any religion as a state religion and infringing on the religious freedom of citizens, 11 Jefferson's phrase about the "wall" also implied restrictions on both the government and the state. religious organizations, prescribing separation between them 12. Since then and to this day, the debate continues between advocates of the "separation" metaphor and its opponents: advocates consider separation and mutual non-interference in each other's internal affairs equally beneficial for the state and religious organizations, while opponents believe that it does not allow citizens to rely on their religious beliefs in political and social activities.13 This contrast in assessment is very characteristic of the perception of Jefferson's attitude to religion in general and in particular.

The thinkers who shaped Jefferson's worldview from his college days were Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, and John Locke - in Jefferson's view, three of the greatest Enlightenment figures ever to exist in history, revolutionizing scientific methodology, the natural sciences, politics, philosophy, and religion. In addition, Jefferson's attitude to Christianity was largely influenced by the critical ideas of the English deists Henry St. John Bolingbroke, the Earl of Shaftesbury, and John Toland. From them, Jefferson inherited a skeptical attitude.-

10. Hamburger, Ph. (2002) Separation of Church and State, p. 1. Harvard University Press.

11. Amendment I: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

12. Dreisbach, D.L. "Sowing Useful Truths and Principles: The Danbery Baptists, Thomas Jefferson, and the 'Wall of Separation'", p. 465-466; Hamburger, Ph. Separation of Church and State, p. 1; Smith, G.S. (2006) Faith and the Presidency: From George Washington to George W. Bush, p. 77. Oxford University Press.

13. Smith, G.S. Faith and the Presidency: From George Washington to George W. Bush, p. 77-79.

14. См.: Gaustad, E.S. Sworn on the Altar of God, p. 20-23.

page 176
a return to the truths of revelation that can only be grasped by faith. This ideological revolution inevitably led to doubts about the validity of traditional Christian dogma and the need to provide new answers to many fundamental questions, in particular: what is the Bible-a divine revelation or just a book written by ordinary people in a specific historical and cultural context? What is the main point of Jesus ' proclamation - the moral precepts of the Sermon on the Mount or the teaching of the Kingdom of God? How can we understand the dogma of the divine origin and resurrection of Jesus from a scientific point of view and how can we combine the truths of science and the truths of revelation?

Jefferson, like many Enlightenment thinkers, believed in the human capacity for rational knowledge of the world and in the need for education and science. Nevertheless, rationalism in Jefferson's view was not only not a denial of religious faith, but was its only true foundation, since, in his view, reason, while destroying ignorance and superstition, was the only path to knowledge in both science and religion, and protected religion from fanaticism. Jefferson considered reason to be a gift from God, for the correct use of which every person was responsible. In his opinion, without the conciliatory action of reason, religion became an arena of endless disputes between its bearers over which of them had the monopoly right to truth.15 Jefferson's ideal, as he wrote to Thomas Cooper on November 2, 1822, was a religion of "peace, reason,and morality." 16
Jefferson was convinced that religion is a private matter of a person, a purely internal process, in which only God and man are participants and in which no one is involved.-

15. Sanford, Ch.B. (1984) The Religious Life of Thomas Jefferson, p. 11. The University Press of Virginia. Charles Sanford's book "The Religious Life of Thomas Jefferson" is one of the most widely known sources on this topic. However, it should be noted that the book was repeatedly criticized for the fact that its author, being not a professional researcher, but a minister of the United Methodist Church, exaggerated the role of religion in Jefferson's life and made an unfounded conclusion that Jefferson based his political activities solely on Christian beliefs (see, for example, the review of D. J. Smith). Corrigan, J. (1987) Journal of Church and State 29(3): 558, in response to a book by C. Sanford from the University of Virginia.

16.Cit. по: Throckmorton, W., Coulter, M. (2012) Getting Jefferson Right: Fact Checking Claims about Our Third President, p. 179. Salem Grove Press.

page 177
no external institution, whether church or state, can interfere. As it is written in the "Religious Freedom Statute of the State of Virginia":

To allow the ruling power to invade the sphere of views and opinions and restrict the practice or dissemination of principles on the basis of their supposed bad orientation is a dangerous mistake and error that destroys all religious freedom at once, since those who make judgments about such orientation will be guided by their own views and will approve or condemn the opinions of others only depending on how close they are to him or differ from his own 17.

Jefferson himself preferred not to speak publicly about his religious beliefs, devoting only a few letters to close friends to this issue out of his vast correspondence of more than 20,000 messages. 18 "Don't say anything about my religion. It is known only to my God and myself, " he wrote in a letter to an interviewer in December 1826, when asked about his worldview.19 Jefferson's own version of the New Testament was not revealed to his family until after his death.20 At the same time, as Edwin Gastad notes, religious issues were extremely exciting for Jefferson and inspired his public activities and intellectual pursuits.21
Jefferson's first account of Christ's teachings, compiled in 1803, was the Syllabus of an Estimate of the merits of the doctrines of Jesus, compared with those of others, which was significantly influenced by the book by the English scholar, philosopher and theologian Joseph PriestleyA History of the Corruptions of Christianity (1782), which Jefferson later described as" the main source of Christianity".-

17. Jefferson T. Autobiography. Notes on the State of Virginia, Nauka Publ., 1990, p. 275.

18. Smith, G.S. Faith and the Presidency: From George Washington to George W. Bush, p. 54.

19. Adams, D.W. "Introduction", p. 4.

20. Sanford, Ch.B. The Religious Life of Thomas Jefferson, p. 12.

21. Gaustad, E.S. Sworn on the Altar of God, p. xviii-xiv.

page 178
understanding of Christianity 22. In his book, Priestley argued that Christianity was originally a simple religion, later distorted by the church for reasons of strengthening its power. Original Christianity, Priestley believed, could be expressed in a few simple statements: The one God entrusted Christ with the special mission of discovering the true nature of the world and teaching people to live a virtuous life; Jesus was not of a divine nature, but was endowed by God with the ability to perform miracles in confirmation of his greatest moral teaching.

Priestley rejected the dogmas of the Trinity, the incarnation, and original sin, considering them a distortion of the original Christianity. The restoration of true Christianity was intended to make it understandable to modern man.23 Priestley, by presenting a demystified and demythologized version of Christianity compatible with the rationalist worldview, convinced Jefferson that he, like any true Christian, could and should clarify for himself the question of the authentic content of Christ's teaching.24 According to Edwin Gastad, "Jefferson's reading of Priestley was like Immanuel Kant's reading of David Hume: it awakened him from his dogmatic slumber and pointed him in the direction of a new formulation or reform of the Christian religion." 25
In addition to the "Synopsis..." Jefferson described his Christian faith in a letter to one of the leaders of the American Enlightenment, Benjamin Rush, dated April 21, 1803.:

I am against distortions of Christianity, but not against the true commandments of Jesus himself. I am a Christian in the only sense that he [Jesus] wanted people to be; I am sincerely committed to his teaching, prefer it to all others, ascribe to him the most perfect human nature possible, and believe that he never proclaimed any other teaching.26
22. Adams, D.W. (ed.) Jefferson's Extracts from the Gospels, p. 335.

23. Priestly, J.A. (2009) History of the Corruptions of Christianity (reprint of the 1871 edition). BiblioBazaar.

24. Adams, D.W. "Introduction", p. 16.

25. Gaustad, E.S. Sworn on the Altar of God, p. 113.

26. Adams, D.W. (ed.) Jefferson's Extracts from the Gospels, p. 331.

page 179
"Synopsis..." was a comparative analysis of the moral concepts of ancient philosophers, ancient Jews, and Jesus, whose preaching was reduced by Jefferson to three main points: to confirm Jewish monotheism, to proclaim a moral teaching that surpasses ancient and Jewish teachings and calls for love for all mankind, and, finally, to preach the future life, dictating the necessity of virtuous behavior in this world 27. Jefferson sent copies of the Synopsis and the letter to Rush to his daughters, as well as to several friends and colleagues, but they were not intended for public distribution.28
In 1804, before the end of his first term as president, Jefferson began work on his own revision of the New Testament, using a very original hermeneutic method: using a razor blade, 29 he cut out the sayings of Christ that he considered authentic, using two copies of the Bible, and pasted them into a book with blank pages. Subsequently, in a well-known letter to John Adams dated October 12 (13), 1813, a quote from which is given in the title of the article, Jefferson described the process of cutting out quotations from the Bible as follows:: "I have performed this operation for my own use, cutting out verse after verse from the printed text and piecing together passages that clearly belong to him [Jesus] and are as easily discernible as diamonds in a dunghill." 30
Later, in a letter to the Dutch priest Francis Adrian van der Kemp, dated April 25, 1816, Jefferson reported that the drafting of the first edition of the New Testament had taken him only "one or two evenings" and that he intended to return to this work when he had more free time.31 This first edition, which was called "The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth, extracted from the account of his life and teachings, as given by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John" ("The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth, extracted from the account of his life and doctrines, as given by

27. Sanford, Ch.B. The Religious Life of Thomas Jefferson, p. 102.

28. Gaustad, E.S. Sworn on the Altar of God, p. 116.

29. It may have been a paper knife (Edwards, O. (2012)" How Thomas Jefferson Created His Own Bible", Smithsonian Magazine, January [http://www. smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/how-thomas-jefferson-created-his-ownbible-5659505/?no-i st, accessed on 12.07. 2016]).

30. Cappon, L.J. (ed) The Adams-Jefferson Letters, p. 384.

31. Adams, D.W. (ed.) Jefferson's Extracts from the Gospels, p. 369.

page 180
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John"), included exclusively the sayings of Jesus. In a letter to Joseph Priestley dated January 29, 1804, Jefferson stated that his goal was to compile a "digest" of Jesus ' moral doctrines, "leaving out all that relates to his personal history and character." 32 All that remained of this revision was the title and list of New Testament verses used. There are also copies of the Bible, from which Jefferson cut quotations 33. Based on these clippings, the American historian Dickinson Adams reconstructed this first edition of the New Testament, carried out by Jefferson, in 1983.34

In the process of writing the Synopsis... and the Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth, Jefferson formulated his basic principle for editing the New Testament text, which was to separate what he believed to be true from what he believed to be false. In his letters to various people, these two hypostases were designated by him as "gold and waste rock," "grain and husk," "genuine and useless," "diamonds and a dunghill."35 While agreeing with Bolingbroke's claim that the inspiration of the Bible cannot be proved empirically, 36 Jefferson wrote to John Adams on January 24 In 1824, he spoke of his right to doubt the authenticity of certain biblical stories. According to him, there is "an internal evidence that some parts [of the New Testament - E. S. ] are derived from an unusual person, and some are the work of very mediocre minds"37. In a letter to William Short dated April 13, 1820, Jefferson was even more critical of the authorship of the New Testament text:

Among the expressions ... attributed to him [Jesus - E. S.] by his biographers, I found many passages that testify to a good imagination, correct morals, and the most lively benevolence. Others are full of ignorance, absurdity, deception,

32. Ibid., p. 340.

33. Throckmorton, W., Coulter, M. Getting Jefferson Right, p. 71.

34. Adams, D.W. (ed.) Jefferson's Extracts from the Gospels, pp. 45-106.

35. Sanford, Ch. B. The Religious Life of Thomas Jefferson, p. 105; Throckmorton, W., Coulter, M. Getting Jefferson Right, p. 79.

36. Adams, D.W. "Introduction", p. 6.

37. Cappon, L.J. (ed) The Adams-Jefferson Letters, p. 421.

page 181
quackery and trickery, so that it is absolutely impossible to imagine that these absurdities come from the same person. Therefore... I attributed the former to him [Jesus - E. S.] and attributed the latter to the stupidity of some of his disciples and the fraud of others.38
On the whole, Jefferson thought in a letter to Joseph Priestley dated April 9, 1803, that Jesus ' teaching was unfortunate in that his utterances were recorded by ignorant people many years after they were uttered, when much was already forgotten and much was misunderstood and distorted.39
In 1819, at the age of 77, Jefferson created a new version of the New Testament. This time, he took texts in English, French, Latin, and Greek, using six copies of the Bible and organizing his editorship in four columns with parallel citations. 40 Jefferson now set himself the more ambitious task of composing extracts from the four Gospels into a single coherent account of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.41 This edition was called "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth extracted textually from the Gospels in Greek, Latin, French and English" (The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth extracted textually from the Gospels in Greek, Latin, French and English).42. Jefferson's first attempt was a compilation of the New Testament text rather than a revision, although it required serious preliminary study, as evidenced by the above phrase from a letter to John Adams about piecing together the authentic sayings of Jesus. The second attempt can rightfully be called the editorial office. This is evidenced at least by the fact that Jefferson broke the original New Testament phrases 46 times in order to connect them.-

38. Adams, D.W. (ed.) Jefferson's Extracts from the Gospels, p. 391-392. 39. Ibid., p. 328.

40. Campbell, E.M. (2012) "Introduction: Thomas Jefferson: Religion, Politics and The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth", In Jefferson, Thomas. The Jefferson Bible. What Thomas Jefferson Selected as The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, p. 9. Lakewood Publishing.

41. Adams, D.W. "Introduction", p. 30.

42. The Jefferson Bible. What Thomas Jefferson Selected as The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth (2012). Lakewood Publishing.

page 182
thread them with phrases taken from elsewhere 43. According to Tim Blessing, the very ability to use several different verses to form columns suggests that Jefferson knew the original text of the King James Bible very well and was well aware of the complexity of the task he set for himself. 44
The only copy of this work, intended, as in the case of the first edition, exclusively for personal use, as evidenced by the fact that there is no mention of it in any of Jefferson's letters, 45 was completed by him around 1820.46 Before his death, Jefferson bequeathed his work to his grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph. For a long time, this copy of the second edition of the New Testament was kept in the Jefferson family. In 1895, his great-granddaughter Caroline Randolph sold it for $ 400 to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington. In 1904, the U.S. Congress decided to print 9,600 copies of the Jefferson Bible, thus beginning the current tradition of giving copies to each new Congressman. In the mid-1950s, the print run ended, but since 1997, printing has been resumed at the initiative of the Libertarian Press division47. Since 2013, new copies have been published with the assistance of the American Humanist Association. 48 In 2010, the original Jefferson Bible underwent a thorough restoration. It currently holds a place of honor in the National Museum of American History49.

43. Adams, D.W. "Introduction", p. 51.

44. Blessing, T.H. (2013) "Revolution by Other Means: Jefferson, the Jefferson Bible, and Jesus." In Marc DiPaolo (ed.) Godly Heretics: Essays in Alternative Christianity in Literature and Popular Culture. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers.

45. Adams, D.W. "Introduction", p. 38.

46. Throckmorton, W., Coulter, M. Getting Jefferson Right, p. 125.

47. Ostling, R.N. (2001) "Jefferson's Abridged Bible Ex-President Dismissed Old Testament, Took What He Found Credible in New", Associated Press, 25 August [http://scars.tv/cgi-bin/news.pl?/home/users/web/b929/us.scars/perl/text-news/news450.txt, accessed on 22.02.2017].

48. Granados, L., Speckhardt R. (eds.) (2013) The Jefferson Bible for the Twenty-First Century. Humanist Press.

49. Edwards, O. "How Thomas Jefferson Created His Own Bible".

page 183
The Jefferson Bible, as this edition is commonly called, begins with the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem and describes his life and teachings before his crucifixion and burial. For his editorship, Jefferson used primarily texts from the Synoptic Gospels, 50 which he divided into three types. The first category included descriptions of mystical events that Jefferson considered falsifications made up by the evangelists, and therefore rejected. The second type included parables and passages that described the simplicity and modesty of Jesus, rejected wealth, and so on-statements that, according to Jefferson, could not have been invented by the evangelists and therefore should have been included in his editorial. The third type is texts that Jefferson believed could be considered authentic sayings of Jesus himself.51
As E. Gastad notes, the texts excluded by Jefferson from his editorial office say more about his approach than the included ones.52 At the same time, since Jefferson excluded from the New Testament text everything that he considered to be inauthentic, we are able to determine exactly what he considered to be inauthentic. Thus, in borrowing the description of the birth of Jesus from the Gospel of Luke, Jefferson omits the story of angels greeting the infant from heaven. There are no magi with their gifts from the Gospel of Matthew, the temptation in the wilderness, the miracle in Cana of Galilee, healings (except for those that can be explained by natural causes) and resurrections from the dead, as well as references to the divine origin of Jesus. There is no transfiguration story, no resurrection, no appearance to the disciples, and no ascension to heaven 53. In general, as E. Gastad writes, Jefferson cut, inserted, and rearranged [poems] in four languages from four short biographies, choosing those that supported an "exalted moral code" and rejecting those that did not.

50. A detailed list of the gospel verses used by Jefferson in his work (although with some inaccuracies, as pointed out by W. R. Tolkien). Throckmorton, W., Coulter, M. Getting Jefferson Right, p. 80), given in: Sanford, Ch. B. The Religious Life of Thomas Jefferson, pp. 181-201.

51. Adams, D.W. "Introduction", p. 38.

52. Gaustad, E.S. Sworn on the Altar of God, p. 124.

53. See: The Jefferson Bible.

page 184
turning Jesus into some sort of supernatural wizard or street healer 54.

Jefferson's interpretation of Christianity was based on the following principles: first, he rejected the idea of the trinity (but by no means God!), considering it a distortion that arose under the influence of Platonic mysticism, 55 and defining it as an" abracadabra "invented by"charlatans who call themselves servants of Jesus" 56. he denied the divine nature of Jesus. In a letter to his secretary, William Short, dated August 4, 1820, Jefferson emphasized that Jesus "did not intend to present himself to mankind as the Son of God."57. For this reason, Jefferson deliberately avoided any mention of the divinity of Jesus in his edition of Christianity.58 Second, Jefferson assumed that the authentic teachings of Jesus were simple and understandable even to a child.59 In the above-mentioned letter to John Adams, dated October 12, 1813, he wrote::

When we isolate the simple ideas that he [Jesus - E. S.] preached, we must remove the elaborate veils that priests have thrown over them in order to stifle them, distort them in various ways, and turn them into instruments of their own wealth and power. We must free ourselves from the Platonists and Plotinists, the Stagirites and Gamalielites, the Eclecticists, Gnostics and Scholastics, from their essences and emanations, logoi and demiurges, aeons and demons, male and female, from the long caravan... nonsense 60.

In this regard, Dickinson Adams suggested that Jefferson should be considered a "demythologized Christian", that is, one who rejected all myths, mystery, miracles, and virtually everything supernatural in religion and instead sought to return to what he considered the natural purity and simplicity of Christianity.61
54. Gaustad, E.S. Sworn on the Altar of God, p. 126.

55. Adams, D.W. (ed.) Jefferson's Extracts from the Gospels, p. 347. 56. Ibid., p. 375.

57. Ibid., p. 397.

58. Sanford, Ch.B. The Religious Life of Thomas Jefferson, p. 110.

59. Gaustad, E.S. Sworn on the Altar of God, p. 134.

60. Cappon, L.J. (ed.) The Adams-Jefferson Letters, p. 383.

61. Adams, D.W. "Introduction", p. 39.

page 185
Third, according to Jefferson, as a result of the purification of Christianity from all alluvial things, it should have become what it was from the very beginning - a simple and consistent teaching about the love of God and neighbor, "the most exalted and beneficial moral code that has ever been offered to people", whose goal is to make people happy 62. Thus, for Jefferson, Christianity was first of all the greatest moral teaching, calling for love and mercy not only for relatives or even for enemies, but also for all members of the human race. At the same time, Jefferson, like many Enlightenment thinkers, valued morality above religion, because, from his point of view, moral principles are the same for all religions, while the latter are characterized by mutual differences. In other words, if morality unites, then religion separates.

When Jefferson edited the New Testament, many of the principles of the methodology of biblical textual criticism were not yet sufficiently developed, although many well - known thinkers-Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Hugo Grotius, Denis Diderot, and others-expressed the need for a critical reading of the Bible. As already noted, the writings of Bolingbroke and Priestley played a major role in shaping Jefferson's attitude to the Bible text. In determining the authenticity of Jesus ' utterances, Jefferson relied primarily on reason and intuition.63 At the same time, being one of the most educated men of his time, he carefully studied the history of early Christianity, as well as the history of ancient Greece and Rome. He paid great attention to the linguistic peculiarities of the Biblical texts, as evidenced by the fact that for the second edition of the New Testament, texts in Greek and Latin were used. In general, Jefferson saw the Bible not as a sacred text dictated by God to man, but as any other book.64 In a letter to his nephew Peter Carr he advised reading the Bible as a historical work like Livy's

62. Adams, D.W. (ed.) Jefferson's Extracts from the Gospels, p. 405.

63. Gaustad, E.S. Sworn on the Altar of God, p. 119.

64. I would like to point out that the process of cutting out quotations from the Bible with a razor or knife is a clear proof of its desacralization.

page 186
or Tacitus or as a philosophical treatise, separating the plausible from the improbable 65.

We have already quoted Jefferson's statement in which he called himself a Christian. At the same time, he did not refer to himself as a member of any existing denomination and spoke about himself: "I am my own sect." 66 In 1814, in a letter to Methodist preacher Miles King, Jefferson described the many paths that lead a person to faith, and emphasized:

There is no Quaker, Baptist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, or Catholic in heaven. When we enter the gates of heaven, we leave these signs of separation and find ourselves united only by the principles that God has united us all.67
Jefferson's unitarianism, deism, rationalism, and atheism were often harshly denounced by his contemporaries and descendants.68 Congregationalist minister Thomas Robbins during the 1800 presidential campaign said: "I do not believe that the Almighty will allow a blatant atheist ["howling atheist"] to lead the American nation. " 69 Given the importance of a presidential candidate's orthodox religious beliefs to a significant number of Americans,this was a serious accusation. 70 Jefferson was particularly attacked by religious figures of various denominations. In response to these attacks, he later wrote: "If there were no priests, there would be no unbelievers." 71 In 1844, Presbyterian Robert Baird, one of the earliest historians of religion in the United States, described Jefferson in a book on the subject as "the worst enemy Christianity has ever faced in America." The proof, according to Baird, was that the principle of freedom of conscience, developed by Jefferson in the "Statute", belittled the status of the state.

65. Throckmorton, W., Coulter, M. Getting Jefferson Right, p. 138.

66. Ibid., p. 174.

67. Adams, D.W. (ed.) Jefferson's Extracts from the Gospels, p. 361.

68. Adams, D.W. "Introduction", p. 39.

69.Cit. по: McGarvie, M.D. (2016) Law and Religion in American History, p. 38. Cambridge University Press.

70. Smith, G.S. Faith and the Presidency: From George Washington to George W. Bush, p. 53.

71.Cit. по: Gaustad, E.S. Sworn on the Altar of God, p. 93.

page 187
christianity, placing it on an equal footing with other religions 72. Even today, many researchers call Jefferson a deist who rejects traditional Christianity.73
The alternative to these charges is to try to portray Jefferson as an Orthodox Christian. So, the famous conservative evangelical politician and publicist David Barton, who defends the idea that the United States is an exclusively Christian nation in contrast to liberal ideologues, in his best-selling book with the eloquent title "The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the myths about Thomas Jefferson that you have always believed" ("The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You've Always Believed about Thomas Jefferson")74 claimed that he had never been an atheist or an opponent of Christianity.75 From Barton's point of view, the so - called "Jefferson Bible" cannot be regarded as his own interpretation of the gospel story, since Jefferson created his first edition with the aim of evangelizing the Indians, and the second-solely to compare the moral teachings of Jesus with other philosophers and to prove his priority in this area.76 According to Barton, Jefferson "did not agree with some of the historical tenets of Orthodox Christianity, but at the same time adhered to other traditional doctrines."77
72. Baird, R. (1844) Religion in America: Or an Account of the Origin, Relation to the State, and Present Condition of the Evangelical Churches in the United States: with Notices of the Unevangelical Denominations, p. 110. Harper & brothers.

73. Holmes, D. (2006) The Faith of the Founding Fathers, p. 80. New York: Oxford University Press.

74. The publication of D. Barton's book was accompanied by a scandal: initially (in 2012) it was published by Thomas Nelson, a well-known American publisher of Christian literature, but after comments about a serious distortion of the facts expressed by experts on US history, as well as representatives of some Christian denominations, Nelson refused to distribute the book further. It was re-published in 2016 by WND Books (see: Bohon, D. (2012) "Thomas Nelson Pulls David Barton Book on Thomas Jefferson", New American, 12 August [http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/education/item/12430-thomas-nelson-pulls-david-barton-book-on-thomas-jefferson, accessed on 29.09.2016]).

75. Barton, D. (2012) The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You've Always Believed about Thomas Jefferson, p. 192. Thomas Nelson Inc.

76. Ibid., p. 194.

77. Ibid., p. 196.

page 188
D. Barton's position was critically analyzed in the book by Warren Throckmorton and Michael Coulter "Proving Jefferson Right. Actual verification of claims about our third President" ("Getting Jefferson Right: Fact Checking Claims about Our Third President"). The authors argued that the two extreme points of view, according to which Jefferson was either an atheist or an Orthodox Christian, were equally incorrect. 78 According to these two authors, Jefferson did consider himself a Christian, but not in the evangelical sense, as his "Synopsis...", letters, and two editions of the New Testament clearly indicate.79 Earlier, Dickinson Adams expressed similar sentiments about Jefferson's faith, saying that it was "both more than those who emphasize his rationalism assume and less than those who emphasize his religiosity believe." 80
At. Throckmorton and M. Coulter accused Barton of making a large number of factual errors in his book "The Lies of Jefferson...", in particular, attributing to Jefferson the intention to evangelize the Indians through his revision of the New Testament, which, in their opinion, is not true.81 In turn, Barton quipped in the preface to the new (2016) edition of his book that psychology Professor W. Throckmorton "had not previously demonstrated an expert knowledge of American history"82 and out of two thousand facts, he drew attention to twenty-three that, in his opinion, were distorted in Barton's book. Thus, a serious controversy broke out around Jefferson's worldview, to a certain extent reflecting the contradictions that exist between liberal and conservative Christians in the United States.

Jefferson himself had a very definite opinion about the criteria for classifying himself as a Christian and the right to his own interpretation of the Bible: it was his

78. Throckmorton, W., Coulter, M. Getting Jefferson Right, p. 114. 79. Ibid., p. 110.

80. Adams, D.W. "Introduction", p. 39.

81. Throckmorton, W., Coulter, M. Getting Jefferson Right, p. 98.

82. Barton, D. (2016) The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You've Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson, p. 3. Washington: WND Books.

page 189
because he considered himself an adherent of true, not distorted Christianity. In a letter to Charles Thomson dated January 9, 1816, Jefferson emphasized:

I am a true Christian, that is, a follower of the teachings of Jesus, which are very different from those of the Platonists, who call me an unbeliever and call themselves Christians and preachers of the good news, while they borrow their favorite dogmas from what their author never said.83
In other words, as Peter Sloterdijk writes, Jefferson did not perceive his editing of the gospel texts "as heresy in the original sense of the word, in which hairesis meant unauthorized insolence against the totality of dogmas and traditions."84 Rather, he considered himself the guardian of the original content of Scripture, restoring the original text, obscured by later insertions. As T. Blessing notes, Jefferson was not the first author in the history of Christianity to harmonize the gospels, but he was the first to do so by excluding what he considered to be inauthentic texts, considering himself entitled to give the gospel story its original appearance. 85
The acuteness of the discussion about Jefferson's attitude to Christianity shows that the question of how he can be considered a Christian, and what he himself meant by this, goes far beyond the actual historical issues related to the period of the formation of the American state. Here, two opposing positions collide: according to one, everyone has the right to consider themselves a follower of Christianity, based on how he/she understands it, and, accordingly, has the right to their own interpretation of the Bible. According to another position, there are dogmas of Christian teaching, sanctified by the tradition and authority of the church (s), according to which it is necessary to evaluate

83. Adams, D. W. (ed.) Jefferson's Extracts from the Gospels, p. 364-365.

84. Sloterdijk P. On the correction of the Good News. The Fifth Gospel of Nietzsche. Speech at celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of Friedrich Nietzsche's death, delivered in Weimar on August 25, 2000 [http://nietzsche.ru/look/xxc/etika/sloterdeik/, accessed 02.02.2016].

85. Blessing, T.H. "Revolution by Other Means: Jefferson, the Jefferson Bible, and Jesus," p. 35.

page 190
the faith of a particular person, as well as the validity of a particular interpretation of the Bible. This confrontation has a long history: in his study of the role of religion in society, Emil Durkheim distinguished between "a free, private religion that is the result of choice and formed in accordance with the needs and understanding of a person" and "a religion transmitted through tradition, formulated for a group and mandatory for practice"86.

It is obvious that in the centuries that have passed since Jefferson's life, the contradiction between these two positions has not only not been resolved, but has deepened and taken on new forms. Consequently, Jefferson's interpretation of Christianity and his understanding of the Christian faith are not only of historical interest. Moreover, this understanding turns out to be extremely modern, since one of the characteristic features of religiosity in our time is the increasing individualization of the Christian faith, which is increasingly becoming an alternative to traditional types of religiosity and religious institutions.87
The individualization of faith, which, among other things, manifests itself in a personal, subjective interpretation of Christian teaching, is largely determined by the specific life situation of a particular person. As for Jefferson, while working on his New Testament revision, according to Charles Sanford, he could not help but draw analogies between the struggle of Jesus against religious and political authorities in Jerusalem in the first century AD and his own struggle for religious freedom and political reform in America in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. identification with the historical situation in which Christianity emerged is not unique to Jefferson: it was both a cause and a consequence of the desire to find the true, undistorted content of Christian teaching, which is one of the most typical features of all the revolutionary changes in it from the Reformation to the present day.

86. Pickering, W.S.F., Durkheim, E. (eds.) (2011) Durkheim on Religion: A Selection of Readings with Bibliographies and Introductory Remarks, p. 96. Casemate Publishers.

87. Stepanova E. A. Postsecular religiosity: individual versus institute // Religious studies. 2015. N 3. pp. 56-65.

88. Sanford, Ch.B. The Religious Life of Thomas Jefferson, p. 118.

page 191
This personal attitude of Jefferson to Christianity and his belief in having a criterion for distinguishing between true and false in the biblical text was ironically criticized by Peter Sloterdijk, who has a negative attitude towards such treatment of the sacred text and believes that in fact Jefferson chose for his editorial those passages from the New Testament that were useful to him in his own work:

He was looking for an object of eulogy whose praises would make the speaker one of the subscription recipients in the distribution of moral values. He was interested in a religious teacher who could be quoted for his own guaranteed benefit.89
For this act of "self-aggrandizement," Sloterdijk thinks, "there is no more impressive symbol than the spectacle of an American head of state shredding six copies of the New Testament with scissors in his office at night."90
Sloterdijk's assessment is highly controversial, but the question remains: how should one treat a person who interprets the Holy Scriptures in such an original way? As U believes. Throckmorton and M. Coulter, such a president, like any political leader and just a person, can easily be accused by conservative religious figures of blasphemous attacks on Christianity and cursing. In turn, E. Campbell, noting that the sight of one of the American founding fathers cutting through the pages of the Bible can really confuse and even shock many people, emphasizes:

For those who know what kind of man Thomas Jefferson was, this is not surprising at all. Among other things, the reduction of the New Testament to the version that best suited Jefferson's own religious needs was an indication of his intellectual maturity and that such a man was difficult to confuse with references to authority.92
89. Sloterdijk P. On the correction of the Good News.

90. Ibid.

91. Throckmorton, W., Coulter, M. Getting Jefferson Right, p. 78.

92. Campbell, E. M. "Introduction", p. 1.

page 192
An interesting interpretation of " witticisms "(literally!) Jefferson's critical biblical studies is offered by T. Blessing. Noting that the mere act of cutting up the Bible text was unthinkable in the early nineteenth century, and that even today this violence against the sacred text may seem unacceptable not only to the believer, but also to a completely secular person, Blessing considers it a kind of analogy to the revolutionary terror of the French Revolution, the way in which Jefferson "helped To Jesus, his fellow revolutionary."93 In other words, there is a deep internal correspondence between Jefferson, the statesman of the American Revolution, and Jefferson, the reader and critic of the New Testament.

So, what can we say about Thomas Jefferson in this second capacity? First of all, both for political and personal reasons, being an adherent of attributing religion to a purely private space of a person, he was engaged in editing the New Testament exclusively for himself, and this circumstance allows us to isolate the principles of this editing in a "pure" form, free from any incidental considerations. Thus, he did not regard this text as divinely inspired and treated it like any other text; he sought to identify the main content of the New Testament epistle, discarding what seemed to him secondary; he separated the parts that he perceived as authentic from extraneous inserts, relying on agreement with reason and with moral feeling; he was interested in In addition, he was quite confident of his right to interpret the New Testament text, because he considered himself a follower of true, and not distorted, Christianity.94 Thus, the Jefferson Bible was not just a reflection of the rationalism and deism of the time, but a deeply personal attempt to break through to the true, pure meaning of Christian teaching, not just a collection of New Testament quotations, but a guide to Jefferson's own personal religion.95
93. Blessing, T.H. "Revolution by Other Means: Jefferson, the Jefferson Bible, and Jesus," p. 39.

94. For a comparison of the views of Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy on the principles of editing the New Testament, see: Stepanova E. A. "Our Christ is not Your Christ": the problem of individual interpretation of the sacred text " / / Voprosy filosofii. 2017. N 4. pp. 50-60.

95. Blessing, T.H. "Revolution by Other Means: Jefferson, the Jefferson Bible, and Jesus", p. 34.

page 193
Above all else, Jefferson valued reason as the manifestation of human freedom and the guarantee of authentic faith, believing that no one can gain it under anyone else's dictates. 96 Jefferson fully shared John Locke's idea that no one can "submissively accept the cult or faith that prescribes it." he's different"97. He considered it his duty to fight for freedom of conscience, and his commitment to this end, as stated in a letter to Benjamin Rush dated September 23, 1800, and engraved on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, reads:"I have sworn on the altar of God to be the eternal enemy of any tyranny over the human mind." 98
If the Jefferson Bible is to be judged according to the principles he established for himself, then we must recognize his right to see in the New Testament the meaning that was closest to him. If we apply to him the external criteria established by one or another religious orthodoxy, then he can easily be accused of anti-Christianity, which has been repeatedly done, as mentioned above. All in all, the story of Jefferson's interpretation of the New Testament is a remarkable proof that the questions that were so acutely posed to Christianity during the Enlightenment are still unanswered.

Bibliography / References

Jefferson T. Autobiography. Notes on the State of Virginia, Nauka Publ., 1990.

Kosmach P. G. Religious representations of Thomas Jefferson / / Vesnik BDU. 2010. Ser. 3. N 2. pp. 15-18.

Locke D. Epistle on Religious tolerance. Essays in three volumes: Vol. 3. Moscow: Mysl, 1988, pp. 91-134.

Sogrin V. V. Jefferson: man, Thinker, politician, Moscow: Nauka Publ., 1989.

Stepanova E. A. Postsecular religiosity: individual versus institute // Religious studies. 2015. N 3. pp. 56-65.

Stepanova E. A. "Our Christ is not Your Christ": the problem of individual interpretation of the sacred text. 2017. N 4. pp. 50-60.

Sheldon G. Political Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson, Moscow: Republika Publishing House, 1996.

96. Sanford, Ch. B. The Religious Life of Thomas Jefferson, p. 11.

97. Locke D. Epistle on religious tolerance. Essays in three volumes: Vol. 3. Moscow: Mysl, 1988, p. 94.

98. "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man" (Adams, D. W. [ed.] Jefferson's Extracts from the Gospels, p. 320).

page 194
Adams, D.W. (1983) "Introduction", in D. Adams (ed.) Jefferson's Extracts from the Gospels: "The Philosophy of Jesus" and "The Life and Morals of Jesus", pp. 3-44. Princeton University Press.

Adams, D.W. (ed.) (1983) Jefferson's Extracts from the Gospels: "The Philosophy of Jesus" and "The Life and Morals of Jesus". Princeton University Press.

Baird, R. (1844) Religion in America: Or an Account of the Origin, Relation to the State, and Present Condition of the Evangelical Churches in the United States: with Notices of the Unevangelical Denominations. Harper & brothers.

Barton, D. (2012) The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You've Always Believed about Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Nelson Inc.

Barton, D. (2016) The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You've Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson. Washington: WND Books.

Bell, J.B. (2008) A War of Religion: Dissenters, Anglicans, and the American Revolution. Palgrave Macmillan.

Blessing, T.H. (2013) "Revolution by Other Means: Jefferson, the Jefferson Bible, and Jesus." In Marc DiPaolo (ed.) Godly Heretics: Essays in Alternative Christianity in Literature and Popular Culture. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers.

Campbell, E.M. (2012) "Introduction: Thomas Jefferson: Religion, Politics and The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth", In Jefferson, Thomas. The Jefferson Bible. What Thomas Jefferson Selected as The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, pp. 1-18. Lakewood Publishing.

Cappon, L.J. (ed) (2012) The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams. 1812-1826. UNC Press Books.

Dreisbach, D.L. (1997) "Sowing Useful Truths and Principles: The Danbery Baptists, Thomas Jefferson, and the 'Wall of Separation'", Journal of Church and State 39(3): 455-501.

Gaustad, E.S. (1996) Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of Thomas Jefferson. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing.

Granados, L., Speckhardt, R. (eds.) (2013) The Jefferson Bible for the Twenty-First Century. Humanist Press.

Hamburger, Ph. (2002) Separation of Church and State. Harvard University Press. Holmes, D. (2006) The Faith of the Founding Fathers. New York: Oxford University Press.

Jefferson, T. (1990) Avtobiografia. Zametki o shtate Virginia [Autobiography. Notes on the State of Virginia, translated from English]. L.: Nauka.

Kosmatch, P.G. (2010) "Religioznye predstavlenia Tomasa Dzheffersona" [Religious Views of Thomas Jefferson], Vestnik BDU, 3 (2): 15-18.

Locke, J. (1988) "Poslanie o veroterpimosti" ["A Letter Concerning Toleration, translated from English"], Locke, D. Sochinenia. T. 3, ss. 91-134. M.: Mysl'.

McGarvie, M.D. (2016) Law and Religion in American History. Cambridge University Press.

Peterson, M.D. (ed.) (1984) Thomas Jefferson: Writings. New-York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc.

Pickering, W.S.F., Durkheim, E. (eds.) (2011) Durkheim on Religion: A Selection of Readings with Bibliographies and Introductory Remarks. Casemate Publishers.

Priestly, J.A. (2009) History of the Corruptions of Christianity (reprint of the 1871 edition). BiblioBazaar.

Sanford, Ch.B. (1984) The Religious Life of Thomas Jefferson. The University Press of Virginia.

page 195
Sheldon, G. (1996) Politicheskaia filosofia Tomasa Dzheffersona [The Political Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson, translated from English]. M.: Izdatel'stvo Respublika.

Smith, G.S. (2006) Faith and the Presidency: From George Washington to George W. Bush. Oxford University Press.

Smith, G.S. (2015) Religion in the Oval Office: The Religious Lives of American Presidents. Oxford University Press.

Sogrin, V.V. (1989) Dzefferson: Chelovek, myslitel', politik [Jefferson: Man, Thinker, Politician]. M.: Nauka.

Stepanova, E.A. (2015) "Post-sekuliarnaia religioznost': chelovek versus institute" [PostSecular Religiosity: Individual versus Institute], Religiovedenie 3: 56-65.

Stepanova, E.A. (2017) "'Nash Khristos - ne Vash Khristos: problema individual'noi interpretatsii cviaschennogo teksta" ["Our Christ is not your Christ": Challenge of Individual Interpretation of Sacred Text], Voprosy filosofii, 4: 50-60.

The Jefferson Bible. What Thomas Jefferson Selected as The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth (2012). Lakewood Publishing.

Throckmorton, W., Coulter, M. (2012) Getting Jefferson Right: Fact Checking Claims about Our Third President. Salem Grove Press.

page 196

Permanent link to this publication: