Jefferson completes his Life and Morals of Jesus; CCWV.LIFE

In 1820 Thomas Jefferson, in retirement at Monticello, completes The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth: the gospel narratives cut and pasted into a single life of Jesus with the miracles, the resurrection, and every supernatural claim removed. Jefferson, who had called himself a Christian in the sole sense Jesus wished disciples to be, leaves the book unpublished; it is printed by the government in 1904.

Tagged: Deism

The Event

Date: 1820 (exact)
Era: The Revolutionary Age; Standard periodization of deist history
Location: Monticello; today Charlottesville, Virginia
Traditions: Deism
Streams: Deism
Key figures: Thomas Jefferson
Key texts: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth

Connections

Illustration for Ethan Allen's Reason, the Only Oracle of Man

History Event Ethan Allen's Reason, the Only Oracle of Man 1784 the revolutionary generation's deism in its most careful form

Primary Sources

Jefferson, Thomas. The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. Monticello manuscript, 1820.

Secondary Sources

Barnett, S. J. The Enlightenment and Religion: The Myths of Modernity. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003.
Byrne, Peter. Natural Religion and the Nature of Religion: The Legacy of Deism. London: Routledge, 1989.
Walters, Kerry S. The American Deists: Voices of Reason and Dissent in the Early Republic. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992.

Provenance: HIST-1370; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-30.