The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth

The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth is a book by Thomas Jefferson, first published in 1895. Compiled by Jefferson from the four canonical Gospels, this concise volume arranges selected passages in chronological order to emphasise Jesus’s ethical teachings and parables while omitting supernatural claims.

The work reflects Jefferson’s Enlightenment outlook — a judicious, skeptical reading that seeks the moral core of the Gospels rather than doctrinal orthodoxy. Written as a personal synthesis rather than a text intended for church use, the book has had lasting cultural interest for its unusual combination of classical republican thought and biblical scholarship.

Readers drawn to historical religious studies, Enlightenment-era critiques of faith, or the history of American intellectual life will find this work a compact and provocative statement on the moral instruction Jefferson valued. It remains frequently referenced in discussions of Jefferson’s religious views, the American Enlightenment, and the long debate over reason and faith in public life.