The Gospels in THE GOSPEL…

In The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Count Leo Tolstoy: Discord, three versions of the New Testament are presented. What’s their history?

Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens, and Leo Tolstoy lived thousands of miles and dozens of years from one another. One was a Founding Father enthralled with science and the Enlightenment, another was a prolific and imaginative story crafter, and the third a sweeping chronicler of his time and an anarchist. They did have something in common, though: each wrote their own version of the gospels.

And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. — Thomas Jefferson; So Mary laid her pretty little boy in what is called the Manger, which is the place the horses eat out of. And there he fell asleep. — Charles Dickens; The birth of Jesus Christ happened like this:…she gave birth to her first son and named him Jesus. And the boy grew up and became a young man. — Leo Tolstoy

Thomas Jefferson steadfastly refused to discuss his religious beliefs publicly. For Jefferson, an individual’s relationship with the divine was private and inviolable, “a matter between every man and his maker, in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle.” He did believe, however, that the teachings of Jesus could be used to promote social harmony, something Jefferson saw as essential to the survival of the young nation. To that end, he made two versions of his gospel, each constructed with verses cut from the full Bible and pasted into a journal. The first, constructed while he was in the White House, was aimed at promoting social harmony and has been lost to time, but the second survives, pasted in four columns of English, French, Latin, and Greek. This second version was for Jefferson alone; it was never meant for anyone’s eyes but his own. It emphasizes the facts of Jesus’ life and the specifics of his morals and teachings, keeping only the verses that could be supported by reason. The book’s existence remained a secret until 1895, when Jefferson’s great-granddaughter sold the work to the Smithsonian.

To flip through the pages of the digitized version of Jefferson’s bible and learn more about the painstaking efforts to preserve it, visit the Smithsonian’s online exhibition on the book.

Jefferson’s gospel was literally cut-and-pasted together. On the left is a full spread, with all four language columns. On the right is a close-up of his handiwork.

A page from Dickens’ handwritten manuscript

Charles Dickens had one thing in common with Jefferson: his gospel was never meant to be seen by the public. Though he was a ferociously prolific writer who published more than 40 works in just 34 years, his gospel was written only for his family, and opens with the exhortation: “My dear children, I am very anxious that you should know something about the History of Jesus Christ.” The brief, simple retelling of the gospel story displays little of Dickens’ usual verbosity; instead, he presents a short story full of heroes, like “John, the good man” and villains, like “Bad King Herod.” He also includes the miracles that Jefferson’s gospel refused.

Despite his millions of fans and a lucrative publishing career, Dickens asked that the handwritten manuscript be kept secret and separate from the public during his or his children’s lifetimes. Indeed, it only came to light after his youngest child died, decades after Dickens himself, and the manuscript is now part of the Dickens Collection in the Rare Books Department at the Free Library of Philadelphia.

Of the three, only Leo Tolstoy wrote his take on the gospels with the intention of publication. The author of the sweeping epics War and Peace and Anna Karenina underwent an emotional crisis at the height of his success, and found meaning in Christianity. Like Jefferson’s version, Tolstoy’s removes the miracles and other aspects of the story he deems impossible, choosing instead to focus on Jesus’ specific teachings. In his preface, Tolstoy defends his deletions and edits, calling the church’s urge to hold the gospels as holy and untouchable “reprehensible and godless.”

Where Jefferson used the physical pages of the Bible to build his version with the words of the King James, Tolstoy instead taught himself Greek, studied the original texts, and wrote his version as both a fusion of the gospels and a new translation. He hoped to make a gospel that was understandable to ordinary Russian people, but due to government and church censorship, he could not publish the book in Russia for 25 years. Instead, he sent it out into the world, seeing French and English translations published well before his Russian version and reaching a wider audience sooner than his fellow gospelists Jefferson and Dickens ever hoped to.

Join us for The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Count Leo Tolstoy: Discord at Lantern Theater Company, June 1 — July 9, 2017. Visit our website for tickets and information.

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