In the early nineteenth century Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States and principal author of the Declaration of Independence, conceived the idea of extracting a gospel purified of what he saw as extraneous philosophical, mythological, and theological elements.
This work was never published during Jefferson\'s lifetime, but was inherited by.
To do so, he took verses from the four canonical gospels and arranged them into a single narrative, focusing on the actual words of Jesus.
In the early nineteenth century Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States and principal author of the Declaration of Independence, conceived the idea of extracting a gospel purified of what he saw as extraneous philosophical, mythological, and theological elements