Jefferson Bible - Recent History

Recent History

In 1895, the Smithsonian Institution under the leadership of librarian Cyrus Adler purchased the original Jefferson Bible from Jefferson's great-granddaughter Carolina Randolph for $400. A conservation effort commencing in 2009, in partnership with the museum's Political History department, allowed for a public unveiling in an exhibit open from November 11, 2011, through May 28, 2012, at the National Museum of American History. Also displayed were the source books from which Jefferson cut his selected passages, and the 1904 edition of the Jefferson Bible requested and distributed by the United States Congress. The exhibit was accompanied by an interactive digital facsimile available on the museum's public website. On February 20, 2012, the Smithsonian Channel premiered the documentary Jefferson's Secret Bible.


  • The Jefferson Bible at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History

  • Fold-out tab Jefferson glued in the margin of page 56

  • Jefferson textually corrects "out" into "up"

  • Jefferson extracts the word "as" from a sentence, to avoid three prepositions in a row

  • TJB Stubs.jpg

    Visible here are the stubs, placed in-between pages by the bookbinder

  • TJB Sampling.jpg

    Conservators take samples from the pages

  • TJB Facing.jpg

    Janice Stagnitto Ellis "facing" the covers of the bible

  • TJB Separating Cover.jpg

    Removing the leather cover from the pages

  • TJB Cleaning Spine.jpg

    Cleaning the spine of the now disbound book

  • TJB Separating Pages.jpg

    Separating the pages of the Jefferson Bible

  • TJB Endband.jpg

    One of the endbands from the Jefferson Bible

  • TJB Mend Trimming.jpg

    Conservator trims the mending tissue away from the edges using a scalpel while viewing the artifact with a microscope

  • TJB Mending Pages.jpg

    Emily Rainwater mends a page of the Jefferson Bible

  • TJB Stub Removal.jpg

    Laura Bedford removes a stub from the gutter of a folio

  • TJB Cleaning.jpg

    Sarah Emerson cleans the surface of all of a folio with a soft goat-hair brush

  • TJB Resewing.jpg

    Resewing the Jefferson Bible

  • TJB Resewn Endbands.jpg

    The original endbands are resewn

  • Marbled paper inside the book's covers

  • TJB After Treatment.jpg

    The Jefferson Bible after treatment

  • Source Books 1 and 2.jpg

    The source books Jefferson used to extract his verses

  • Source Book Close Up.jpg

    Jefferson's meticulous excisions

  • Jefferson Bible Government Facsimile.jpg

    A Jefferson Bible Government Printing Office fascimile

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