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