This site is owned and operated by Bruce D. Kothmann. The site is my repository of political commentary, with a special interest in the intersection of religion and politics (plus the occasional diversion into mathematics). Please send me e-mail with comments, criticisms, etc.

The name, "Jefferson Bible", was motivated in part by something that then candidate George W. Bush said during one of the primary debates for the Republican nomination in the 2000 presidential election. Bush asserted that Jesus was his favorite political philosopher. Of course, he didn't really mean it. This was merely a prepared answer for any question demanding specific identification of any historical figure. In any context whatsoever. ("Just say Jesus--no one can fault your for that.")

But, what if Bush had actually meant it? What if you took the teachings of Jesus, as recorded in the Gospels of the New Testament, and attempted to extract some notion of a "political philosophy"? You might start by excising the references to the divinity of Christ, and leave only his teachings, favoring moral parables to eschatological prophesy. Remarkably, this has already been done, nearly two centuries ago, by the greatest political thinker in American history. The result was a document he called "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth." Here is how Jefferson described the project:

"In extracting the pure principles which he [Jesus] taught, we should have to strip off the artificial vestments...There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man. I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging, the matter which is evidently his..."

I have omitted the more inflamatory portions of Jefferson's description (hence the "...") with the hope of someday developing a more complete exposition on his views of Jewish and Christian theology.

If you actually read the "Jefferson Bible", you find no mention of the evils of homosexuality, or of the importance of family-friendly tax cuts, but plenty of warnings of the evil of material wealth and the futility of war. In short, you find a liberal political manifesto. I hope to add more details of this assertion later...

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Only 2 days after this site was launched, an article about the Jefferson Bible appeared in the Washington Post. Shortly thereafter, the University of Virginia's student newspaper, the Cavalier Daily, also ran a story.

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I put together the layout of this site by reading one of the O'Reilly Nutshell books. I also learned a lot of useful stuff about "PHP" from the DevShed website.

I formatted the site so that I think it looks pretty good with 12-point Times as the default font. You can set this in Netscape from the Edit->Preferences menu. Go to the "Fonts" tab under "Appearance".

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