How are the creed?’s three conclusions derived from the Bible? Freedom is the message of the Exodus, one of the Hebrew Bible?’s great underlying themes. Bible readers believed that the Exodus story predicted the fate of nations. The literary scholar David Jeffrey names three major works that ?“illustrate the power of the Exodus story in the formation of American national identity?”: Samuel Mather?’s Figures and Types of the Old Testament (1673), Cotton Mather?’s Magnalia Christi Americana (a history of 17th-century New England, 1702), and Jeremiah Romayne?’s The American Israel (1795).----V
In 1777 Nicholas Street preached in East Haven, Connecticut:
The British tyrant is only acting over the same wicked and cruel part, that Pharaoh king of Egypt acted toward the children of Israel some 3,000 years ago.
The same day the Declaration of Independence was adopted, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson were appointed as a committee to propose a seal for the brand-new United States. Given what we know about Americanism, it is hardly surprising that they suggested an image of Israel crossing the Red Sea and Moses lit by the pillar of fire, with the motto: ?“Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.?” (The seal was never adopted, but a copy of the recommendation survives in the papers of the Continental Congress.)
Next, equality. Equality was connected with Genesis?—every man is created in God?’s image?—and also with the powerful anti-monarchy message delivered by the prophet Samuel. Abraham Lincoln took the largest and most important step in American history toward putting this part of the creed into effect, and also gave the clearest exposition of its biblical roots. Citing the words of the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln said:
This was [the Founding Fathers?’] lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to His creatures. Yes, gentlemen, to all His creatures, to the whole great family of man. In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on, and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows. They grasped not only the whole race of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity.
A near-relative of Lincoln?’s argument appears in one of the first documents of colonial American history, Alexander Whitaker?’s Good Newes From Virginia of 1613. Whitaker urges that the Indians be well treated; after all, ?“One God created us, they have reasonable soules and intellectuall faculties as well as wee; we all have Adam for our common parent: yea, by nature the condition of us both is all one.?”
There is also a remarkable similarity between Lincoln?’s thought and a rabbinic midrash according to which a phrase in Genesis?—?“these are the archives of Adam?’s descendants?”?—is the single greatest statement in the Torah. Why? Because it teaches that all men, being descended from the same ancestors, are equal in dignity.
Of the creed?’s three elements, democracy might seem the least likely to be traced back to biblical sources?—but Americans of past ages knew the Bible much better than we do. The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, often called the ?“first written constitution of modern democracy,?” were inspired not by democratic Athens or republican Rome or Enlightenment philosophy but by a Puritan preacher?’s interpretation of a verse in the Hebrew Bible. They were drafted in May 1638, in response to a sermon by Thomas Hooker before the general assembly in Hartford.
By Sam Adams of Braintree
In 1777 Nicholas Street preached in East Haven, Connecticut:
The British tyrant is only acting over the same wicked and cruel part, that Pharaoh king of Egypt acted toward the children of Israel some 3,000 years ago.
The same day the Declaration of Independence was adopted, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson were appointed as a committee to propose a seal for the brand-new United States. Given what we know about Americanism, it is hardly surprising that they suggested an image of Israel crossing the Red Sea and Moses lit by the pillar of fire, with the motto: ?“Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.?” (The seal was never adopted, but a copy of the recommendation survives in the papers of the Continental Congress.)
Next, equality. Equality was connected with Genesis?—every man is created in God?’s image?—and also with the powerful anti-monarchy message delivered by the prophet Samuel. Abraham Lincoln took the largest and most important step in American history toward putting this part of the creed into effect, and also gave the clearest exposition of its biblical roots. Citing the words of the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln said:
This was [the Founding Fathers?’] lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to His creatures. Yes, gentlemen, to all His creatures, to the whole great family of man. In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on, and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows. They grasped not only the whole race of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity.
A near-relative of Lincoln?’s argument appears in one of the first documents of colonial American history, Alexander Whitaker?’s Good Newes From Virginia of 1613. Whitaker urges that the Indians be well treated; after all, ?“One God created us, they have reasonable soules and intellectuall faculties as well as wee; we all have Adam for our common parent: yea, by nature the condition of us both is all one.?”
There is also a remarkable similarity between Lincoln?’s thought and a rabbinic midrash according to which a phrase in Genesis?—?“these are the archives of Adam?’s descendants?”?—is the single greatest statement in the Torah. Why? Because it teaches that all men, being descended from the same ancestors, are equal in dignity.
Of the creed?’s three elements, democracy might seem the least likely to be traced back to biblical sources?—but Americans of past ages knew the Bible much better than we do. The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, often called the ?“first written constitution of modern democracy,?” were inspired not by democratic Athens or republican Rome or Enlightenment philosophy but by a Puritan preacher?’s interpretation of a verse in the Hebrew Bible. They were drafted in May 1638, in response to a sermon by Thomas Hooker before the general assembly in Hartford.
By Sam Adams of Braintree
