The Hebrew Bible in American History and Today’s Headlines

The world’s oldest best-seller is back in the news. In mid-June, Governor Jeff Landry (R) of Louisiana signed legislation requiring public classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. A week later, Oklahoma’s superintendent of public instruction announced plans to mandate teaching the Bible in public schools. In a July 4 op-ed, New York Times columnist Pamela Paul expressed her outrage at these measures. Her Independence Day essay, titled “Your Religious Values are Not American Values,” lamented these “flagrant” examples of “Judeo-Christian values” as “exclusionary” examples, reflective of “hypocrisy and intolerance.”

The constitutionality of such measures will no doubt be debated in the courts. In the meantime, it’s worth reminding Ms. Paul and all Americans that long before modern terms like “Judeo-Christian” became sources of political contention, the Hebrew Bible was a foundational influence as America forged its independence, and it has continued to play an impactful role in the almost two-and-a-half centuries since.

As my colleagues Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, Jonathan Silver, Matthew Holbreich and I documented in our sourcebook “Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land: The Hebrew Bible in the United States,” the American republic was born to the music of the Hebrew Bible, drawing from the moral and narrative inspiration of ancient Israel. The men of the First Continental Congress, despite their religious diversity, were united by a shared heritage rooted in the text of the Hebrew Bible, stretching back to their Puritan forefathers. They turned to the stories of the ancient Hebrews for inspiration, solidarity, comfort, and purpose.

John Adams thought the Bible “the best book in the world.” Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, when asked to design the new great seal of the United States, suggested images from Exodus.

This is not surprising considering how the Bible, and especially the Hebrew Bible, was the single most cited book during the Revolutionary era — more than the French political philosopher Montesquieu, the Roman statesman Cato the Elder and the Greek philosopher Plutarch.

Of course the role of the Hebrew Bible in America is bound up with Christian theology and doctrine, more so than with Judaism. There were very few Jews in the colonies and the United States’ earliest decades. But the metaphors, images, and narrative arcs that Americans have taken from the text to describe their own experience are distinct from, and cannot be fully encompassed or captured by, Christian theology

The impact of the Hebrew Bible, as we detail in the book, can be understood in four ways.

The first is as a source for, and an element of, American collective identity. The United States contains countless biblically-infused cities with names like “Zion,” “Canaan,” “Shiloh,” and “Salem.” Many American universities, such as Yale and Dartmouth, were founded as seminaries with broader purposes, and chose Hebrew mottos to encapsulate their mission. Harvard required its students to study Hebrew and commencement addresses were, for decades, delivered in that language.

Secondly, the Hebrew Bible has been a source of political and cultural vocabulary. When Thomas Paine wanted to make a case to the colonies that monarchy was a primitive, outdated, and illegitimate form of government, he cited the book of Samuel. Washington was compared to Moses, Joshua and Gideon. Sojourner Truth saw herself as Esther.

The biblical concepts of chosenness and covenant have long shaped American exceptionalism. Lincoln (also eulogized as having been like Moses) had referred to Americans as “God’s almost chosen people.” The story of God’s liberation of the Israelites from Egypt has been a unifying throughline throughout U.S. history, as I detail in my “The Promise of Liberty: A Passover Haggada.” To the Puritans, England was Egypt, the house of bondage, and their voyage across the Atlantic was their Exodus. To the Revolutionaries, George III was the tyrant Pharaoh. For enslaved Blacks, the North was Zion, and their songs and hymns were titled “Go Down Moses” and “Didn’t Ol’ Pharaoh Get Lost.” For Civil Rights leaders, it was the vision of the Promised Land that reflected the aspiration of equality for all Americans.

A third way that the Hebrew Bible has influenced American public life is by its ubiquity in crucial societal debates. There have been arguments for both republicanism and monarchy, for and against Revolution, and for and against the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution — all with the Hebrew Bible serving as a proof text. It was used to denounce slavery, and it was used to justify slavery. But both parties thought it necessary to demonstrate that the Hebrew Bible was on their side.

The fourth way that the Hebrew Bible has influenced America is through the eloquent language of the King James Bible. Its cadence and phrases influenced American novelists such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and William Faulkner, and statesmen like Presidents Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. In fact, American presidents, both Republican and Democrat, continue to consistently quote the Bible, and more often than not, the Hebrew Bible in the King James translation, in inaugural addresses. They do so because the Hebraic worldview articulates a vision of human life that is redemptive, endowed with sacred meaning, and which seeks to combine righteousness and freedom.

Of course, Ms. Paul’s essay is right when she notes that religious coercion is un-American. And, as she notes, the Good Book was used to justify evils like slavery and its language and themes don’t encompass the religious and atheistic diversity of today’s United States. But to ignore or dismiss the Bible’s role as an indelible element of the American experiment is to forget how the faith of Israel has been foundational to the country and can continue to serve as a significant and positive force. As David Brooks, also in The Times, put it recently, “The Bible gave generations of Americans a bedrock set of moral values, the conviction that we live within an objective moral order, the faith that the arc of history bends toward justice. Religious fervor drove many of our social movements, like abolitionism.”

To ignore or dismiss the Bible’s role as an indelible element of the American experiment is to forget how the faith of Israel has been foundational to the country and can continue to serve as a significant and positive force.

The biblical concepts of liberty, covenantal community, and moral responsibility are values all Americans, regardless of creed or perspective on today’s controversies, can continue to benefit from.

Rabbi Dr. Stuart Halpern is Senior Adviser to the Provost of Yeshiva University and Deputy Director of Y.U.’s Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought. His books include “The Promise of Liberty: A Passover Haggada,” which examines the Exodus story’s impact on the United States, “Esther in America,” “Gleanings: Reflections on Ruth” and “Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land: The Hebrew Bible in the United States.”