The Bible: Source for the writing of the Constitution discussion
Hope you read the original post here...
"Three fourths of the Biblical citations in Lutz's 1760 to 1805 sample come, not from secular sources, but from reprinted sermons (one of the most popular types of political writing during these years)"
Terribly slanted anti-Bible posting found here
Lutz: "The Bible's prominence disappears, which is not surprising since the debate centered upon specific institutions about which the Bible has little to say. The Anti-Federalists do drag it in with respect to basic principles of government, but the Federalist's inclination to Enlightenment rationalism is most evident here in their failure to consider the Bible relevant....The debate surrounding the adoption of the Constitution was fought out mainly in the context of Montesquieu, Blackstone, the English Whigs, and major writers of the Enlightenment (Relative Influence, pp. 194-195)"
Let's see, the political writings of the day included 75% sermons and yet the Bible wasn't relevant to the writing of the Constitution??!! Are you unable to see the forest for the trees? The Bible was an integral part of political life and thought during that time period. Half the framers of the Constitution were regular church members and probably all but two or three of them were at the very least Deists. The Ten Commandments was more central to the formation of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights than was any document produced by a "writer of the Enlightenment".
Let's take a look at the Declaration of Independence, which begins:
"WHEN in the Course of human Events,
it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.
WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness -- That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
Our founding fathers acknowledged a Creator God and used the Bible as a basis for the writing of the Constitution. They continually referenced God and the Bible in their personal writings. Both God and the Bible were integral to political discourse in the 1700's no matter what kind of spin modern observers wish to place upon history today.
"This post has a whiff of defensiveness about it. Sure the Bible reflects literary, historical, metaphorical and mythological merit - but not evenly throughout. It is an anthology, and does not evenly reflect all these things throughout. Because, say, it can be verified that some lake where Jesus supposedly preached actually exists does not serve as proof of some of the more miraculous sections of the Bible, which are far more in line with other existing creation myths and hagiologies.
The Bible is an impressive literary work on many levels, but that holds true whether God exists or not, and it holds true whether the Bible was created by God or by man. Nothing wrong with that either way."
The post was not defensive since it was not in reply to any kind of attack. That the facts in the Bible are verifiable may not prove it is true but it certainly starts us down that road.
"It can be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference."
Or not. How about Jericho? At the earliest, the Exodus was said to have happened in the 15th century BC (most accepted dates are later than this). However, almost all archaeologists agree that at this time Jericho was nothing more than a pile of rubble and had been that way for at least a hundred years."
Nelson Glueck said it, not me. Nelson Glueck was accomplished enough as an archaelogist and expert on ancient literature to have not only the acclaim of colleagues but to have made the cover of Time Magazine.
Brief Encyclopedia reference: Glueck, Nelson (glook, glik) [key], 1900–1971, American archaeologist and educator, b. Cincinnati, grad. Univ. of Cincinnati, 1920, Ph.D. Univ. of Jena, Germany, 1926. Among the more than 1,000 sites in the Middle East that Glueck uncovered were the copper mines of King Solomon and the ancient Red Sea port of Ezion Geber. In 1947 he became president of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati; from 1950 he served as president of the merged Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion. He wrote several books on archaeology, including Explorations in Eastern Palestine (4 vol., 1934–51), The Other Side of the Jordan (1940), The River Jordan (1946), Rivers in the Desert: A History of the Negev (1959), Deities and Dolphins (1965), and Hesed in the Bible (1968).
Commenter, you are just offering up an argument modern anti-Bible scholars will use, advancing the dates on events of the past until they don't fit in with the archaelogical findings. Let's see some kind of verification of your dates for the Exodus and the destruction of Jericho before even considering what you have posted.
~~~~~~~
I do not claim that the Constitution is a religious document. I don't say that the framers of the Constitution wanted a theocracy because they didn't. The framers of our Constitution considered a belief in God to be fundamental to the point of going without being said. They didn't wish to eliminate God from government, but rather to incorporate Godly principles into a document establishing a secular form of government that would be friendly to all stated belief systems. Look at the very first amendment to the Constitution, the beginning of what we call the Bill of Rights:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
One of the great shames of the secularists of this century, the left-wing liberals and the ACLU is that they have found a way to frustrate and break this amendment on the grounds of "separation of church and state" which is not found in the Constitution anywhere. The writers of this amendment put religion first, being concerned about conditions in the continent that they had fled might occur here. They wanted to guarantee that no state religion would be established and no religious expression would be banned. Every time a Christmas creche is taken down by order of a cowardly court, every time a school changes the words to "Silent Night" for fear of the ACLU, every time Hannukah candles are banned from a courthouse lawn the founding fathers might well roll over in their graves. For there is a state religion being established: Humanism. Christianity and Judaism in particular are under attack, with the document meant to protect them being (falsely) used as the weapon against them.
"Three fourths of the Biblical citations in Lutz's 1760 to 1805 sample come, not from secular sources, but from reprinted sermons (one of the most popular types of political writing during these years)"
Terribly slanted anti-Bible posting found here
Lutz: "The Bible's prominence disappears, which is not surprising since the debate centered upon specific institutions about which the Bible has little to say. The Anti-Federalists do drag it in with respect to basic principles of government, but the Federalist's inclination to Enlightenment rationalism is most evident here in their failure to consider the Bible relevant....The debate surrounding the adoption of the Constitution was fought out mainly in the context of Montesquieu, Blackstone, the English Whigs, and major writers of the Enlightenment (Relative Influence, pp. 194-195)"
Let's see, the political writings of the day included 75% sermons and yet the Bible wasn't relevant to the writing of the Constitution??!! Are you unable to see the forest for the trees? The Bible was an integral part of political life and thought during that time period. Half the framers of the Constitution were regular church members and probably all but two or three of them were at the very least Deists. The Ten Commandments was more central to the formation of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights than was any document produced by a "writer of the Enlightenment".
Let's take a look at the Declaration of Independence, which begins:
"WHEN in the Course of human Events,
it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.
WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness -- That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
Our founding fathers acknowledged a Creator God and used the Bible as a basis for the writing of the Constitution. They continually referenced God and the Bible in their personal writings. Both God and the Bible were integral to political discourse in the 1700's no matter what kind of spin modern observers wish to place upon history today.
"This post has a whiff of defensiveness about it. Sure the Bible reflects literary, historical, metaphorical and mythological merit - but not evenly throughout. It is an anthology, and does not evenly reflect all these things throughout. Because, say, it can be verified that some lake where Jesus supposedly preached actually exists does not serve as proof of some of the more miraculous sections of the Bible, which are far more in line with other existing creation myths and hagiologies.
The Bible is an impressive literary work on many levels, but that holds true whether God exists or not, and it holds true whether the Bible was created by God or by man. Nothing wrong with that either way."
The post was not defensive since it was not in reply to any kind of attack. That the facts in the Bible are verifiable may not prove it is true but it certainly starts us down that road.
"It can be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference."
Or not. How about Jericho? At the earliest, the Exodus was said to have happened in the 15th century BC (most accepted dates are later than this). However, almost all archaeologists agree that at this time Jericho was nothing more than a pile of rubble and had been that way for at least a hundred years."
Nelson Glueck said it, not me. Nelson Glueck was accomplished enough as an archaelogist and expert on ancient literature to have not only the acclaim of colleagues but to have made the cover of Time Magazine.
Brief Encyclopedia reference: Glueck, Nelson (glook, glik) [key], 1900–1971, American archaeologist and educator, b. Cincinnati, grad. Univ. of Cincinnati, 1920, Ph.D. Univ. of Jena, Germany, 1926. Among the more than 1,000 sites in the Middle East that Glueck uncovered were the copper mines of King Solomon and the ancient Red Sea port of Ezion Geber. In 1947 he became president of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati; from 1950 he served as president of the merged Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion. He wrote several books on archaeology, including Explorations in Eastern Palestine (4 vol., 1934–51), The Other Side of the Jordan (1940), The River Jordan (1946), Rivers in the Desert: A History of the Negev (1959), Deities and Dolphins (1965), and Hesed in the Bible (1968).
Commenter, you are just offering up an argument modern anti-Bible scholars will use, advancing the dates on events of the past until they don't fit in with the archaelogical findings. Let's see some kind of verification of your dates for the Exodus and the destruction of Jericho before even considering what you have posted.
~~~~~~~
I do not claim that the Constitution is a religious document. I don't say that the framers of the Constitution wanted a theocracy because they didn't. The framers of our Constitution considered a belief in God to be fundamental to the point of going without being said. They didn't wish to eliminate God from government, but rather to incorporate Godly principles into a document establishing a secular form of government that would be friendly to all stated belief systems. Look at the very first amendment to the Constitution, the beginning of what we call the Bill of Rights:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
One of the great shames of the secularists of this century, the left-wing liberals and the ACLU is that they have found a way to frustrate and break this amendment on the grounds of "separation of church and state" which is not found in the Constitution anywhere. The writers of this amendment put religion first, being concerned about conditions in the continent that they had fled might occur here. They wanted to guarantee that no state religion would be established and no religious expression would be banned. Every time a Christmas creche is taken down by order of a cowardly court, every time a school changes the words to "Silent Night" for fear of the ACLU, every time Hannukah candles are banned from a courthouse lawn the founding fathers might well roll over in their graves. For there is a state religion being established: Humanism. Christianity and Judaism in particular are under attack, with the document meant to protect them being (falsely) used as the weapon against them.