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Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers. By Daniel L. Dreisbach. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. 344. Cloth, $34.95.)
The Bible teaches Christians that their faith begins with the Word. Recent scholarship teaches historians of the early republic that their field has witnessed a return of the Word. A bookshelf with recent titles about the Bible in the early United States would include Eran Shalev, Ameri can Zion: 1 he Old Testament as a Political Text from the Revolution to the Civil War (New Haven, CT, 2013); James P. Byrd, Sacred Scripture, Sacred War: The Bible and the American Revolution (Oxford, UK, 2013); and Mark A. Noll, In the Beginning Was the Word: The Bible in American Public Life, 1492-1783 (Oxford, UK, 2015). Daniel L. Dreisbach's Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers is a significant recent addition. As the title suggests, Dreisbach's subject is biblical literacy. The creation of the United States occurred in a biblically literate culture. Although few scholars would challenge this observation, Dreisbach argues that historians have failed to recognize the high biblical literacy of the nation's founders. According to Dreisbach, the Bible permeated "both the private expressions and the public pronouncements of those who shaped the new nation and its civic institutions" (3).
Dreisbach focuses primarily on the words of men active in American public life between 1760 and 1800. His subjects are all familiar to historians of the period. He includes individuals of national prominence such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams but also regional elites such as ministers and state-level politicians. Despite their differences, Dreisbach argues that these men...