EVERY BODY:

The book is at its best--and shows how it is "the product of three decades of research"--when Dreisbach makes a point about the Bible and then uses a Founder to illustrate his observation or, even better, quotes a Founder making his point for him. Such is the case when Dreisbach claims that "the founding generation wove biblical language, often without quotation marks or explicit references" because "quotation marks and citations were unnecessary to identify the source of words so familiar to a biblically literate people."

Dreisbach's opponents may take issue with him here. Perhaps the Founders used biblical phrases without even knowing they were in the Bible. Dreisbach thinks the reverse is far more likely. The Founders knew the Bible, even if historians do not: "The failure to recognize Washington's numerous biblical references perhaps indicates widespread biblical illiteracy among modern scholars."

But whether quotation marks were unnecessary for the Founding generation isn't a matter on which Dreisbach is speculating. He turns to historical testimony. When Benjamin Franklin--hardly the poster child for Christian America--agreed to translate and publish a Boston minister's sermon for a European audience, he told the minister he would have to insert scriptural citations for the biblically illiterate non-Americans:

It was not necessary in New England where every body reads the Bible, and is acquainted with Scripture Phrases, that you should note the Texts from which you took them; but I have observed in England as well as in France, that Verses and Expressions taken from the sacred Writings, and not known to be such, appear very strange and awkward to some Readers; and I shall therefore in my Edition take the Liberty of marking the quoted Texts in the margin.

The translation that "every body" read in the Founding era was the King James Version, which has two advantages: It uses few words, and the words it uses are short. But, Dreisbach says, it also "enjoyed the favor of English authorities." Why? He hides the answer in a footnote on page 250: "The marginal notes in the Geneva Bible," its chief rival, "were an irritant to civil rulers, especially James I, because they were said to articulate a right to resist tyrannical rulers." As Dreisbach makes clear, the Founders did not require margin notes to defend a revolution. [...]

[S]ome Founders were Bible students, teachers, or even commentators. John Witherspoon was a clergyman as well as president of the College of New Jersey; his student, James Madison, could read the Bible in Greek and Hebrew. Roger Sherman published a sermon on the Lord's Supper; John Dickinson left behind a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, and Samuel Osgood wrote "a 500-page commentary entitled Remarks on the Book of Daniel, and on the Revelations (1794)." Something tells me I'd rather read Dreisbach on Osgood than Osgood on Daniel.

The Founders made a serious push to get the Bible into people's hands. Elias Boudinot served as the first president of the American Bible Society; John Jay served as the second. John Quincy Adams, Francis Scott Key, and John Marshall served as vice-presidents.

Dreisbach exhibits impressive craftsmanship in his chapters on single verses. His chapter on Proverbs 14:34 ("Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people") shows his method at its best. He first sets the stage with some appropriate quote from a Founder, places the verse in its biblical context, and proceeds to show the extent to which the writer or speaker used, adapted, or modified the verse.

George Mason's concern for national righteousness is as striking as it is prophetic:

In a speech in the Constitutional Convention on the corrupting effects of slavery, Mason argued that slavery produces "the most pernicious effect on manners. Every master of slaves," he declared, "is born a petty tyrant." The scourge of slavery, he continued, will "bring the judgment of heaven on a Country. As nations can not be rewarded or punished in the next world they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes & effects providence punishes national sins, by national calamities."

When considering Proverbs 29:2 ("When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn"), Dreisbach goes so far as to consider whether the King James Version correctly translates the Hebrew text. He also nicely catalogs the different ways the same Founder could use a verse. For example, George Washington uses Micah 4:4 both as an expression of hospitality ("I should be very happy in seeing you under my vine and fig tree") and as a picture of religious liberty (in his1790 letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island).

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