Reservations and Ruminations among the American Founders over the Historicity, Authenticity and Authority of Mosaic Law, 1770–1830

This chapter begins what can justifiably be considered a second major part of Section One, both theoretically and historically. The first three chapters of this study (Chaps. 2 , 3 and 4 ) are all premised on the theoretical discussion about, and/or actual, practical application of, Mosaic Law to public and official socio-political affairs. These theories and (proposed) applications were hammered out within the process of European nation-state formation as well as North American colonial legal affairs and later national independence. The latter redefined the nature of the colonies as autonomous constitutional states, requiring revision of both national and state law codes which were autonomously distinct from but in sufficient harmony with one another and the newly forged Constitution and appended Bill of Rights. Though necessarily involving Europe, these theoretical discussions and (proposed) applications all took place during the crucial pre-founding and founding eras of American history, with the pre-founding era treated primarily for purposes of providing proper background and context to the question of Mosaic Law in the founding of America as a nation. Notwithstanding the first section of this chapter which covers the period from 1758–72, the primary focus shifts chronologically at this juncture within the study (Chaps. 6 , 7 , and 8 ) to the late founding and early post-founding eras of American history, reaching down to the 1830s. This history provides important continuing context which helps elucidate the founding era in retrospect. But along with the chronological transition, Chapter 6 also shifts its primary (though not exclusive) focus to debates over the historicity, authenticity, and authority of Mosaic Law from a historical-critical point of view. This stands in contrast to the more theological-legal angles covered in the previous chapters, though theological-legal engagement remains part of this late founding and early post-founding period as well. The chapter makes a unique contribution to the history of biblical criticism within the United States against the background of John Adam’s reference to “the Controversies in Germany and the learned Researches of Universities and Professors” over these selfsame issues. It provides an in-depth look at how key American founders were impacted by the increasing complexity of critical biblical and historical scholarship emerging across Europe in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries which contributed to continued declining confidence in the authenticity and authority of not only Mosaic Law, but the Mosaic corpus as a whole, while certain of the American founders themselves in turn then contributed to the widening and deepening of these trends within the American context during this crucial early phase of the new republic.