Founders Bible

Barton Offers 'Another Example of the Many Biblical Principles Directly Incorporated into the Constitution'

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Thursday, 10/25/2012 4:03 pm

A few months ago, we posted a video of David Barton falsely claiming that the Constitution's provision regarding treason "is a verbatim quote out of Ezekiel 18:20." Even by Barton's lax standards, this claim made no sense as the Bible passage has literally nothing to Constitutional provision he cited:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

vs

The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.

It turned out that Barton was not talking about the treason section of Article III, Section 3 but rather the provision pertaining to bills of attainder:

The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.

Obviously, this is not a "verbatim quote" either, but in his book "The Founders Bible" Barton tries to make the case that is evidence that these "Biblical principles [were] directly incorporated into the Constitution":

[W]hen a nation is under the curse of the Lord, children are punished for what their parents did ... But when the Lord exalts a nation, the policy changes - each individual's actions are imputed only to himself and not to his children ... Americans understood this Biblical principle, and so when they separated from Great Britain, they changed their laws accordingly so that no one would be punished for a crime he himself did not commit ... These two clauses are but another example of the many Biblical principles directly incorporated into the Constitution.

Barton's book also contains an article on the origins of the Declaration of Independence written by Paul Jehle, Executive Director of the Plymouth Rock Foundation, who claims that the rights mentioned in the document came directly out of the book of Genesis:

When we look at the Declaration of Independence and the truths they held as self-evident - the list of inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (which is another way the Founders spoke of the right to private property) - those ideas were not the invention of great minds of the Enlightenment; they originated with the source of light Himself, God. They were revealed truth our forefathers found in the pages of Scripture.

The charter that God made with Adam was threefold. First, "Be fruitful and multiply," which is mankind's basic right to life. Second, "fill or replenish, the earth." The Hebrew word fill or replenish involved the scientific method, meaning to take something that we observe, then break it down to its essential ingredients and reform it into a different form. It is a concept that requires the right to liberty. When we have liberty, we can take natural resources and then refill the earth with the same natural resources in different forms through invention and technology. Third, "subdue the earth and rule, or have dominion, over it," which is the right to own private property. Dominion of the earth simply means we have a parcel of land that is our exclusive possession that we steward before God.

Barton: Criticism of My Work is Just Like When God and Satan Tested Job

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Friday, 10/5/2012 11:45 am

During his appearance on Glenn Beck's radio program yesterday to discuss the debate, David Barton also also took a few minutes to promote his new book "The Founder's Bible" which he predicted would become "a new Geneva Bible" and shape the nation for generations to come.

Beck asserted that Barton and his work have been "ravaged" in order to undermine the credibility of his extraordinary important new book and Barton agreed, saying that the attacks on him are just like what took place when "God and Satan had debates over Job" as Satan is trying to destroy Barton's work before people start reading it:

Proof-Texting: An Insight Into How David Barton Constructs His Pseudo-History

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Thursday, 10/4/2012 5:15 pm

In Biblical interpretation, there are some who engage in a practice called "prooftexting" which is "the practice of using isolated quotations from a document to establish a proposition." In essence, it is a practice of pulling isolated passages, fragments, or even sometimes single words out of the Bible, removing them from their original context and then using similarities in language or symbolism to assert that the cited passages support a certain position or prophesied a certain event.

As anyone who has any familiarity with the "history" produced by David Barton knows, the practice of yanking things out of context and then making bold declarations based on linguistic or stylistic similarities is fundamental to his work.  And his new book, the Founders' Bible, provides a key insight into how this practice pervades all of Barton's work, be it interpreting the Bible or interpreting American history.

The book of Joshua kicks off with a sixteen page article on the history of the English language Bible in which Barton seeks to explain why, for most of Christian history, Bibles contained not only the 66 books found in current versions of the Bible, but dozens of other books as well, known as the Apocrypha.  It was not until the 1500s that these books began to be excluded from the Bible when it was decided that they were not "part of the authoritative canon of Scripture."

In seeking to explain why, after thousands of years, these other books were suddenly excluded from the Bible, Barton provided a lengthy explanation about how it was God himself who said that there were only to be 66 books in the Bible way back when Moses and the Israelites were still wandering in the desert.

As Barton sees it, when God was giving Moses instructions for the construction of the Tabernacle, He was very specific about the construction of the lampstand that was to serve as the light source within:

Make a lampstand of pure gold. Hammer out its base and shaft, and make its flowerlike cups, buds and blossoms of one piece with them. Six branches are to extend from the sides of the lampstand—three on one side and three on the other. Three cups shaped like almond flowers with buds and blossoms are to be on one branch, three on the next branch, and the same for all six branches extending from the lampstand. And on the lampstand there are to be four cups shaped like almond flowers with buds and blossoms. One bud shall be under the first pair of branches extending from the lampstand, a second bud under the second pair, and a third bud under the third pair—six branches in all. The buds and branches shall all be of one piece with the lampstand, hammered out of pure gold.

“Then make its seven lamps and set them up on it so that they light the space in front of it. Its wick trimmers and trays are to be of pure gold. A talent of pure gold is to be used for the lampstand and all these accessories. See that you make them according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.

Barton then explains that, throughout the Bible, a lamp or lampstand is frequently used as a symbol for the Word of God, which he claims, based upon the instructions from Exodus, demonstrate that God intended the Bible to contain exactly 66 books:

The lampstand was to have 7 branches, with 3 branches on each side of a center branch. Each branch was comprised of 3 cups in the shape of an almond blossom, and each cup had a bulb and a flower, thus 9 pieces (3+3+3) for one branch. The center branch had 4 cups, each with a bulb and a flower, or 12 pieces (4+4+4). So there are 6 outer branches of 9 pieces each and once center branch of 12, which means that the combined number of individual pieces (9+9+9+9+9+9+12) is 66.

The golden lampstand, being a type or symbol of the Word of God, has 66 individual pieces of hammered gold that are fashioned together into a single complete unit. And the Bible has 66 books, by dozens of authors, written over the span of some 1,500+ year, preserved and recorded for us upon who the ends of the age have come, fashioned together to create one amazing, continuous story that testifies of God and shines his light of His purpose and plan for salvation.

Is that coincidental, or is it God's providence?

There's more. Adding up the individual pieces of hammered gold of the first four branches of the lampstand (9+9+9+12) gives a total of 39 - the number of books in the Old Testament. Combing the individual pieces of the remaining three branches (9+9+9) yields a total of 27 - the precise number of books in the New Testament.

Not everyone is going to agree as to whether this proves anything, but it's hard not to agree that it is utterly amazing! The Bible has 39 Old Testament books + 27 New Testament book = 66 books of hammered pure gold that are considered one compete work - not just 39 or 27 or 80, but 66 Divinely inspired, purposed, and planned before the first one was ever penned.

And that is just one of the marvelous gems awaiting discovery in this supernatural Book! 

Barton: DNA Evidence is a Biblical Concept

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Wednesday, 10/3/2012 3:41 pm

As we noted yesterday, we are working our way through David Barton's new book "The Founders' Bible" and we've made it up to the book of Deuteronomy, which Barton has filled with articles about how the Founding Fathers disapproved of using the government to help the poor, wanted the Bible taught in schools, included God in the wording of oaths, created courts to carry out Biblical justice, and opposed the imposition of unbiblical progressive taxation:

America's original system of taxation treated Americans as individuals rather than as part of a group, and it allowed, figuratively speaking, for the sun to rise alike on the good and the evil, and the rain to fall equally on the just and the unjust. This is just one of the many areas in which the Constitution specifically incorporated Biblical principles. We would do well to return to the wisdom that God establish for how to order our society. Forsaking it only invites destruction.

There is also a long article defending the Biblical legitimacy of the death penalty, which Barton roots in Deuteronomy 17:6, which says that "on the evidence of two witnesses or three witnesses, he who is to die shall be put to death; he shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness."

Barton again asserts that this passage is the foundation for the Constitution's treason clause, but also explains that God was using DNA evidence way back in Genesis and so it counts as an "eyewitness" in today's courts of law:

Biblically, the death penalty could not be applied unless there were at least two eyewitnesses to the incident. Circumstantial evidence, even when strong, is not the equivalent of multiple eyewitnesses and therefore does not meet the Biblical standard. Interestingly, however, the Bible long ago acknowledged a specific eyewitness that only in recent decades has become recognized in Americans courts.

Recall the account of Cain's murder of his brother Abel from Genesis 4:8-10. When God asked Cain where his brother was and Cain lied, God specifically confronted him with the declaration: "The voice of your brother's blood is crying to Me from the ground" (v. 10). Blood cries out? Blood has a voice? How can that be? We now know that DNA has a voice - that it serves as an eyewitness to specific crimes, just as when it cried out to God about Abel's death. This voice therefore Biblically qualifies as one of the "two or three eyewitnesses" needed to secure the death penalty in a capital crime. 

Barton: The 4th of July and the Second Amendment Came Out of the Bible

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Tuesday, 10/2/2012 1:56 pm

Over the last several months, we have written a series of posts highlighting the various social, cultural, and governmental institutions that David Barton claims are directly rooted in the Bible.  For Barton, any parallel he can discover between a provision in the Constitution and language in the Bible can only mean that the latter was the cause for the former, often going so far as to falsely claim that the Constitution quotes the Bible "verbatim."

Now Barton has produced a new book called "The Founders' Bible" which is designed to help readers "discover the Scriptures that the Founders used as the basis for our original founding documents, see what chapters inspired them in the fight for independence, understand the sacrifices they made because of their Biblically-based beliefs and learn about America as a Christian nation."

We received our copy of the book today and we were not at all surprised to discover that it is full of the sorts of absurd claims we have come to expect from Barton.  In essence, the book is a Bible interspersed with long explanatory articles written by Barton explaining how the adjoining passages served as the foundation for America and our form of government.  

Many of the claims we have heard from Barton before, but the book also to contain several new ones, such as the statement that Independence Day was based on Biblical precedent. 

As Barton explains it:

The turning point for the independence of the Jews ... was the Passover, when God, in a miraculous demonstration of power, struck down the firstborn of the Egyptians. Out of all the amazing things along Israel's lengthy road to becoming an independent nation and people, God commanded them to remember that one particular event and to celebrate the anniversary of that one particular day every year thereafter (Exodus 13:10.) And not only were they to honor that day, but they were also to use it to teach the rising generation about what God had done in birthing their nation (Exodus 13:8.)

Barton then explains that some of the Founding Fathers "saw a correlation between the account in Exodus and the American experience," prompting him to declare that "the Fourth of July is an annual day of celebration and remembrance like that in Exodus 13 - one of the many American practices with Biblical precedents."

Later in the same chapter, Barton declares that the Second Amendment is rooted in Exodus 22 which says that "if a thief is caught breaking in at night and is struck a fatal blow, the defender is not guilty of bloodshed" (though Barton conveniently edits out the rest of the line, which says "but if it happens after sunrise, the defender is guilty of bloodshed.")  For Barton, this is proof that "the Second Amendment's 'right to keep and bear arms' is the constitutional embodiment of the Biblical right to self-defense found in Exodus 22 (and other passages) - another of the many American rights rooted in Biblical teachings."

These are just a few examples that jumped out at us in just the first two chapters of Barton's book, which contains several dozen of these sorts of explanatory articles through out its 2000+ pages; so undoubtedly this is merely the first in a series of posts highlighting the various claims Barton makes about how our social, cultural, and governmental institutions are all rooted in the Bible.

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Founders Bible Posts Archive

Barton Offers 'Another Example of the Many Biblical Principles Directly Incorporated into the Constitution'
SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Thursday 10/25/2012, 4:03pm
A few months ago, we posted a video of David Barton falsely claiming that the Constitution's provision regarding treason "is a verbatim quote out of Ezekiel 18:20." Even by Barton's lax standards, this claim made no sense as the Bible passage has literally nothing to Constitutional provision he cited: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open... MORE
Barton: Criticism of My Work is Just Like When God and Satan Tested Job
SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Friday 10/05/2012, 11:45am
During his appearance on Glenn Beck's radio program yesterday to discuss the debate, David Barton also also took a few minutes to promote his new book "The Founder's Bible" which he predicted would become "a new Geneva Bible" and shape the nation for generations to come. Beck asserted that Barton and his work have been "ravaged" in order to undermine the credibility of his extraordinary important new book and Barton agreed, saying that the attacks on him are just like what took place when "God and Satan had debates over Job" as Satan is trying to... MORE
Proof-Texting: An Insight Into How David Barton Constructs His Pseudo-History
SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Thursday 10/04/2012, 5:15pm
In Biblical interpretation, there are some who engage in a practice called "prooftexting" which is "the practice of using isolated quotations from a document to establish a proposition." In essence, it is a practice of pulling isolated passages, fragments, or even sometimes single words out of the Bible, removing them from their original context and then using similarities in language or symbolism to assert that the cited passages support a certain position or prophesied a certain event. As anyone who has any familiarity with the "history" produced by David... MORE
Barton: DNA Evidence is a Biblical Concept
SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Wednesday 10/03/2012, 3:41pm
As we noted yesterday, we are working our way through David Barton's new book "The Founders' Bible" and we've made it up to the book of Deuteronomy, which Barton has filled with articles about how the Founding Fathers disapproved of using the government to help the poor, wanted the Bible taught in schools, included God in the wording of oaths, created courts to carry out Biblical justice, and opposed the imposition of unbiblical progressive taxation: America's original system of taxation treated Americans as individuals rather than as part of a group, and it allowed, figuratively... MORE
Barton: The 4th of July and the Second Amendment Came Out of the Bible
SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Tuesday 10/02/2012, 1:56pm
Over the last several months, we have written a series of posts highlighting the various social, cultural, and governmental institutions that David Barton claims are directly rooted in the Bible.  For Barton, any parallel he can discover between a provision in the Constitution and language in the Bible can only mean that the latter was the cause for the former, often going so far as to falsely claim that the Constitution quotes the Bible "verbatim." Now Barton has produced a new book called "The Founders' Bible" which is designed to help readers "discover the... MORE