On the latest episode of his “Foundations of Freedom” series, right-wing pseudo-historian David Barton repeated his claim that the concept of adolescence is entirely unbiblical.
Joined by his “WallBuilders Live” co-host Rick Green, Barton asserted that “adolescence is a term that never existed in the Bible because there was never a time when you were not to be a man or a woman.”
“That’s why David was just a teen, maybe a pre-teen, when he slew the lion and the bear and Goliath,” he stated. “King Josiah was 8 years old when he started to reign. Samuel, they say he may have been somewhere between 4 and 12 when the Lord spoke to him and called him to his ministry there with Eli. Jesus was 12 years old when he was in the temple confounding the doctors of the law.”
“In the Hebrew culture,” Barton continued, “when you were 13 years old, you were a man. You went from being a boy to being a man. When you turned 13, no longer were your parents responsible for you because you’re a man, you answer for your own decisions, you make your own decisions.”
In an effort to bolster his argument, Barton later went on to repeat his false claim that the Pony Express was staffed with young orphans who rode hundreds of miles a day alone across the country.
