No, he's not mentioned by name in the Federalist Papers. No, he's not a Founding Father, or "the first American." No, our laws don't very much resemble the Ten Commandments. But early Americans saw in his words a tested pattern for self-government. That's plenty.
· My testimony before the State Board of Education in Austin, TX, Tues, 15 Nov 2018. The Board makes headlines for deciding on hot-button issues like this for Texas textbooks that are adopted by states across America.
· The PDF, an infographic overview
· John Calvin's influential notes on Deuteronomy 1:13, explicitly linking Moses to a concrete pattern of democracy
· John Cotton's "Moses His Judicials," discussing the Massachussets Bay Colony and Moses's institution (as they read it) of a representative proto-democracy
· Hooker's reading of Moses, delivered at the first meeting of Connecticut's founders
It bears mentioning that rank-and-file believers of the time thought of Moses as the deliverer of God's law, not a human scheme. They believed he bore the commandments from the mountain; they didn't think he came up with them. But, though Moses claims God spoke to him, he never claims this particular idea — "Take you wise men" — came from God. He's careful in what he attributes to divine inspiration and what comes from himself. This one comes from him.
The Bible and the Founders are both more brandished than sought. We talk about what we want our kids to know: what do *we* know? Both the pro-Moses and anti-Moses teams seem to be unaware of an important fact of how earlier Americans saw him. Show of hands: most of us didn't know this, or read about it in our textbooks when *we* were kids.
We can do better at remembrancing an exhilarating chapter in human history.
get in touch: email to bbbarry@yahoo.com