National Bible Week
Floor Speech
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Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, it is always enjoyable to speak to Bible Week and always enjoyable for Doug Lamborn to give me a couple of minutes.
National Bible Week, of course, begins every year on Thanksgiving and continues for the week after Thanksgiving.
One of the prior speakers, searching to say something unique about the Bible, talked about the number of books that have been printed. I would like to point out, since we are commanded under the Bible to share the Word of Christ and spread the Word of Christ around the world, the Bible, I believe, is the most translated book in the world. The Bible is right now translated into 3,700 different languages, which is a testament to the degree to which Christians are taking it to heart to spread the book throughout the world.
Now, the reason we have Bible Week in the United States is the Bible is more important than any other book in putting together our Constitution, putting together the laws we live under. There was a study done by something called the American Political Science Review in which they reviewed all the writings by our Founding Fathers: John Dickinson, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, the whole bunch. They found that the Bible was the most cited book of our forefathers.
That is not surprising. What I did find interesting is that one-third of the citations in the writings of our forefathers were from the Bible itself. I find this hard to believe, but in the article, they said the most cited book in the Bible was Deuteronomy. I would have guessed it was somewhere in the New Testament or Psalms. Even I will say that Deuteronomy is the most cited book in the Old Testament other than Psalms.
In any event, why was Deuteronomy so cited? I think Deuteronomy is so cited because Deuteronomy lays out the law that the Israelites were supposed to follow when Israel was founded. Our forefathers looked at Deuteronomy because they, as well, wanted us to form a country that God would bless and God would protect. That is why Deuteronomy was so cited.
This does not mean that they did not quote the New Testament. There are plenty of references from John, 1 Corinthians, from the other gospels that our forefathers mentioned because I think they felt it was of necessity to look at these quotations in learning how to live.
I should also point out that the Bible our forefathers read was largely from the English language. They lived at a time when we were having the American Revolution. America was being founded, and we read an English Bible. When the French Revolution was going on, it was somewhat the opposite of our country. The French revolutionaries were atheist. They were barbaric. They killed the nuns. They killed the priests. It was horrific. It was an interesting juxtaposition even at that time between what I guess today we would call maybe the communist element, the French, and what we have in America.
I should also give a couple of quotes from our forefathers showing how important they felt the Bible was. These quotes do not mean a political party. It means kind of an ideology or way to put together your country. John Adams said the Bible ``is the most republican book in the world.'' John Dickinson, who was the most important member of Delaware in our founding, said the Bible ``is the most republican book that was ever written.'' He even ups it one more.
You can see the degree to which our forefathers lived by the Bible. It is because they lived by the Bible and stuck by the Bible that we have become such a blessed country. We have to continue to follow the Bible if we kind of want to get back on the straight and narrow.
One more time, I thank Congressman Lamborn for giving me a few extra minutes.
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