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Legislators in Arkansas believe that you can’t fathom America without first understanding the Ten Commandments.
“In order that they may understand and appreciate the basic principles of the American system of government, the people of the United States of America and of the State of Arkansas need to identify the Ten Commandments, one of many sources, as influencing the development of what has become modern law,” intoned legislation authorizing placement of a Ten Commandments monument at the state Capitol in Little Rock.
There is one problem, though: No evidence exists that the Ten Commandments, a code of religious behavior found in the Old Testament of the Bible, in any way influenced the development of the American system of government.
The belief that the Decalogue is the font of all American law and the basis of our government is treasured by many Religious Right activists. But that doesn’t mean it’s accurate. As proposals to display the Ten Commandments on government property spread, it’s important to understand what’s really going on here: Powerful sectarian lobbies are looking for a way to create a symbolic merger between church and state by persuading government bodies to display a code that largely regulates religious behavior.
With that thought in mind, here are 10 myths about the Ten Commandments:
1.) The Founding Fathers relied on the Ten Commandments when creating the American government.
The Founding Fathers rarely, if ever, cited the Ten Commandments during the creation of the American government.
This question of the founders’ relationship to the Ten Commandments was answered definitively in 2003 when 41 professors and legal historians weighed in on a lawsuit challenging Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore’s display of the Ten Commandments in the state Judicial Building in Montgomery. The scholars, brought together by Steven K. Green, former legal director at Americans United and now a law professor at Willamette University College of Law in Salem, Ore., filed a friend-of-the-court brief mustering ample historical evidence to debunk claims by Moore’s attorneys that the judge had the right to display the Ten Commandments because they are the foundation of American law.
Nothing in the nation’s legal history supports Moore’s view, the legal scholars and historians said, asserting in part, “Aside from a failed attempt in the seventeenth century to establish a biblically based legal system in the Puritan colonies, American law is generally viewed as having secular origins.”
The brief noted that “various documents and texts” figured in the development of American law, among them English common and statutory law, Roman law, the civil law of continental Europe and private international law.
American law, they pointed out, was also influenced by the writings of William Blackstone, John Locke, Adam Smith and others as well as the Magna Carta, the Federalist Papers and other sources.
“Each of these documents had a far greater influence on America’s laws than the Ten Commandments,” asserted the brief. “Indeed, the legal and historical record does not include significant and meaningful references to the Ten Commandments, the Pentateuch or to biblical law generally…as can best be determined, no delegate ever mentioned the Ten Commandments or the Bible.”
Concluded the brief, “While the Ten Commandments have influenced some of our notions of right and wrong, a wide variety of other documents have played a more dominant and central role in the development of American law. No respected scholar of legal or constitutional history would assert that the Ten Commandments have played a dominant or major role, or even a significant role, in the development of American law as a whole. To insist on a closer relationship or to claim the Ten Commandments has a special place in the development of American law lacks historical support.”
