In my recent article published in the Journal of the Early Republic, “Aeschylus, Bookplates, and Jefferson’s Conception of an Enlightened Aristocracy,” I argued that, for a few select Founding Fathers, the study of the ancient Greek and Latin languages served as a bedrock for higher intellectual pursuits. While I focused on Thomas Jefferson and George Wythe for that article, the importance of the ancient languages in the intellectual and personal life of a third Founding Father—John Adams—is no less salient. Below I take a look at one of Adams’s notes to highlight an instance in which he turns to ancient Greek to contemplate a topic of great import: the divinity of Jesus Christ.

John Adams. Portrait by Asher Brown Durand. From Wikimedia Commons.

In the Summer of 1815, John Adams picked up a 1794 edition of the ancient Greek treatise, Against the Galileans, originally written 363 CE by the Roman Emperor Julian.[1] Adams’s volume was edited and translated (with many notes) by Enlightenment thinker (and friend of Voltaire) the Marquis d’Argens, who uses the title Défense du paganisme.[2] Thankfully, Adams’s copious notes on the work are preserved, now located at the Massachusetts Historical Society and accessible through the Adams Papers Microfilm 188. These notes contain many fascinating moments as Adams—who we might describe as a Unitarian with some complicated views toward orthodox Christian doctrines—engages (and argues) with both Argens—an overall religious sceptic who takes some pro-Catholic stances in his notes on the text—and Julian (known as the Apostate to ancient Christian authors)—the last pagan emperor of Rome (361–363 CE).[3] Julian wrote Against the Galileans to undermine Christianity, which was clearly ascendant in the Mediterranean in the fourth century CE. While Adams often does not see eye to eye with the Apostate in his notes, at one point commenting that “Julian reasons like a Fanatic and a Booby,” on the question of Christ’s divinity, the second president of the United States finds an ally in the last pagan emperor. Both men, despite their differing circumstances and religious beliefs, strongly doubted Christ’s status as God and felt that early Christian texts supported their position. On this topic, Julian makes the following point (Julian, Against the Galileans, 327a):

τὸν γοῦν Ἰησοῦν οὔτε Παῦλος ἐτόλμησεν εἰπεῖν θεὸν οὔτε Ματθαῖος οὔτε Λουκᾶς οὔτε Μάρκος.

Neither Paul, nor Matthew, nor Luke, nor Mark dared to say that Jesus was God.[4]

Adams here quotes this sentence word for word in Greek (see Figure 1), as he is wont to do when he finds something especially important or appealing to him. Before quoting the passage, Adams even notes: “Here is the most important passage of Julian.” Adams, clearly unconvinced by the divinity of Christ, sees value in Julian’s note that neither Paul nor a majority of the gospels call him God.

John Adams’s notes on Against the Galileans, Adams Papers Microfilm 188. Courtesy of Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Nothing about the passage above is surprising as Adams’s skepticism of the divinity of Christ is widely known.[5] Nevertheless, Adams’s notes on Julian and the specific quotation analyzed above illuminate both his intellectual processes and inspirations. Many scholars have noted that the atmosphere of the Enlightenment had inspired Adams to question traditional Christian doctrine. While this notion is undoubtedly true, Adams’s notes on Julian confirm that classical literature and ancient Greek and Roman thinkers should also be considered as influential on his spiritual outlook.

Much like his belief in mixed government, Adams did not rely solely on Enlightenment thinkers nor translators to form his theological views. He instead studied ancient texts—in their original Latin and Greek languages—while considering the interpretations and developments of later Enlightenment thinkers alongside them. His notes on Argens’s edition of Julian illustrate his process. He constantly analyzes both Julian’s position in the text and Argens’s position in the notes on the text, coming to his own conclusions based on how he evaluates the strength of their arguments. His quotation of Julian’s Greek shows that Adams does not interpret Julian through Argens’s translation, but instead (at least for the most important passages) reads the original text himself. John Adams was undoubtedly a man of the Enlightenment, but his classicism also puts him in an intellectual league with a few other Founding Fathers. John Adams—along with Thomas Jefferson and George Wythe, as I highlight in my article for JER—stood out among the Founders as men who remained devoted to reading and studying ancient Greek and Latin texts far beyond their college days. Thus, for them, the Greek and Roman ideas and texts were more foundational to their outlook—and more influential on both their political and personal lives—than most American leaders of their day. As I hope to have shown here by highlighting a previously underrecognized ancient Greek influence on Adams’s religious beliefs, the study of how these Founders used and read the ancient languages themselves can further clarify the foundations of their political, personal, and religious beliefs.

I would like to thank the Massachusetts Historical Society, and specifically Hannah Elder and R. M. Barlow, for answering my many questions about Adams’s notes.

Endnotes

[1] “Galilean” was a term used by Julian to describe Christians.

[2] Défense du paganisme par l’empereur Julien, edited by the Marquis D’Argens (Berlin, 1769).

[3] Adams’s religious beliefs can be hard to describe in a few words. For a succinct, helpful summary of John Adams’s religious views as well as the various ways that scholars have described him, see John Fea, “John Adams and Religion,” in A Companion to John Adams and John Quincy Adams (Chichester, UK, 2013), 184–98.

[4] I take the Greek text from Wilmer Wright, Julian: Volume 3 (Cambridge, UK, 1923). The translation of the Greek is my own. Adams would have been using Argens’s text, which has been amended and rearranged by scholars over the last three centuries. Nevertheless, the quoted passage is the same in both Argens’s and Wright’s text.

[5] See, for example, David L. Holmes, The Faiths of the Founding Fathers (Oxford, UK, 2006), 78, Gregg L. Frazer, The Religious Beliefs of America’s Founders (Lawrence, KS, 2012) 111, and Fea, “John Adams and Religion, 188.