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3. Myths of Curses, Myths of Blessings
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America was settled and its republic founded by Europeans steeped in a biblical theory of history, a belief that the final age was dawning and that the kingdom of heaven would soon appear on earth. If we may judge by their rhetoric, the leaders of this enterprise assumed that their work had been inscribed in God’s providential book of time and had not only temporal consequences but eternal ones as well. Patriotic clergy preached that if Americans were truly Christian, Christ would manifest himself in their lives in a manner so palpable that the entire world would follow their example. Then, working through his believers, he would soon complete his redemptive mission . Even before postmillennialism was theologically defined, this belief that the ultimate nation had at last appeared had become the mythical premise of the United States. Leaders of government appreciated the advantages of this myth. English settlers had always been quick to discern the features of the Antichrist and his minions in the pope, the Spanish, the French, the Indians, and later the English king—any current enemy of theirs—because his appearance in the time line of history made it possible for them to fancy themselves the army of saints on their march to the Millennium. Of course, the founders of the republic did not, for the most part, believe this epic narrative, but few were inclined to chill the zeal of those among their countrymen who did. American millennialists, however, needed more than properly vilifiable enemies. They had to practice an intense religious regimen of scripture readings , good works, and close observation of God’s signs in their souls, in nature, and in current events to prove to themselves that they, and no others , were the true millennial people. They also had to find ways to justify a 3 , 60 number of activities that appeared similar to those of other, less godly European invaders of the New World. When necessary, they, too, needed to launch preemptive military attacks on the native populations, destroy their natural resources, extirpate their culture, and take their land. They found it increasingly profitable, moreover, to import Africans as slave laborers to help build their peaceable kingdom. Whenever their actions seemed to clash with their ethics, their troubled consciences sent them to the Bible for master narratives that might legitimate their actions. The Peculiar People of Deuteronomy Toward the end of his sermon aboard the Arbella, having outlined his biblical model of Christian government, John Winthrop proceeded to “shut up this discourse with that exhortation of Moses, that faithful servant of the Lord, in his last farewell to Israel.” What followed was a paraphrase of a text from chapter of Deuteronomy that must have been quite familiar to his fellow voyagers. In it, having detailed God’s conditions for their possession of the Promised Land, Moses added these blunt words: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life that both thou and thy seed shall live” (:). Deuteronomy, the “second law,” was an elaboration on the covenant code received by Moses on Mount Sinai (Exod. ). Since its reported discovery in a wall of the Temple in , this book has been admired for many reasons: its ideals of social justice (but not for most gentiles), its moral vehemence, its majestic eloquence, and its importance to the development of monotheism. It was also the book from which Jesus most often quoted. But why the English colonizers of North America so often referred to it is not immediately apparent. One might sooner expect them to have found in Exodus, Joshua, and Judges closer resemblances to their enterprise. Those epic narratives did indeed provide homeland mythology with much of its vivid imagery, but Deuteronomy, with its lists of blessings and curses, provided its fundamental ideology. Deuteronomy grounds this ideology firmly in a set of traditional narratives derived from the second, third, and fourth books of the Bible (Exodus , Leviticus, and Numbers). This, the fifth book of the Pentateuch, might therefore provide us with a model of narrativized thinking and rhetoric. A thumbnail outline of some of the key Deuteronomic themes will suggest how important this text was in the development of America’s own master [3.84.7.255] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 10:53 GMT) narratives, especially those that have come to be associated with postmillennialism . It will also suggest how Deuteronomy may have served to justify certain frequently attributed tendencies in American culture. Exodus See...