John Adams: Loved the Bible but thought its Extant Texts Corrupted By Institutional Authorities

John Adams' eccentric and nuanced opinions of the Bible/Christian religion are especially prone to "out of context," cherry picking for various sides in the historical political-theological culture wars, wishing to "score points." 

For instance, he once wrote to Thomas Jefferson:

I have examined all, as well as my narrow Sphere, my Streightened means and my busy Life would allow me; and the result is, that the Bible is the best book in the World.

Yet, he also believed that he was reading a canon of books whose contents had been corrupted. In Adams' world, the Roman Catholic Church was the chief "corrupter of Christianity," but that corruption also infected institutional Protestantism as well. For instance, Adams -- who considered himself a "liberal unitarian Christian" -- blamed Roman Catholicism for the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation which he bitterly rejected; he also rejected the King James Bible because it was too Catholic!

As he wrote to his son and namesake:

What do you call “The Bible”? The Translation by King James the first? More than half a Catholick.?

But it went beyond merely the KJV. In the same letter he continued:

“The Bible a Rule of Faith.”! What Bible? King James’s? The Hebrew? The Septuagint,? The Vulgate? The Bibles now translated or translating into Chinese, Indian, Negro and all the other Languages of Europe Asia and Affrica? Which of the thirty thousand Variantia are the Rule of Faith? 

But he had especial disdain for the KJV. As he also wrote to Thomas Jefferson:

We have now, it seems a National Bible Society, to propagate King James's Bible, through all Nations. Would it not be better, to apply these pious subscriptions, to purify Christendom from the corruptions of Christianity, than to propagate these corruptions in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America! 

In particular, John Adams didn't trust ANY of the texts of the Bible whose original manuscripts were written in Hebrew. He thought the original Hebrew manuscripts were ordered burnt by Pope Gregory the 9th such that essential truths contained therein were purposefully concealed. 

In fact, Adams thought this included not just the Old Testament, but St. Paul's writings. Adams believed, contrary to most biblical scholars, that Paul's original writings were in Hebrew (and thus burnt as part of Pope Gregory's efforts) as opposed to Greek.

Ultimately, this quotation from Adams summarizes how he approached the extant texts of then available Bibles:

What suspicions of interpolation, and indeed fabrication, might not be confuted if we had the originals! In an age or in ages when fraud, forgery, and perjury were considered as lawful means of propagating truth by philosophers, legislators, and theologians, what may not be suspected?

Though, Adams was still a devout theist and believer in Jesus (as he Adams understood Him) and thought somewhere in there, the Bibles whose corrupted text he was reading contained profound truth.

John Quincy Adams Believed All Bibles Contained Errors

When discussing the Old Testament, Adams ranks which version he prefers; though he notes he thought all translations contained errors. As he wrote to his father on July 7th, 1814:

I promised you that I would answer your questions of my opinions with regard to the Bible, and of my acquaintance with it—I have not studied the Canon of the Old Testament, because to my deep and constant regret I do not understand the languages in which it was written—I have never learnt either the Hebrew, or Chaldaic Characters, and therefore never could read a line of the Old Testament, in the Original—I have only read it in the Modern English French and German Translations for I have hitherto not even had the opportunity of going through either the Greek Septuagint or the Latin Vulgate, as I hope at some future day to do—of the translations which I have read, that in German, made by Luther, is incomparably the Best—The French one, originally made by Calvin, and revised by the Pastors of the Church at Geneva, is upon the whole not quite equal to the common English Bible published with the Dedication to James the 1st.—But in all there are a multitude of errors; and they are all so far from giving me satisfaction, that I shall never forgive myself, for neglecting to learn the Hebrew, when the opportunity for learning it was in my own hands.  

So as we see, Adams puts the KJV above Calvin's Geneva Bible, but also puts Luther's German translation at the very top. He notes that because he didn't read Hebrew that he's not competent in the original language to fully comprehend the Old Testament. 

The elder John Adams adhered to an extremely "heterodox" faith that contrasted to the orthodoxy that was more institutionally ingrained in late 18th century America. He considered himself a "liberal unitarian Christian." The scholar Dr. Joseph Waligore terms him a "Jesus-Centered-Deist." Whereas Dr. Gregg Frazer terms him a "theistic rationalist." 

These terms are used to distinguish from that more conventional orthodox Trinitarian Christianity. John Quincy Adams, during a period of time in his adult life, opted for that more traditional understanding of the faith, with a Calvinist bent. 

However, JQA seemed to vacillate, during his adult life, between the two -- the more conventional Calvinistic Christianity and his father's heterodoxy. I've gotten confused more than once when reading the younger Adams during periods of time in history when he supposedly was a traditional Calvinist, and it sounds like it's his father's heterodoxy talking. 

As the saying goes, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.