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.