From ejt1@columbia.edu Mon Sep 4 07:17:41 2000 Received: from mxu2.u.washington.edu (mxu2.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.9]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id HAA145670 for ; Mon, 4 Sep 2000 07:17:41 -0700 Received: from ciao.cc.columbia.edu (IDENT:cu58912@ciao.cc.columbia.edu [128.59.59.11]) by mxu2.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id HAA29431 for ; Mon, 4 Sep 2000 07:17:40 -0700 Received: from localhost by ciao.cc.columbia.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA17020 for ; Mon, 4 Sep 2000 10:17:39 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2000 10:17:38 -0400 (EDT) From: Elias J Theodoracopoulos Sender: ejt1@columbia.edu To: Classics List Subject: God in the Declaration of Independence Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII In today's New York Times Michael Novak writes in an op-ed piece entitled "The Founders and the Torah" (p. A17): "Most historians lazily say that the founders were Deists, because they did not use Christian names for God, like Trinity and Savior and Redeemer. They miss the crucial point. Three names for God in the Declaration -- Creator, Judge and Providence, are unmistakably Jewish names for God. This language did not come from the Greeks or Romans." Is the matter as simple as the writer states? Comments, anyone? EJTh .