How Common Sense drew on Judges
A documented line of influence: Thomas Paine demonstrably engaged Samuel’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
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On Common Sense’s page
- Paine doesn't argue against monarchy from reason alone — he opens the Bible and quotes Judges directly
- Gideon's refusal of the crown is his scriptural trump card: kingship, he insists, is contrary to God's will, and here is the chapter that proves it
- Read the original passage and you'll see exactly what Paine was reaching for — the oldest argument against kings, conscripted for 1776
On Judges’s page
- Gideon's refusal of the crown — I will not rule over you... the Lord shall rule over you — became the founding proof-text of anti-monarchism
- More than two millennia later, Thomas Paine reached past every philosopher to Judges for Scripture's first, clearest rejection of hereditary kingship
- A single verse from the book of the judges gave the American Revolution its biblical authority