Gettysburg Address

[Rob Wick]

This actually isn't new. In 2014, historian Gary Philip Zola published a documentary history titled "We Called Him Rabbi Abraham" in which Zola reprinted Rabbi Sabato Morais' sermon. Here is what Zola writes:

What is genuinely intriguing about this document, beyond Morais's characteristic eloquence, is the first sentence of the third paragraph, where the rabbi remarks, "I am not indifferent, my dear friends! to the event, which four score and seven years ago, brought to this new work light and joy" (emphasis added). The following Friday, July 10, 1863, the Jewish Messenger, a Jewish newspaper published in New York, printed the entirety of Morais's July 4, 1863 address.
Most scholars agree that Lincoln's famous turn of phrase "Four score and seven years ago" came from the King James Version of the Bible, with which he was so familiar, and wherein the phrase "three score and ten" appears numerous times. It is nevertheless fascinating to discover that Morais's use of "four score and seven years ago" is arrestingly identical to the immortal words Lincoln employed as he began the Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863. Is it possible that Lincoln had read Morais's sermon and made mental note of the rabbi's biblical rhetoric? This question has no definitive answer.

Zola notes that Rabbi Morais met Lincoln once, when he appeared before him asking for a pardon for a Jewish soldier. Morais was a strong admirer of Lincoln who gave a moving sermon after the assassination. However, to accept the possibility that Lincoln used this phrase or was influenced by Morais for the phrase is a massive stretch. For what reason would Lincoln have even read a Jewish newspaper published in New York at that time? While I have no evidence to show the number of Jewish newspapers in New York at the time (that weren't printed entirely in either Yiddish or Hebrew...the Jewish Messenger was printed in English, German, and Hebrew), I think the chances that this particular edition landed before Lincoln's eyes to be too astronomically high. An interestingly coincidence? Quite likely.

By the way, anyone who wants to look at the original newspaper can go to this link.

I would highly recommend Zola's book as one of those "odd duck" types of books on Lincoln that one otherwise might not have noticed given its specialized nature. I corresponded with Zola regarding the papers of Emanuel Hertz and he seemed to me to be a very nice person.