Proposed Law Would Make Aitken Bible Official State Book

A Tennessee legislator has introduced a bill that would make the “Bible of the Revolution” one of Tennessee’s official state books.

State Rep. Gino Bulso (R-Brentwood) introduced HB 1828, a bill that would elevate the Aitken Bible to prominence.

“When the American Revolution began, America stopped trade with Britain, cutting off our country’s supply of bibles and causing the printer for the Journals of Congress, Robert Aitken, to publish the first American Bible, also known as the “Aitken Bible,” the text of the bill says, noting that Tennessee is “home to three of the five privately owned original first American Bibles remaining in the world today.”

Tennessee is also home to the publisher of the Aitken Bible, The Aitken Bible Historical Foundation.

According to the bill, the Tennessee Blue Book catalogs Tennessee’s State Songs, State Poems, and State Paintings, but no books are part of the catalog.

The Library of Congress explains the historical significance of the Aitken Bible:

The publication of the “Aitken Bible” was a landmark moment in the book history of the United States. As the first complete Bible published in an independent America, the tome represents not only its publisher’s piety, but the country’s burgeoning cultural identity detached from that of Britain’s, as well as an intrepid side-stepping of the embargo affecting the importation of books. By decreeing it not just an American copy of a British publisher’s work, but as a brand new, comprehensive incarnation of the Bible for an American audience, the Aitken Bible became not just a devotional text, but a patriotic one as well. It remains the only edition of the Bible authorized by Congress.

But the Aitken Bible is not the only book that be recognized by the Tennessee Blue Book, according to Bulso’s bill.

Nine other works, fiction and nonfiction, are also slated to be considered. All, in some way, are connected to Tennessee.

“All the King’s Men,” by Robert Penn Warren, is on the list.

Warren was a resident of Clarksville, Tennessee when he wrote the book, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1947.

The other books mentioned in the bill are:

• “Farewell Address to the American People,”  by George Washington (1796)
• “Democracy in America,” by Alexis de Tocqueville (1835 and 1840)
• “The Papers of Andrew Jackson,” collected by the College of Arts and Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
• “Roots,” by Alex Haley (1977)
• “A Death in the Family,” by James Agee (1958)
• “American Lion,” by Jon Meacham (2009)
• “The Civil War: A Narrative,” by Shelby Foote (1958-1974)
• “Coat of Many Colors,” by Dolly Parton (2016)

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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on X / Twitter.
Photo “Tennessee Capitol” by Peggy Anderson CC4.0.