SOURCE: "Newton as Bible Scholar," in Essays on the Context, Nature and Influence of Isaac Newton's Theology, by James E. Force and Richard H. Popkin, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990, pp. 103-118.

[In the following essay, Popkin reviews Newton's writings on the Bible, demonstrating how Newton analyzed the composition and nature of the Bible's books. Popkin maintains that Newton sought to present the Bible as historically accurate, and that Newton also believed the Bible contained corruptions deliberately placed there to encourage a false Trinitarian doctrine.]

In his views about the text and import of the Bible, Sir Isaac Newton combined a most interesting mixture of modern Bible scholarship with an application, to the understanding of the Bible, of some of the findings of modern science and a firm conviction that, in the proper reading of the scriptural text, one could discover God's plan for human and world history. Newton wrote much about the Bible as a historical document, about the accuracy of Biblical chronology, and about the message of the Bible. All of these topics were burning issues during the 17th century. Newton wrote on these subjects from his early student years at Cambridge until his death. For many years, including the central ones in his intellectual career, he was composing manuscripts on these issues.¹

He published none of his writings on the Bible during his lifetime. But after his death four items appeared in print, The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended (1728),' the Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733),³ an essay on the sacred cubit of the Hebrews (1737),⁴ and two letters written to John Locke concerning doubts abut the textual basis for the Doctrine of the Trinity.⁵ (A third letter to Locke on this subject was only published in 1961.)⁶ In addition to the material that has been published in the two and one-half centuries since Newton's death, an enormous amount of unpublished manuscript writings are still unpublished. They are in libraries from California to Jerusalem.⁷ The largest amount of the unpublished work is in the Yahuda collection at the National and University Library of Israel.⁸

Newton's writings on the Bible seem to have been penned over a sixty-year period. Because most of the manuscripts have not been published, it is not yet possible to give a succinct statement of hisviews on the subject. Newton's views changed and developed over the years. Early in his career, Newton composed a paper on how to interpret scripture. He wrote this around 1671. It is the first item in the vast Yahuda collection (Yahuda MS 1.1) Part of the text was published by Frank Manuel in The Religion of Isaac Newton in 1974.⁹ (This is the only item of the Yahuda collection so far published.) In this manuscript, Newton presented a view close to the Calvinist literalism of the mid-17th century. Newton writes that he prefers to choose "those interpretations which are most according to the litterall meaning of the scriptures unles where the tenour and circumstances of the place plainly require an Allegory."¹⁰ A few pages later on, just after the portion of the text published by Manuel, Newton says that it "is ye wisdom of God that he hath so framed ye scriptures as to distinguish between ye good & ye bad, that they should be demonstrative to ye one & foolishness to the other,"¹¹ a view similar to that stated by Pascal whose Pensees were just becoming known.

In subsequent writings, Newton, influenced probably by the Biblical researches of Father Richard Simon and possibly by Spinoza's work on the subject as well as by interchanges with John Locke, developed a rather critical view about the accuracy of existing texts. of the Old and New Testaments. Newton owned several of Simon's works,¹² which. were causing quite a stir in England in the 1680's.¹³ Spinoza's views were discussed in some detail by Simon.¹⁴ Three of Newton's Cambridge colleagues, Isaac Barrow, Ralph Cudworth, and Henry More, had access to copies of Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Newton had catalogued Barrow's library and so must have catalogued this work by Spinoza.¹⁵ Cudworth and More were very concerned about Spinoza's critical views about the Bible and published critical replies in the 1670's, which Newton probably read.'" At that point in his career Newton was involved with Henry More in working out Biblical exegeses and was consulting Cudworth, the Regius Professor of Hebrew, on various textual matters.

In various manuscripts at Oxford and Jerusalem (e.g., New College, Oxford, MS II, fol. 192, and Yahuda MSS 1.7 and 1.9) as well as in the published version of the Observations on Daniel and Revelation, Newton set forth a picture of how the text of the Old Testament got into its present state. He presented a theory of how the Biblical texts were composed and how they became mixed up and corrupted over time. Newton sought to describe in some detail how various texts became confused. On the basis of his researches, he concluded that no text of the Old Testament dated before Talmudic times.¹⁷

Newton based his historical theory of the development of the Biblical text on internal evidence in scripture and on historical events mentioned in the books. A brief version of his results appears in the first chapter of the Observations. Much more detail is given in some of the Yahuda manuscripts. The opening chapter in the Observations is entitled, "Introduction concerning the Compilers of the books of the Old Testament."¹⁸ After going over some of the details in the Biblical narrative, Newton says, concerning a passage in Genesis, "therefore that book was not written entirely in the form now extant, before the reign of Saul."¹⁹ If this were so, Moses could not be the author of that part of the text. The first five books of the Old Testament, the Pentateuch, are called the Books of Moses. But, on Newton's account, the historical part about God's people was put together from several earlier books. These were, according to Newton, a history of the Creation composed by Moses, a book of the generations after Adam, and a book of the wars of the Lord, each of which is mentioned in the present text.²⁰ The book of the wars of the Lord, Newton claimed, was begun by Moses and was continued by Joshua. Samuel, writing during the reign of Saul, put them in their present form.²¹ Thelater historical material in the Pentateuch, Joshua, and Judges contained one continuous history from Creation to the death of Samson. Examining the history therein, Newton declares, "Therefore all these books have been composed out of the writings of Moses, Joshua and other records, by one and the same hand,"²² during the reign of Saul or early in David's kingship. Newton's guess was that Samuel was the author.²³ After the battles with the Philistines, Newton states that Samuel might have had time to collect "the scattered writings of Moses and Joshua, and the records of the Patriarchs and Judges, and compose them in the form now extant."²⁴ Newton also ascribed to Samuel the book of Ruth and the beginning of Samuel. Other books had later authors and "were therefore collected out of the historical writings of the antient Seers and Prophets."²⁵ Ezra, Newton said, was the compiler of the book of Kings and Chronicles. The prophecies of Isaiah were written at several times, as were the other prophetic writings.²⁶ The book of Daniel, which is all important in Newton's interpretation of the Bible, "is a collection of papers written at several times. The six last chapters contain Prophecies written at several times by Daniel himself: the six first are a collection of historical papers written by others.… The first chapter was written after Daniel's death …, "as were the fifth and sixth chapters.²⁷ Newton surmises that some of the verses were added by the collector of the papers, "whom I take to be Ezra."²⁸ Newton says, too, that the Psalms, which were composed by Moses, David, and others, "seem to have been also collected by Ezra into one volume."²⁹

Newton offered some textual evidence for his theory of the various authors of the books. By and large, Newton offered more or less the same picture which Spinoza and Father Richard Simon had offered about how the present text got put together. For Spinoza, this messy and somewhat confused picture was a basic reason for doubting that scripture was anything more than a collection of ancient Hebrew writings. For both Simon and Newton, the fact that there were multiple authors, even of the Books of Moses, did not detract from the revelatory nature of the text.

Spinoza, after presenting his version of how the text got put together, says, "We may, therefore, conclude that all the books we have considered hitherto are compilations, and that the events therein are recorded as having happened in old time."³⁰ The books "are compilations made many generations after the events they relate had taken place" and are written by a single historian, probably Ezra.³¹ Going over the Pentateuch, Spinoza comes to the sad conclusion that:

If anyone pays attention to the way in which all the histories and precepts in these five books are set down promiscuously and without order, with no regard for dates; and further, how the same story is often repeated, sometimes in a different version, he will easily, I say, discern that all the materials were promiscuously collected and heaped together, in order that they might at some subsequent time be more readily examined and reduced to order. Not only these five books, but also the narratives contained in the remaining seven, going down to the destruction of the city, are compiled in the same way.³²

Spinoza followed Isaac La Peyrere's view that the text which now exists is nothing but copies of copies of confused compilations.³³ Understanding what a mess the text is in and how it got this way during its compilation was enough for Spinoza to be dubious that there could be any divine message in scripture except for its teaching of the moral law.³⁴ Simon and Newton offered much the same account of how Ezra put together various strands and fragments without giving up confidence in scripture as the crucial source of God's revelation to mankind.³⁵ Until the beginning of modernBible criticism with Thomas Hobbes and Isaac La Peyrere, the usually accepted guarantee of the connection of the Biblical text with God was that Moses wrote what God revealed to him. Aben Ezra, around 1100 A. D., had pointed out that there were lines in the Pentateuch that were not written by Moses, including those telling of the death of Moses. Aben Ezra just indicated that these non-Mosaic verses had some different status but did not try to specify what that was.

Hobbes said that he accepted canonical Scripture, as recognized by the Church of England, as Divine Revelation and just wanted to consider the historical question of who wrote the various parts. Hobbes supposedly shocked his contemporaries with the news that Moses could not have written all of Deuteronomy because of the verses about his death. So, for Hobbes there had to have been two or more authors. La Peyrere went further and suggested that Moses was not the author at all and that a diary of Moses was used by later authors, along with a lot of other materials.³⁶ Spinoza then worked out a general theory of how the work grew. Unlike his predecessors, who still at least gave lipservice to the claim that the Bible was a special book of Divine Revelation, Spinoza presented it as a human production which gave a confused picture of ancient Israelite history.³⁷

Father Simon, who said that he followed the method of Spinoza but that he disagreed with Spinoza's radical conclusions, made a much more intensive study of the text. He concluded, much as Spinoza had, that various narratives had been put together by Ezra. But, Simon insisted, the text began with a Mosaic core which had the privileged status of recording a Divine communication. And, Simon said, in answer to Spinoza, that additional parts by later authors did not reduce the value of the Mosaic part. The additional parts could also be divinely inspired text.³⁸

Newton, having looked at the evidence, at least in the form that Simon had presented it, accepted a revelatory core in the documents. For Newton, this consisted of the prophetic parts, especially in Daniel and Revelation.⁹

Before describing Newton's interpretation of these divinely revealed prophecies, another, second-order problem must be considered. Given the Spinoza-Simon-Newton theory that Ezra compiled the basic narrative we now have in scripture, mostly out of preexisting materials, is there any accurate copy of the Ezra compilation? From information in scripture, in the story of the Maccabees in the Apocrypha, in Josephus' History of the Jews, and in Jewish accounts in the Talmud, we learn that the historical, legal, and prophetic writings compiled by Ezra were partially destroyed by Antiochus Epiphanes who "caused the sacred books to be burnt wherever they could be found."⁴⁰ After the successful Maccabaean revolt, "Judas Maccabaeus gathered together all those writings that were to be met with.…"⁴¹ At this time, some books were entirely lost and others got jumbled together. In the manuscripts, Newton offered a detailed theory of how pages from Samuel got mixed with pages of Nehemiah, among other disorders.⁴²

Newton then said that the reconstructed Maccabaean text was further confused by copyists. Spinoza and Simon had supplied lots of data about how glosses, errors, etc., got into the text. Newton then points out that it was only after the Romans captured Judaea that the Jews sought to preserve their traditions, putting them in writing in the Talmud, "and for preserving their scriptures, agreed upon an Edition, and pointed it [that is, put in the vowel markers], and counted the letters of every sort in every book."⁴³ This edition was the only one which had been preserved. All earlier versions werelost, except for those in the Greek Septuagint Version. As a result, "such marginal notes, or other corruptions, as by the errors of the transcribers, before this Edition was made, had crept into the text, are now scarce to be corrected."⁴⁴ Spinoza took all of this to mean that one could never get back to an accurate text. Simon offered a program for reconstructing the right text that would unfortunately involve an endless amount of research.

Newton accepted this general conclusion, namely that what survives is a corrupt text which is probably truncated from what the original looked like. Thus, Newton does not accept the contention of the Westminster Confession of the mid-17th century according to which "The Old Testament in Hebrew (which was the Native Language of the People of GOD of old), and the New Testament in Greek … being immediately inspired by God, and by his singular care and Providence kept pure in all Ages, are therefore Authentical".⁴⁵ Instead, Newton was about as avant-garde as Spinoza and Simon in his view about how the Biblical text got to be what it is.⁴⁶ Nonetheless, Newton adamantly insists that a divinely revealed prophetic message is contained in scripture, as we have it and that, as Daniel says (xii. 9-10), in the latter days, "the wise may understand, but the wicked shall do wickedly, and none of the wicked shall understand."

For Newton, "The authority of the Prophets is divine, and comprehends the sum of religion.… Their writings contain the covenant between God and his people, with instructions for keeping this covenant; instances of God's judgments upon them that break it: and predictions of things to come."⁴⁷ Of the prophets of the Old Testament, Daniel is the most distinct and the easiest to understand—"and therefore in those things which relate to the last times, he must be made the key to the rest."⁴⁸ And so, regardless of the history of the text and the vagaries of how our current copies have come down to us, it is all important to try to figure out what is being said by the prophet. Newton devoted a great deal of time and energy to trying to decipher the symbolism in Daniel's prophecies.

When Newton turned to the New Testament, he was much more critical about the reliability of the texts. His chief concern was to argue for the primacy of the book of Revelation and to point out the deliberate alteration of New Testament texts by wicked characters such as Saint Athanasius.⁴⁹ With regard to the Old Testament, Newton never claimed that any of the extant texts had been deliberately falsified. But, since he was an Arian and was convinced that the doctrine of the Trinity was not stated in the true revealed text, he had to hold that the lines in John and Timothy, which appear to state a Trinitarian position, were deliberately forged attempts to deceive the faithful.

From the time of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, Christian Church authorities claimed that Revelation was a late work and unconnected with Jesus's life on earth, and, therefore, not to be taken seriously. In opposition to this view, Newton contended that Revelation was the earliest work in the New Testament and that it was written before the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 A. D. and the expulsion of the Jews from the city. Its author, John the Evangelist, received the revelation he recorded directly from Jesus and wrote it down in a style that contains many more Hebraisms than the Gospel of John (which Newton thought was written by the same person.) Therefore, Newton argued, Revelation was written when John "was newly come out of Judea, where he had been used to the Syriac tongue; and that he did not write his Gospel, till by long converse with the Asiatick Greeks he had left off most of the Hebraisms."⁵⁰

Newton offered a wide range of scholarly historical details to support his claim that Revelation was written in the very earliest days of Christianity. This was an old Christian view, going back before the early Church Fathers. According to the Syriac version of Revelation, it was written in the time of Nero. In the extant text itself, there are allusions to the Temple and the Holy City as still standing. Next, Newton pointed out that many false books of the Apocalypse, attributed variously to Peter, Paul, Thomas, Stephen, Elias, and Cerinthus, had appeared in ancient times in imitation of the Revelation of John. This constituted evidence that there was a true Apostolic work on the Apocalypse in the earliest days of Christianity for the others to imitate. From the possible dates of the false ones, Newton tried to date when St. John's Revelation was written.⁵¹

He added to these considerations some evidence that Revelation is alluded to in the Epistles to Peter and the Hebrews. Newton offered evidence showing that the same metaphors are used in each.⁵² Newton did not consider the reverse possibility, namely, that their appearance in Revelation may indicate borrowings by a later author. Rather, he insisted that the text of Revelation had to precede the text of those Epistles and, hence, that it had to be a very early Christian work.⁵³

Scouring materials in early Christian writings, Newton came to the conclusion that John and Peter stayed with their churches in Judaea and Syria until the Romans made war in the twelfth year of Nero's reign. John was then banished to the Greek island of Patmos. "It seems also probable to me that the Apocalypse was there composed, and that soon after the Epistle to the Hebrews and those of Peter were written.…"⁵⁴ Many writings of the Church Fathers confirmed this. As Newton says, "This account of things agrees best with history when duly rectified."⁵⁵

If one accepts Newton's rectification, then the next question becomes, is the book of Revelation true? For Newton, the answer is yes, "since it was in such request with the first ages, that many endeavoured to imitate it",⁵⁶ and because of certain phrases in it. Christ was not called the Word of God in any book of the New Testament written before the Apocalypse.⁵⁷ All true Christians in the early days of Christianity accepted Revelation as genuine and true. Every one who believed that there would be a millennium accepted Revelation "as the foundation for their opinion."⁵⁸ The early Christian Millenarians accepted the text as genuine and most important. "I do not indeed find any other book of the New Testament so strongly attested, or commented upon so early as this."⁵⁹ Later on, for bad reasons, Christians became prejudiced against the work, in part because of the Hebraisms in it that Greek Christians did not like. So they began, in the fourth century, to doubt the genuineness or significance of the book.⁶⁰

Newton goes on to point out that, according to Daniel 10.21 and 12.4-9, Daniel is commanded to shut up and seal the ultimate prophecy until the end of time:

'Tis therefore a part of this Prophecy, that it should not be understood before the last age of the world; and therefore it makes for the credit of the Prophecy, that it is not yet understood. But if the last age, the age of opening these things, be now approaching, as by the great successes of late Interpreters it seems to be, we have more encouragement than ever to look into these things.⁶¹

This was the context for Daniel's cryptic observation that, in the time of the end, the wise shall understand, but none of the wicked shall understand.

Newton then went on to condemn those who wanted to predict exactly when the great events forecast in Daniel and Revelation would take place. But from this text—"Amongst the Interpreters of the last age there is scarce one of note who hath not made some discovery worth knowing; and thence I seem to gather that God is about opening these mysteries"⁶²—there seems to have been no doubt in Newton's mind that Revelation is the book which Daniel is commanded to shut up and seal and that it is true.

In his discussions of the state of the text of the New Testament, Newton made quite clear that he thought that there were not only normal errors in the historical transmission of the documents, but that there were also deliberate corruptions and falsifications in texts stating the doctrine of the Trinity. In sharp contrast to the corruptions of much of the New Testament, Newton believed that special protection had been given to the conservation of the text of Revelation. And, it may be of some interest that, in this view, Newton seems to hold a reverse view from that of Spinoza who declares that "the books of both Testaments were not written by express command at one place for all ages, but are a fortuitous collection of the works of men, writing each as his period and disposition dictated."⁶³ (Both Father Simon and Newton agreed and yet insisted that this did not preclude the writings from containing divine messages.) For Spinoza, the so-called Word of God "is faulty, mutilated, tampered with, and inconsistent; … we possess it only in fragments."⁶⁴ But, nonetheless what is important in both Testaments is the statement, which has "come down to us uncorrupted," of the Divine Law which is:

To love God above all things, and one's neighbour as one's self. This cannot be a spurious passage, nor due to a hasty and mistaken scribe, for if the Bible had ever put forth a different doctrine it would have had to change the whole of its teachings, for this is the corner-stone of religion, without which the whole fabric would fall headlong to the ground.⁶⁵

For Spinoza, the moral message of both Testaments was what was crucial. This moral message had not been changed by the history of the transmission of the texts. Spinoza's interest in the New Testament was only in the statement of the moral principle in the Gospels. He showed no interest in the book of Revelation, although it was probably the most widely interpreted Biblical book of his time.

Newton, in contrast, concentrated on the prophetic message. And in the one place where I could find an explanation of the guarantee of the accuracy of Revelation, in an unpublished note still in private hands (which is actually written by Newton on the back of an envelope and around the text of a letter to him when he was Director of the Mint), Newton explained that God was so concerned that John get the text right that he sent Jesus, the messenger of God, to watch over John as he wrote down the prophecies.⁶⁶

Further, for Newton, it was Divine action ever since that had enabled various scholars to understand parts of the prophecies and it will be Divine action at the end of history which will make the whole of Daniel and Revelation intelligible to the wise. For Spinoza, it was solely by the use of human reason that one understood the Divine message. No matter what language it was written in, no matter what corruptions had occurred, the Bible would contain the Divine message if it contained only the moral law which was capable of being understood by reason. And, because this moral law wasknowable by reason, it was also by reason that we could tell whether the text had become too corrupt. Spinoza writes that:

We remain then unshaken in our belief that this has always been the doctrine of Scripture, and, consequently, that no error sufficient to vitiate it can have crept in without being instantly observed by all; nor can anyone have succeeded in tampering with it and escaped the discovery of his malice.⁶⁷

According to Newton, some crucial texts of the New Testament had been changed deliberately and the Church had kept people from realizing this. Newton was an Arian, a denier of the doctrine of the Trinity and of the divinity of Jesus. The New Testament authorized by the Church of England contained passages in the revelation of St. John and in the letter to Timothy which appeared to justify the doctrine of the Trinity. Newton insisted that these passages were false and, furthermore, that they had been deliberately falsified. In one of the manuscripts in the Yahuda collection, he listed pages and pages of the variant readings of these texts in as many manuscripts as he could examine.⁶⁸ Here he made no effort to try to decide which of these readings was the accurate one. But, in 1690, he sent two letters to John Locke detailing his case that the doctrine of the Trinity was not in the original or early texts of the New Testament and was not the view held by the early Christians. These letters, which apparently grew out of a conversation between Newton and Locke about Trinitarianism, were intended for anonymous publication in Jean Le Clerc's Bibliotheque universelle. After sending them to Locke who forwarded them to Le Clerc, Newton panicked and directed Locke to withdraw them from publication, fearing that people would recognize his authorship of these heretical letters and the subsequent loss of his post at Cambridge. The letters were only published in 1754, eleven years after Le Clerc's death.⁶⁹ A more accurate text of them appeared in the fifth volume of the 1785 edition of Newton's Opera Omnia, edited by Bishop Samuel Horsley, who utilized a holograph manuscript of the letters for his edition.⁷⁰ Newton showed immense historical erudition in making out his case. In a third letter to Locke, not published until the 1961 edition of Newton's correspondence, Newton says that he has been looking over his earlier two letters and is "so far satisfied in the discoveries that it has put me upon the curiosity of enquiring whether the like corruptions may not have happened in other places, & upon search I find reason to suspect a great many more places of this kind then I expected."⁷¹ He then gave a list of these corruptions. Newton compared all sorts of versions of the Bible, including the Ethiopic one, looking for corruptions in the text. He relied on both his own researches and those of other Bible scholars such as Grotius, Richard Simon, and Gilbert Burnet.⁷⁷

One of the questions which Newton was most interested in was who was responsible for the changes in the Biblical text. On the basis of his study of early Church history, Newton came to the conclusion that it was primarily through the efforts of Saint Athanasius and his Trinitarian followers that the Church became corrupt and that these corrupters had altered Biblical texts and Church council records to support their anti-Christian views. There are three unpublished manuscript variants of the "Paradoxical Questions concerning y^e morals & actions of Athanasius & his followers." In all of them, Newton set forth his indictment of Saint Athanasius.⁷³

In the longest unpublished manuscript on this topic, at the Bodmer Library in Geneva, Newton presented his grandiose theory of how the Church became corrupt and how it falsified the truedoctrines of Christianity, in part by tinkering with the texts of the New Testament.⁷⁴

To pull together various threads of Newton's Bible scholarship, one can say that, with regard to the scriptural text that has come down to us, Newton, with Spinoza and Father Simon, accepted the Hebrew Text as corrupted because of various historical events. But, unlike Spinoza, and like Simon, he insisted that the text was usable. Simon says that:

We may by this same principle easily answer all the false and pernicious consequences drawn by Spinoza from these alterations or additions for the running down the Authority of the Holy Scripture, as if these corrections had been purely of humane Authority; whereas he ought to have consider'd that the Authors of these alterations having had the Power of writing Holy Scripture, had also the Power of correcting them.⁷⁵"

Through careful research and evaluation, one could work out an acceptable text of the Old Testament. With regard to the New Testament, Newton insisted the text had to be rescued from the Trinitarians and restored to its pristine doctrine according to which Jesus was the Lamb of God, but was not co-substantial. Because Newton, unlike Spinoza, was convinced that the essential prophetic message of the Bible survived in the texts of Daniel and Revelation, he did not become a sceptic about religious knowledge. Newton, on the other hand, with Spinoza, thought that much of the Old Testament could be studied as an early historical document and could be evaluated in terms of our other historical data. In this way its accuracy could be determined.

The first of Newton's writings about the Bible to be published, The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended (London, 1728), is a most interesting effort to employ newly discovered scientific findings to evaluate the historical status of the Bible. In the mid-17th century, Archbishop James Ussher of Ireland had carefully worked out the chronology of Biblical events and had dated them from the Creation, in 4004 B. C., onward.⁷⁶ Newton, using astronomical discoveries, constructed a chronology based upon the positions of the stars described in scripture and in other ancient writings which superceded Ussher's effort. Using his astronomical method of dating, Newton came to the conclusion that the Bible was historically accurate and was the oldest historical record that we have. Scriptural history is more accurate than Greek, Phoenician, Babylonian, or Egyptian records. The earliest chronologists, Manetho and Eratosthenes, contradicted both scripture and 17th-century astronomy. In view of the fact that we do not have any records older than the Bible, there are good reasons to question the claims to great antiquity in some of the early pagan authors. We should begin, Newton said, where we can have reasonable confidence in the available data. This, he thought, involved accepting the history and chronology in the Bible up to the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, as well as accepting the astronomical records mentioned by Thucydides and Ptolemy. From the description of the stars in the constellations in the zodiac presented in accounts of the mission of Jason and the Argonauts and the events in the Trojan War, we could calculate when these events took place. The procession of various stars in these constellations was measurable and followed a uniform law. From present observations, we could calculate backward to where these stars were historically described as being and date when the stars were in the positions described in early Greek history.⁷⁷

For Newton, the dramatic result of using this astronomical method to calculate the date of previousevents was that it showed that the earliest events described in the Bible took place before the earliest events in Greek history. Newton calculated that Jason's voyage took place in 937 B. C. The earliest known events in Egyptian history also postdated the earliest Biblical events. Therefore, our earliest historical knowledge came from the Bible. The ancient Israelites were the first civilization and had the first monarchy. All other cultures and kingdoms, Newton declared, were derivative from the original Hebrew one.⁷⁸

Newton's elaborate astronomical argument and his debunking of pagan chronological and historical claims aimed to show that the Bible was accurate as history, no matter how corrupted the text had become over the years. And, assumed Newton, the message in the Bible was still of the greatest importance to mankind. The fact that the Bible was accurate historically meant that God had presented His message from the very beginning of the world through the history of the Hebrews and through the prophetic insights given to them. (This, of course, was another major difference between Newton and Spinoza. Spinoza contended from the beginning of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus that the prophets did not have any special information, only very vivid imaginations.⁷⁹ For Newton, in contrast, the prophetic material was the most important element in the Bible and definitely contained divinely revealed information if only it could be understood.)

As I have discussed in "Newton and Fundamentalism, II" (infra), A. S. Yahuda, the renowned Arabist who purchased the majority of Newton's unpublished writings on religion and theology when they were auctioned off at Sotheby's in 1936, did so in part because he had his own "proof of the accuracy of the Bible about which he was lecturing and writing in England at the time. Yahuda contended that the story of the Exodus had to have been written by an eyewitness because so many Egyptian terns appear in it. Israelites of subsequent generations would no longer have known Egyptian. (Various Egyptologists immediately challenged Yahuda's theory.)⁸⁰ Apparently, one of the motives for Yahuda's purchase of the Newton material was to see if Newton had other evidence to establish the accuracy of the Bible. Yahuda's notes, written on Newton's manuscripts, and his own unfinished essay on Newton's religious views showed that Yahuda, a 20th-century scholar trained in the world of German Higher Criticism of the Bible and in the best methods of historical scholarship, felt a strong affinity with Newton in trying to establish some meaningful sense in which it could be said that the Bible was accurate.⁸¹ (I have been told by an eyewitness that Yahuda's close friend, Albert Einstein, was present when Yahuda first advanced his theory and that Einstein wept with joy when he heard that one could establish the accuracy of the Bible on the basis of historical and philological research.)

For Newton, once one accepted that the Bible was accurate in a significant sense, then one could use materials contained in it to explain the origins of mankind, of human institutions, and of human social and cultural abilities, for example, writing. Newton left a lot of manuscripts on these subjects. He was also convinced that one could find some basic understanding of the universe in the plans God laid down for building Solomon's Temple, a microcosm of the macrocosm. Newton's essay on the sacred cubit of the Hebrews and his analysis of the construction of the Temple show that he was sure that there was a mystical architecture in its dimensions that explained God's total dominion over all of creation.

But the most important idea to be gleaned from an analysis of the Biblical records, for Newton, wasthat God laid down a plan of human history, as well as a plan for natural history. One studied the latter primarily in terms of studying the Book of Nature through scientific researches. The former, the plan of human history, must be studied in the central prophetic statements about the course of human history put forth in Daniel and Revelation. No matter what the textual problems about these texts may be, these two works were continuous and united and presented in cryptic form a blueprint of what would happen to mankind up to the apocalyptic end of human history.

To those who question whether Daniel and Revelation contain the core of God's message, Newton replies: why would God have provided so many clues to mankind, in the form of prophetic symbols, if we are not supposed to figure them out?⁸² To repeat, Daniel tells us that the wise will understand and that the wicked will not near the end of time. So, if one could not find a message, this indicated one's own moral deficiencies or, perhaps, that the end was not quite yet, rather than the absence of a message.⁸³

The message contained in the prophetic writings, Newton contended, was confirmed by carefully examining human history from the time of the writing of Daniel onward. And, Newton insisted, much of what had happened was an exact fulfillment of the prophecies set forth in these works. All during his adult life, Newton was writing definitive explications of Daniel and Revelation, building upon what scholars such as Joseph Mede, Isaac Barrow, and Henry More had written. (Newton came to a bitter disagreement with More around 1680 about how to interpret the opening passage in Revelation.)

Newton did a great deal of original historical research to discern the events in world history which constituted the fulfillment of the prophecies. Some of his interpretations have been accepted by later Bible interpreters, especially among the fundamentalists. Newton studied the history of the Roman Empire, the European Middle Ages, and the rise of Islam in the Middle East in order to identify what actually happened in history with what was predicted in prophecy.

Newton differed from many of those who had worked on the interpretation of prophecies in denying that we could or should figure out exactly when the climactic events in world history would occur, when Jesus would return, when the Jews would return to Palestine and rebuild Jerusalem, etc. Newton, in a famous passage, declared that God had not intended people to be prophets. What people could do was recognize after the fact that events which had occurred were in fact those previously predicted in the prophecies. This post facto reading of history would demonstrate that the course of historical events was divinely providential. God had laid out the whole sequence. We, in studying history, could realize that this was the case as we recognized that each major event which happened had already been forecast in the prophetic writings.⁸⁴ When we realized this, we should be in awe of God's dominion over our history, as well as over nature, and we should realize that, in studying the scriptural text, we were also learning what events remained to be fulfilled before the end of human and natural history.

Newton opposed the prophetic seers of his day who were continually announcing the exact moment of the end of the world. In contrast, Newton offered a theory of the progressive development of our understanding of the prophecies. As we approach the end of history, "Then, saith Daniel, many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." But, Newton continues, "'Tis therefore a part ofthis Prophecy that it should not be understood before the last age of the world; and therefore it makes for the credit of the Prophecy, that it is not yet understood."⁸⁵ Newton took the progress made in the 17th century in interpreting Biblical prophecies by Joseph Mede and his followers (including Newton himself), as a clear sign that we might be approaching the time of the end. It is at this point in his Observations that Newton condemns those who predict the end with precision, as if they are themselves prophets, and says, "The folly of Interpreters has been, to foretel times and things by this Prophecy, as if God designed to make them Prophets. By this rashness they not only exposed themselves, but brought Prophecy also into contempt."⁸⁶ So, people should restrain themselves and devote themselves to post facto interpretations of events in terms of the prophecies. In so doing, we would realize the on-going fulfillment of the prophecies and might be able to say, with Newton, "I seem to gather that God is about opening these mysteries."⁸" The world to come prophesied in the Bible was near fruition.

Newton's conception of the Bible was that it was a historical document and a cryptogram containing God's historical plan. The historical document was as open to critical examination as any other historical document. Critical investigations of the sort offered by Spinoza and Simon helped us to realize the defects in the documents and enabled us to assess them. Using historical standards and modern scientific information about the movements of the stars in history enabled us to determine that the Bible was the oldest historical document which we possessed. And, except for parts of the New Testament, it had been preserved fairly well. The Bible was the most accurate account we possessed about early human history.

But, for Newton, in contrast to Spinoza, the Bible was more than just a historical document. It was the way in which God had communicated to us in the Book of Words and was analogous to the way God had communicated to us in the Book of Nature. Tremendous effort, insight, and pious attention were needed to understand the natural and verbal messages. Science and the study of Biblical prophecy went hand in hand as ways of comprehending God's message. Progress in science and progress in deciphering Daniel and Revelation indicated that God was opening the seals, thereby gradually and progressively unfolding to us the nature and destiny of man. Newton's role in this process of progressive understanding was to be in the forefront of those decoding both Nature and scripture.

Newton as a Bible scholar used the techniques of Spinoza and Simon and accepted a similar view about how the surviving text developed. But, he did not accept Spinoza's doubts about the Divine character of the Bible, regardless of its fortunes in human history as a document. Newton broke new interpretive ground both in the application of modern scientific techniques to the understanding of the Bible and in the historical interpretation of prophecies. Newton attempted to provide a better basis for dating ancient literature through astronomical events. Of course, his method has been superceded by archaeological and anthropological techniques. Those dating the events in the Bible, and dating events in other cultures by these means, would no longer support Newton's conclusion that the Biblical world is the most ancient part of human history.

Newton's historical research into the interpretation of historically fulfilled prophecies was taken over by many 19th-century fundamentalists who regarded him as one of the very best in this field. When the various components of Newton's Bible scholarship are examined and evaluated, he can indeedbe seen to be in the forefront of the critical scholarship of his time, in the forefront in applying modern science to understanding the Bible, and in the forefront of those offering new historical data for interpreting prophecies. Because many of those who devoted themselves to the first two ventures became sceptical of traditional religions in the manner of Spinoza, it is at first hard to fathom how Newton managed to be so serious about the third venture. Perhaps if he is seen in terms of both 17th-century Biblical criticism and 17th-century Millenarianism, we can better appreciate the nature of his theological position and his contribution to theology. Perhaps, when his theological manuscripts have been published, we will be able to assess more accurately his entire theory and see his originality and his stature as a commentator on the scriptures. We will then be able to see if he was as great a thinker in this area as he was in the sciences.

Notes

¹ For the biographical details about Newton's intellectual life, see Richard S. Westfall, Never at Rest. A Biography of Isaac Newton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.)

² Isaac Newton, The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended (London, 1728.)

³ Newton, Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John (London, 1733.)

⁴ Newton, "A Dissertation upon the Sacred Cubit of the Jews and the Cubits of the several Nations; in which from the Dimensions of the Greatest Pyramid, as taken by Mr John Greaves, the Antient Cubit of Memphis is Determined," in Miscellaneous Works of John Greaves, ed. Thomas Birch (London, 1737), Vol. II, pp. 405-33.

⁵ Newton, Two Letters of Sir Isaac Newton to Mr Le Clerc (London, 1754.)

⁶ In The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, ed. H. W. Turnbull (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), Vol. 3, pp. 83-146.

⁷ No complete list exists. Richard Westfall has prepared an unpublished inventory covering almost all of what is known to exist, though some items are still in private hands. I have found a few items not in Westfall's inventory. The unpublished papers were auctioned off at Sotheby's in 1936. These are listed in the Catalogue of the Newton Papers Sold by Order of the Viscount Lymington to whom they have descended from Catherine Conduitt, Viscountess Lymington, Great-Niece of Sir Isaac Newton. Which will be Sold by Auction by Messrs. Sotheby and Co.… At their Large Galleries, 34 & 35 New Bond Street W.1. On Monday, July 13th, 1936, and Following Day, at One O'clock Precisely (London, 1936.)

⁸ The majority of Newton's theological manuscripts belonged to the collection of Abraham Shalom Yahuda, a wealthy Palestinian Jew, who became a professor of medieval Judaism and of Arabic in Spain and Germany. He moved to England when Hitler came to power. He had an enormous collection of manuscripts, including his purchases of most of Newton's theological writings. In 1940, he moved to the United States, where he lived until his death in 1951. He and his friend, AlbertEinstein, tried to get Harvard, Yale, or Princeton to take the Newton papers. All of them refused. On his death-bed, although he was a strong anti-Zionist, he decided to leave the papers to the National Library of Israel. Due to legal disputes about his will, the Yahuda papers only got sent to Jerusalem in 1969, where they are now available for public examination by scholars.

⁹ Frank E. Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), Appendix A, "Fragments from a Treatise on Revelation," pp. 107-25.

¹⁰Ibid., p. 118.

¹¹ Yahuda MS 1.1, f. 19v.

¹² Among other works by Richard Simon, Newton possessed in his library a copy of Simon's A Critical History of the Old Testament … Translated into English, by a person of quality (London, 1682.) He also owned some of the works of the time whose authors were critical of Simon's position.

¹³ See, for example, the discussion of Simon's impact in England in Louis I. Bredvold, The Intellectual Milieu of John Dryden (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959), esp. pp. 98-107.

¹⁴ See "The Author's Preface," in Simon, A Critical History of the Old Testament.

¹⁵ Cf. Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton, p. 84.

¹⁶ Cudworth offered his criticism of Spinoza in Part V of The True Intellectual System of the Universe, which was completed in 1671 and published in London in 1678. More wrote two essays against Spinoza, one a letter to Lady Anne Conway, the other, some demonstrations against Spinoza's atheism. These are published in Henry More, Opera Omnia (London, 1679), Vol. 1, pp. 565-614 and 615-35. More's letter to Robert Boyle, written soon after Spinoza's Tractatus appeared, shows that More was very upset by the work. See The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle (London, 1772), Vol. 6, p. 514.

¹⁷ Newton, Observations, Part I, chap. 1.

¹⁸Ibid., pp. 1-15.

¹⁹Ibid., p. 4.

²⁰Ibid., p. 5.

²¹Ibid.

²²Ibid., p. 6.

²³Ibid., p. 6.

²⁴Ibid., p. 7.

²⁵Ibid., p. 9.

²⁶Ibid., pp. 9-10.

²⁷Ibid., p. 10.

²⁸Ibid.

²⁹Ibid., p. 11.

³⁰ Benedict de Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise, chap. 8, in The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza, trans. R. H. M. Elwes, 2 vols. (New York: Dover, 1965), p. 125. (This English translation of Spinoza's work is cited hereafter as Treatise.) Cf. Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, ed. Carl Gebhardt, 4 vols. (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1926), 2:125. (This Latin edition of Spinoza's work is cited hereafter as Tractatus.)

³¹ Spinoza, Treatise, chap. 8, pp. 129-30. Cf. Tractatus, p. 126.

³² Spinoza, Treatise, chap. 9, p. 135. Cf. Tractatus, p. 135.

³³ Isaac La Peyrere, Men Before Adam (London, 1656), Book IV, p. 208.

³⁴ Spinoza, Treatise, chap. 12, pp. 165-6; Cf. Tractatus, pp. 158-9.

³⁵ For Simon's account, see his A Critical History of the Old Testament, Book 1, chaps. 1-8.

³⁶ See Richard H. Popkin, Isaac La Peyr&re (1596-1676). His Life, Work and Influence (Leiden: Brill, 1987), chap. 4.

³⁷ Spinoza, Treatise, chaps. 5-10.

³⁸ Richard Simon, "The Author's Preface" and Book I, chap. 5, pp. 249-50, in A Critical History of the Old Testament.

³⁹ Newton, Observations, pp. 13-5.

⁴⁰Ibid., p. 11.

⁴¹Ibid.

⁴² Yahuda MS 7.3 and lOB.

⁴³ Newton, Observations, p. 11.

⁴⁴Ibid., p. 12.

⁴⁵The Confession of Faith … composed by the Reverend Assembly of Divines sitting at Westminster (London, 1658), chap. 1, p. 6.

⁴⁶ Bishop Gilbert Burnet also rejected the claim in the Westminster Confession and offered a view much like that of Newton. In Bumet's An Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England (London, 1699), he explained how the Biblical text could have become corrupted through the copying process. All sorts of mistakes, additions, and deletions may have occurred: "There is no reason to think that every Copier was so divinely guided, that no small Error might surprize him. In Fact, we know that there are many various Readings, which might have arisen from the haste and carelessness of Copiers, from their guessing wrong that which which appeared doubtful or imperfect in the Copy, and from superstitious adhering to some apparent Faults, when they found them in Copies of a Venerable Antiquity." Nonetheless, Burnet also says that the texts "are preserved pure down to us, as to all those thing for which they were written; that is, in every thing that is either an Object of Faith, or a Rule of Life." (p. 86) So all of the corruptions and errors in various manuscripts do not matter.

⁴⁷ Newton, Observations, p. 14.

⁴⁸Ibid., p. 15.

⁴⁹ Three unpublished manuscripts by Newton deal with his charges against St. Athanasius. See note 73.

⁵⁰ Newton, Observations; Part II, chap. 1, p. 238.

⁵¹Ibid., pp. 238-9.

⁵²Ibid., pp. 239-40.

⁵³Ibid., p. 244.

⁵⁴Ibid.

⁵⁵Ibid., p. 245.

⁵⁶Ibid., p. 246.

⁵⁷Ibid., p. 247.

⁵⁸Ibid., p. 248.

⁵⁹Ibid., p. 249.

⁶⁰Ibid.

⁶¹Ibid., pp. 250-1.

⁶²Ibid., p. 253.

⁶³ Spinoza, Treatise, chap. 12, p. 170. Cf. Tractatus, p. 163.

⁶⁴Treatise, chap. 12, p. 165. Cf. Tractatus, pp. 158-9.

⁶⁵Treatise, chap. 12, p. 172. Cf. Tractatus, pp. 164-5.

⁶⁶ In this manuscript, written in the early 18th century, Newton said that the historical parts of scripture were written with the ordinary assistance of the Spirit, which the prophets had at all times. The prophetic sections involved special impulses of the Spirit, which the prophets only had on certain occasions. St. John wrote "his Apocalyps when Christ sent his messenger to him with that prophecy. He had y' spirit at all times, but not in that extraordinary manner wc I made him say that he was in the spirit of the Lord."

⁶⁷ Spinoza, Treatise, chap. 12, p. 172. Cf. Tractatus, p. 165.

⁶⁸ Yahuda MS 1.4

⁶⁹ On the history of the publication of Two Letters of Sir Isaac Newton to Mr Le Clerc, see Westfall, Never at Rest, pp. 489-91.

⁷⁰Isaaci Newton opera quae existant omnia, 5 vols. (London, 1779-85), vol. 5.

⁷¹ Newton, Correspondence, 3:144-5.

⁷²Ibid., pp. 145-6. Discussing the manuscripts that did not contain the vital text from John, Newton adds in his letters to John Locke that "Dr. Gilb. Burnett has lately in the first letters of his Travelles noted it wanting in five other ancient ones kept at Strasburg, Zurich & Basil, one of w'h MSS he reccons about 1000 years old & ye other about 800." Newton, Correspondence, 3:94. Newton's reference to Gilbert's "Travelles" is to Bumet's Some Letters concerning an Account of what seemed most remarkable in Switzerland, Italy, etc., first published in Rotterdam by Abraham Archer in 1687. Bumet begins his discussion of manuscripts he has examined by noting that "I have taken some Pains in my Travels to examine all the most ancient Manuscripts of the New Testament, concerning that doubted Passage of St. John's Epistles." (p. 49) Bumet then discussed manuscripts he had examined in Zurich, Venice, Florence, Basel, Strasbourg, Rome, and London which did not have the passage in question. (pp. 49-51)

Newton says "And by the best enquiry yt I have been able to make [i.e., regarding the Trinitarian passage in John] it is wanting in the manuscripts of all Languages but the Latine." Newton says that it is not the in the Ethiopic, Syriac, Arabic, Armenian, or Slavonic versions and that he has been toldthat "it is not in the Greek mss in Turkey." correspondence, 3:94. Newton's evidence is all second hand from Erasmus, Burnet, Simon, and others. He apparently did not even check the London manuscript at St. James's that Burnet mentioned.

⁷³ There are three variant manuscripts relating to the "Paradoxical questions concerning y^e morals & actions of Athanasius & his followers." One is located in the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Los Angeles. One (Keynes 10) is in the King's College Library, Cambridge. And one Yahuda MS 14) is in the Yahuda Collection, Jerusalem. Bishop Bumet, who, as we have seen, checked various manuscripts and reported that the crucial Trinitarian text was missing in the gospel of John, did not draw Newton's anti-Trinitarian conclusion. In his Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles, he says that, with regard to Article One about the Trinity, "I do not insist on that contested Passage of St. John's Epistle. There are great doubtings made about it: The main ground for doubting being the Silence of the Fathers, who never made use of it in the Disputes with the Arrians and Macedonians. There are very considerable things urged on the other hand, to support the Authority of that Passage; yet I think it is safer to build upon sure and undisputable grounds. So I leave it to be maintained by others who are more fully persuaded of its being Authentical. There is no need of it. This matter is capable of a very full Proof, whether that Passage is believed to be a part of the Canon, or not." (p. 40)

Bumet's "proof was that the Trinitarian view was accepted by the Church long before the Council of Nicaea. All that the Nicene Council did was make official what was already the Faith of the Church "with the addition only of the Word Consubstantial." (p. 40) This particular word was, of course, the heart of what was in dispute between Arians and the Trinitarians.

Bumet was immediately accused of Arianism when his "Travelles" appeared in 1687 with his account of what he had found, or rather had not found, in his examination of ancient manuscripts throughout Europe. Antonie Varillas asks, in his Reflexions on Dr. Gilbert Burnet's Travels into Swizerland, Italy, and certain parts of Germany and France (London, 1688), "Were so many Copiers therefore exact in every thing else, and did they, through negligence, fail in the Translation of this onely Passage; or did they commit an errour by joint consent? Nevertheless I do not say this much to defend Arrianism, which is not indeed my sentiment, but to shew the cunningness and malignity of our Author, who (as many others have done) seem to oppose that Sect with such weak Arguments, on purpose to establish it the better." (p. 48)

In answer to Varillas, Burnet, in his Dr. Burnet's Vindication of Himself from the Calumnies with which he is aspersed, in A Second Collection of Several Tracts and Discourses written in the Years 1686, 1687, 1688, 1689 (London, 1689), replies that his opponent "represents me as an Enemy to the Divinity of Jesus Christ, because of the various readings of a verse in St. John's Epistle, that I gave from some Ancient Manuscripts, which I saw in my Travels." (p. 186) Bumet points out that all the Church Fathers who write against the Arians accept the doctrine of the Trinity, but do not cite the passage in question from John, "from which it was reasonable to conclude, that it was not in their Bibles; otherwise it is not to be imagined, that such men as St. Athanase and St. Austin, should not have mentioned it." Bumet says he believes in the "Divinity of the Saviour of the World," whether the passage be legitimate or not. Over the years, Bumet went on, he had continued to check Bible manuscripts he had come across to see if the passage turned up. It had not. Even so, writes Gilbert, he has "given the account of what I saw sincerely.… For I have learned from Job, not to lye for God, since truth needs no support from falshood." (p. 187) Burnet, in contrast to Newton, claimed that he held the view that the Divine Savior was equal with God the Father. Further examination of Bumet's theology may show that he was closer to Newton's view than he admitted in public.

⁷⁴" This manuscript is a history of the development of the Christian religion and the institutional church.

⁷⁵ Simon, "The Author's Preface," in A Critical History of the Old Testament, p. (a)2.

⁷⁶ On Ussher's achievement, see Hugh Trevor-Roper, "James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh," in Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans. Seventeenth Century Essays, chap. 3.

⁷⁷ Newton's method and his achievements with it are described and analyzed in Frank E. Manuel, Isaac Newton, Historian (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963), esp. chap. 4.

⁷⁸ Manuel, Isaac Newton, Historian, chaps. 5-6.

⁷⁹ Spinoza, Treatise, chaps. 1-2.

⁸⁰ Yahuda's theories were criticized by such leading Egyptologists as Professor Wilhelm Speigelberg, the father of Herbert Speigelberg.

⁸¹ See Richard H. Popkin, "Newton and Fundamentalism, II," infra.

⁸² Newton, Observations, pp. 252-3.

⁸³ Newton, Yahuda MS 1.1, f. 19v.

⁸⁴ Newton, Observations, pp. 251-2.

⁸⁵Ibid., pp. 250-1.

⁸⁶Ibid., p. 251.

⁸⁷Ibid., p. 253.