Abstract
Isaac Newton was not an original interpreter of the Apocalypse. He himself stated that he followed Joseph Mede, and he imitates Mede in his lexicon of symbols with due attention to dream lore like the Oneirocriticon of Ahmad ibn Skin, in his synchronisms, and in his attention to Hebrew ritual.1 Seen in the long history of Apocalypse interpretation, however, even Mede might not be original. Few in fact are those who have changed the whole discourse on this book. Mede, while he may have had a new method, did not alter the standard Protestant interpretation of Revelation. Commentators and critics who might meet such tough criteria would be Dionysius of Alexandria, Tyconius, Joachim of Fiore, Nicholas of Lyra, and perhaps Ribera and Alcazar, whom Mede read.
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Newton, Trattato sull’ apocalisse, ed. Maurizio Mamiani, 1994 (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1995), 1, 8r, 14–16. In citations from this text I refer first to the manuscript number (Newton MS 1), then to the folio number (8r), and finally to the page numbers in Mamiani’s edition (14–16). Frank Manuel notes Newton’s debt to Mede in The Religion of Isaac Newton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), p. 90; and Sarah Hutton argues that Newton is closer to Mede in his interpretive practice than More, who was Mede’s own student. See “More, Newton, and the Language of Biblical Prophecy,” in The Books of Nature and Scripture: Recent Essays on Natural Philosophy, Theology, and Biblical Criticism in the Netherlands of Spinoza’s Time and the British Isles of Newton’s Time, ed. James E. Force and Richard H. Popkin (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994), p. 49. She also argues that Ahmad ibn Sinn gave Mede his basic idea of the analogy between the natural and the political world, p. 43. Newton developed his interest in Hebrew ritual in the late 1670s. See Richard Westfall, Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 344, 346.
For the basic account see Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History.7.24–25. The early witnesses to the Apocalypse were millenarians: Papias, Justin, and the heretic Cerinthus. See also Wilhelm Bousset’s remarks in the Introduction to his edition, Die Offenbarung Johannis, ( Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1906 ), pp. 19–20.
Alexandria, of course, was a center for allegorical interpretation. Dionysius was also answering those who complained that the book was not an unveiling (apocalypsis) but veiled its content with a heavy, thick curtain of unintelligibility. For Jerome see his letter to Paulinus in the Opera, ed. Dominicus Vallarsius (Venice, 1766), 1. 1. 270–81.
Dionysius has a long list: life, light, turning from the dark, truth, grace, joy, flesh, the blood of the Lord, judgment, the forgiveness of sins, love by God of us and the command to love one another, condemnation of the world, of the Devil, of Antichrist, the proclamation of the Holy Spirit, and the adopted sonship to God (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 7.25.21).
Newton was still trying to refute this argument in his Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John (London, 1733), pp. 243–7. For a discussion of Newton’s argument, see Richard H. Popkin, “Newton as a Bible Scholar,” in Essays on the Context, Nature, and Influence of Isaac Newton’s Theology, ed. James E. Force and Richard H. Popkin ( Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990 ), pp. 107–8.
For a discussion of the Apocalypse and the canon see Bousset, Introduction, pp. 19–31; Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), pp. 113–14, 148, 150, 155, 203–06, 209–20, 224–5.
Luther made his arguments in the Preface to Revelation which he composed for his translation of the New Testament. See his “Vorhede auf die Offinbarung Sanct Johannis,” in Luther’s “September Bible” in Facsimile ( Ann Arbor: Ann Arbor Publishers, 1972 ).
For a general discussion of the issue, see Bousset’s Introduction, pp. 31–3, and Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament, pp. 241–3.
For Newton the issue was crucial. Already in the 1670s he believed the essence of the Bible was prophecy and had reduced that essentially to Daniel and the Apocalypse. See Westfall, Never at Rest, pp. 319, 826–7, and Popkin, “Newton as a Bible Scholar,” p. 106. Popkin cites an unpublished note of Newton’s, written in the early eighteenth century, to the effect that the historical parts of Scripture were written with the ordinary assistance of the Spirit, but the prophetic sections had special impulses of the spirit (p. 109 and n. 66). In the Observations, Newton argues that John the Evangelist composed the Apocalypse at the time of the Christian dispersal, caused by the Jewish Revolt, and this fact explains his faulty Greek. Later, after he had lived long in Asia Minor, he could write the excellent Greek which marks the Fourth Gospel. See especially Observations, pp. 235–47. Father Richard Simon had recently made the text of the Bible a major issue for English Protestants, and Newton knew his work. He owned the English translation of his Histoire critique du Vieux Testament, which came out in 1682. See Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton, 84, and Popkin, “Newton as a Bible Scholar,” pp. 103–4. Already, however, in the early 1670s, Newton was collating textual variants of the Apocalypse. They survive in Yahuda MS 4 and were complete by 1694. Newton looked at twenty-two versions and arranged the variants verse by verse. See Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton, pp. 93–4, and Westfall, Never at Rest, pp. 327–8. For a careful and detailed discussion of Simon and the English response see Justin A. I. Champion, “`Acceptable to inquisitive men’: Some Simonian Contexts for Newton’s Biblical Criticism, 1680–1692,” infra.
For a translation of this preface in its latest form, that of 1546, see the text in Word and Sacrament, vol. 1, ed. E. Theodore Bachmann, who also revised the translation of Charles M. Jacobs, vol. 35 in Luther’s Works, ed. Helmut T. Lehmann, 1960 ( Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987 ).
Denis wrote his commentary shortly before his death in 1471. For a discussion see Henri de Lubac, Exégèse médiévale: Les quatre sens de l’écriture, Part II, vol. 2 ( Paris: F. Aubier, 1964 ), pp. 363–7.
De Lubac, Exégèse médiévale, I1. 2. 346–7.
Newton said this more than once. See his remarks under Rules 13 and 14 at Trattato, I, 16r, 32.
See Robin Bruce Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis: Apocalypticism in the Wake of the Lutheran Reformation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), pp. 51, 106–7.
Henry More, Apocalypsis Apocalypseos; or The Revelation of St. John the Divine Unveiled (London, 1680), pp. 16–17, 128; Newton, Trattato, 1, 3v, 10.
Under Rule 2. Trattato, 1, 12r, 20.
Bousset, Introduction, pp. 91–2.
See, for example, his remarks at In sacram beati boannis apostoli, et evangelistae Apocalypsin commentarii (Lyon: Iuntae, 1593), pp. 2, 9.
Cited via David Pareus, A Commentary upon the Divine Revelation of the Apostle and Evangelist John, tr. Elias Arnold (Amsterdam, 1644 ), p. 159.
Ibid., p.I62, 375, 377.
See Richard Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse (Appleford, Abingdon: Sutton Courtenay Press, 1978 ), pp. 236–7.
For a discussion of Alcazar and his antecedents see Bousset, Introduction, pp.93–4.
Bousset also implies that the erudition in Pareus’ Variorum commentary comes from Alcazar, Introduction, pp. 96.
Trattato, 1.1, 1 1r, 70. Alcazar reads it as paganism.
Ibid., 1, 9r, 16. Because Alcazar, like Ribera, does use patristic sources, Newton’s criticism loses much of its force.
Under Rule 12. Trattato 1, 15r-16r, 30. For a discussion of Mede see Michael Mun-in, “Revelation and Two Seventeenth Century Commentators,” in The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature, ed. C. A. Patrides and Joseph Wittreich (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), pp. 126–9, 132–3, 139–40.
Ribera, lnchwr(133)apocalypsin commentarü, Proem, 3.
Mede had used the angel’s gloss on the scarlet Beast of Chapter 17 for the red dragon of Chap. 12. He then said the Dragon, not the sea Beast, had a wounded head, although Rev.13:12 syntactically refers to the Beast, and John never calls the Dragon to thèrion. See his Commentarius in The Works (London, 1677), pp. 500–1. Mede’s correspondents all corrected this confusion: Lawenus (Mede, Appendix to the Clovis in The Works, pp. 541–2) and De Dieu (p. 566). Mede tried to answer these objections but in the course of his argument allowed his interpretation to determine his presentation of the literal sense, a tendency he criticized in others. See the Appendix in The Works, pp. 555, 570 and The Remains, also in The Works, p. 596.
See Murrin, “Revelation,” pp. 125, 138–9.
Bousset, Introduction, pp. 93–4.
Mamiani, Introduction, p. xiv and n. 32.
This is implied in Mamiani’s chronology (Introduction, p. xiii). Richard Westfall pointed out that Yahuda MS 1.1 had to be complete by 1675. See Never at Rest, pp. 319–20 and n. 114. Richard Popkin dates it as early as 1671. See his “Newton as a Bible Scholar,” p. 103. Alan Shapiro, however, notes that Yahuda 1.1 by its watermarks is dated to the mid-1670s. See Rob Iliffe, “`Making a Shew’: Apocalyptic Hermeneutics and the Sociology of Christian Idolatry in the Work of Isaac Newton and Henry More,” in The Books of Nature and Scripture, p. 63 and n. 29. What Mamiani now lists as Newton 1 contains rules for interpretation with a brief lexicon of symbols. Newton 1.1 has a detailed lexicon with proofs, and 1.3 has his synchronisms or the application of the symbols to the Apocalypse.
Westfall says that the Observations combines two different manuscripts. The base text was an unfinished manuscript from Newton’s old age, supplemented by an old, completed manuscript (Never at Rest, pp. 321, 818–9). Iliffe says that Keynes MS 5 has this same base text. See ’“Making a Shew’,” p. 63 and n. 28. Also relevant is the tract on the Last Judgment which Manuel transcribed as Appendix B in his Religion of Isaac Newton, pp. 126–36. Manuel dates a parallel version to the 1680s (pp. 99–100). Finally there is the material on prophetic language in Keynes MS 5, which H. McLachlan transcribed in Theological Manuscripts ( Liverpool: University Press, 1950 ), pp. 119–26.
For examples in Mede see Murrin, “Revelation,” p. 136. Newton expresses his version of this view in McLachlan, Theological Manuscripts, pp. 119–20.
Mede, Commentarius, in The Works, 448–9; Newton, Observations, p. 16; Theological Manuscripts, pp. 120–1.
Murrin, “Revelation,” pp. 131, 137.
Observations, p. 312. He added the seven vials and classed them all as temporal divisions of the seventh seal.
Mede makes this claim on the title page of the Clavis. See also the Appendix to the C/avis, in The Works, pp. 550, 558, and The Remains, also in The Works, p. 581. Earlier commentators had called such repetitions recapitulation, and Victorinus and Tyconius had already assumed recapitulation in the fourth century. The approach still has its modem proponents. See the discussion in André Feuillet, L’apocalypse: État de la question ( Paris and Bruges: Desclée de Brouwer, 1962 ), pp. 10–11.
Mede, Remains, pp. 590–1. See also Murrin, “Revelation,” p. 137.
See L ‘apocalypse, pp. 61–2, 71–3. Most modem scholars, however, stress correspondences to early Christian liturgical practice rather than to the Jerusalem Temple.
Mede, Commentarius in The Works, pp. 437–8; Appendix in The Works, pp. 566–7; Fragmenta, in The Works, pp. 916–7; Murrin, “Revelation,” p. 137.
See the way Newton reads the vision which begins the seals sequence (Observations, pp. 257–61).
There were, however, differences. There was probably, for example, no incense altar in the desert encampment. See Roland de Vaux, Religious Institutions, vol. 2 of Ancient Israel, trans. into English ( New York and Toronto: McGraw Hill Book Company, 1965 ), pp. 409–10.
Mede, for example, talks of the Temple courts at Commentarius, pp. 438–9, and Newton on the four animals uses Mede’s explanation of the tribal banners in the desert encampment (Observations, pp. 25860).
For Newton’s use of this feast to explicate the letters to the Asian churches see Observations, pp. 2557; for the trumpets, pp. 265, 268–9.
Observations, pp. 261–4, 309–10. De Vaux, citing Deuteronomy, observes, however, that the High Priest read the Law at the feast only once every seven years. See Ancient Israel, 2. 498.
For Una, see The Faerie Queene 1.3 and 6; for Duessa TFQ 1.7.16–18; 8.6.12–15, 25.
Trattato, I, 27r, 42; 1.1, 20r-22r, 86–88; 1.1, 23v, 92; 1.3, 8r, 128; 1.3, 40r, 208.
Richard Bauckham notes that these two chapters, Rev. 13 andl 7, became especially popular by the middle of the sixteenth century and would often get monographs by themselves. See Tudor Apocalypse, pp. 102–3.
Pierre Prigent, Apocalypse 12: Histoire de l’exégèse ( Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1959 ), p. 8.
Ibid., p. 16. Ambrosius Autpertus carried this analogy into the medieval period. He composed his commentary between 758 and 767 (pp. 24–5 ).
Ambrosius Autpertus pointed out that the dragon was a type of Pharaoh (Prigent, Apocalypse 12, p. 25). Isaiah had compared the dragon with multiple heads to Egypt at 27:1 as did Ezekiel 29: 2–4.
In his Eicasmi (1596), Foxe used the Exodus analogy for the faithful remnant in the Middle Ages, as did David Pareus in 1618. See Prigent, Apocalypse 12, pp. 12, 59, 62. For Mede see his Commentarius in The Works, pp. 496–7.
Ribera, Inchwr(133)Apocalypsin commentarii, pp. 244–5.
Mede, Commentarius in The Works, pp. 493–6. Foxe and Brightman read the heavenly war in the same way, and Pierre Prigent cites many Continental parallels: Artopeus (1549), Osiander (1580), and Kromayer (1662). See Apocalypse 12, pp. 58–9, 64.
Trattato, 1.3, lOar, 132; 10r-11r, 136; 11ar, 138; Theological Manuscripts, p. 125; Observations, p. 23, 279–80.
William Fulke had identified the Babylon of Rev. 14:8 and 17 with Rome in his Hampton Court sermon of 1570, which went through many editions (1570, 1571, 1572, 1574, 1579, 1580) and solidified in England an already common identification. See Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse, pp. 103, 106, 146.
Trattato 1.3, 9r-v, 128–30; 1.3, 24r and 22v,174–76.
Ibid.., 1.3, 31 r-33r, 188–90. Since the horns of the beast are kingdoms ultimately derived from the dragon, and the dragon and the beast coexist at Rev. 16:13, then the dragon must become one of the beast’s horns.
Observations, pp. 277, 281, 315–7.
Trattato, 1.1, 23v, 92.
Ibid., I, 24r, 38. He got this interpretation from Ahmad ibn Shin. See 1.1, 2r, 52–54. In McLachlan, Theological Manuscripts, p. 123, Newton has the moon symbolize the common people of a state.
Newton, Observations, p. 279. For Mede see his Commentarius in The Works, p. 492. The equation of the moon with Israelite cult is very old. Oecumenius had already made this identification in the sixth century. See Prigent, Apocalypse 12, pp. 12, 29.
Trattato 1.1, 19r, 82; Theological Manuscripts, p. 124; Observations, p. 22.
Trattato 1.3, 40r, 208.
Nicholas in turn simply adapted the reading of Alexander of Bremen, who applied the story to the same war but narrowed the symbolism of the desert to Constantinople. See Prigent, Apocalypse 12, pp. 45, 47.
Rule 12 in the Trattato 1, 16r, 30.
Mede had based his argument for a millennial reading on Justn Martyr. See his Coromentarius in The Works, pp. 533–4.
He instead followed Augustine and argued that the millennium was the whole time until Antichrist comes. David Pareus points out the confusion, showing that Ribera’s interpretation of the first resurrection, which begins the millennium, as the immortality of souls departs from the literal (Commentarychwr(133) upon Revelation, pp. 507, 520).
Sarah Hutton has said that Mede could be called the founder of a Cambridge school of millenarianism. See “More, Newton, and the Language of Biblical Prophecy,” p. 39.
Murrin, “Revelation,” p. 125. Katharine Firth remarks that his editor and biographer, John Worthington, tried in vain “to disentangle the thought of Joseph Mede from his reputation as a prophet of the Revolution.” See her Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain 1530–1645 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 245. 1 do not enter here into the refinements of millenarian theory. For those interested, William Lamont succinctly explains the differences between pre-and post-millenial expectation. See Godly Rule: Politics and Religion, 1603–60 ( New York: Saint Martin’s Press, 1969 ), p. 7.
Paul Christianson, Reformers and Babylon: English Apocalyptic Visions from the Reformation to the Eve of the Civil War ( Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978 ), p. 244.
B. S. Capp, The Fifth Monarchy Men: A Study in Seventeenth-century English Millenarianism (Totowa, N. J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1972), pp. 14, 56, 131, 231. He points out, however, that they only engineered two minor risings (p. 132). Their violence was rhetorical (p. 134). Lamont thinks that the Fifth Monarchy men and the ranters were symptoms of the decline of millenarianism (Godly Rule, pp. 106–7).
Manuel indicates that Newton shared with Henry More and John Spencer at Cambridge a revulsion for the fanatical enthusiasts of the 1640s and 50s. See The Religion of Isaac Newton, p. 87.
Trattato 1.3, 56r-57r, 236–38.
See Appendix B in Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton.
To the year 2060 or later. See Westfall, Never at Rest, pp. 816–7.
Westfall, however, is talking of Newton’s early works. See Never at Rest, pp. 329–30.
Robin Bruce Barnes traces the Lutheran attack on millenarian expectations back to Alexandrus Utzinger (1589) and argues that orthodox Lutherans in effect destroyed apocalyptic speculation during the Thirty Years’ War. See Prophecy and Gnosis, pp. 232, 241–7, 254–60.
Calvin stressed the hiddenness of the Last Day, and the Second Helvetic Confession (1566) expressly rejected millenarianism. See Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis, pp. 32–3; Lamont, Godly Rule, pp. 22–3. Bodin attributed to Calvin a statement which he may or may not have made but which circulated widely: “I thoroughly approve the reply of Calvin, not less polished than sagacious, when he was asked his opinion about the book of the Apocalypse. He candidly answered that he was totally at a loss regarding the meaning of this obscure writer, whose identity was not yet agreed upon among the erudite. Similarly, I do not see how we are to relate the wild beasts and the image discussed by Daniel to these empires which flourish everywhere now-a-days and have flourished for so many centuries.” (Firth, Apocalyptic Tradition, p. 197). Richard Bauckham considers Calvin’s remark probably apocryphal (Tudor Apocalypse, p. 40, n. 9).
Luther, for example, compared the frogs during the sixth vial to some of his attackers (Second Preface, pp. 407–8). Luther’s reading was decisive for the tradition. See Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis, pp. 41–4.
Bale, however, classed the English Reformation and the dissolution of the monasteries under the sixth vial. See Christianson, Reformers and Babylon, pp. 17–8. Writers on the Protestant left similarly liked to move the time schedule ahead, stressing the fifth and sixth vials (pp. 64–5, 93, 140–1, 231, 238). Tillinghast, though he thought the angels had reached only the third vial by 1654, nevertheless expected the millennium in 1656! See Capp, Fifth Monarchy Men, pp. 105, 192–3.
Firth, Apocalyptic Tradition, p. 170.
Commentarius in The Works, p. 483; Murrin, “Revelation,” p. 128.
Trattato 1.3, lr-4r, 2v and 3v, 112–20.
Iliffe, “`Making a Shew’,” p. 63.
Observations, pp. 275, 295.
In his Exposition of Daniel (1681). See lliffe, “’Making a Shew,”’ pp. 69–71.
Like modem academic critics Alcazar read Apocalypse in terms of events which occurred in the first century of our era. Grotius and Hammond, who adopted Alcazar’s approach, in effect destroyed the Protestant way of reading the book. They limited Revelation, except for prophecies of the millennium, to the times before Constantine. For them the vials signify the victory of Christianity over pagan Rome. See Firth, Apocalyptic Tradition, pp. 246–7. Mede’s pupil, Henry More, attacked Grotius constantly and bitterly. As he complained, in Grotius’ approach prophecy disappears, since the events signified all happened long ago. See, for example, An Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness,- or, A True and Faithful Representation of the Everlasting Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the Onely Begotten Son of God and Sovereign over Men and Angels (London, 1660 ), pp. 182–4.
For the schema see Murrin, “Revelation,” pp. 132–3. Bale may have been the first to use it in England. See Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse, pp. 69–70, 95; Christianson, Reformers and Babylon, pp. 15–6. Christianson stresses the polemical function of this historical pattem, p. 5.
Pareus, Commentary upon Revelation, pp. 494–5.
Observations, pp. 17–23; Theological Manuscripts, pp. 120–6.
There are exceptions. Newton argues that the seven letters relate to church conditions in the period covered by the fifth and sixth seals (Observations, pp. 256, 286). The fifth seal concerns the Great Persecution under Diocletian and Maximian (pp. 256–7, 278) and the apostasy begins under the seventh seal (pp. 256–7).
In his note, Pope indicates that Duck-Lane was a place near Smithfield, where old and used books were sold. I cite from The Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. John Butt, ( New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974 ).
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Murrin, M. (1999). Newton’s Apocalypse. In: Force, J.E., Popkin, R.H. (eds) Newton and Religion. International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives Internationales D’Histoire des Idées, vol 161. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2426-5_10
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