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

ARCHNES INTERNATIONALES D'HISTOIRE DES IDEES INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

139

THEBOOKSOFNATURE ANDSCRWTURE Recent Essays on Natural Philosophy, Theology, and Biblical Criticism in the Netherlands of Spinoza' s Time and the British Isles of Newton's Time EDITED BY JAMES E. FORCE and RICHARD H. POPKIN

Directors: P. Dibon (Paris) and R. Popkin (Washington University, St. Louis and UCLA) Editorial Board: J.F. Battail (Paris); F. Duchesneau (Montreal); A. Gabbey (New York); T. Gregory (Rome); J.D. North (Groningen); M.J. Petry (Rotterdam); J. Popkin (Lexington); Th. Verbeek (Utrecht) Managing Editor: S. Hutton (The University of Hertfordshire) Advisory Editorial Board: J. Aubin (Paris); A. Crombie (Oxford); H. de la Fontaine Verwey (Amsterdam); H. Gadamer (Heidelberg); H. Gouhier (Paris); K. Hanada (Hokkaido University); W. Kirsop (Melbourne); P.O. Kristeller (Columbia University); Elisabeth Labrousse (Paris); A. Lossky (Los Angeles); J. Malarczyk (Lublin); E. de Olaso (C.I.F. Buenos Aires); J. Orcibal (Paris); Wolfgang ROd (Miinchen); G. Rousseau (Los Angeles); H. Rowen (Rutgers University, N.J.); J.P. Schobinger (Zurich); J. Tans (Groningen)

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
Edited by

JAMES E. FORCE
University of Kentucky, Dept. of Philosophy, U.S.A.

and

RICHARD H. POPKIN
University of California. Los Angeles. U.S.A. Emory University. U.S.A

SPRJNGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bible scholarship 1n the Netherlands of Sp1noza's tiNe and 1n the British Isles of Newton's time 1 edited by James E. Force ana Richard H. Popkin. p. em. -- <International arch1ves of the history of Ideas Archives lnternatlonales d'hlstolre des idees v. 1391 Includes 1ndex.
ISBN 978-90-481-4321-4 ISBN 978-94-017-3249-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-3249-9

BX4827.N45B53

1. Newton, Isaac, Sir, 1642-1727--Rellglon. 2. Sp1noza. Benedlctus de, 1632-1677--Rellgion. 3. Bible--Study and teacnlng-Great Britain--History--17th century. 4. Bible--Study and teaching--Netherlands--History--17th century. !. Force, James E. II. Popkin, Richard Henry, 1923III. Senes Arch1ves internatlonales d'hlstolre des idees ; 139.
1994

220' .07'041--dc20

93-29487

ISBN 978-90-481-4321-4

Printed on acid}i-ee paper

All Rights Reserved 1994 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1994 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means. electronic or mechanical. including photocopying. recording or by any information storage and retrieval system. without written permission from the copyright owner.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction (Richard H. Popkin, University of California. Los Angeles; Emory University) I. Spinoza and Bible Scholarship (Richard H. Popkin) 2. Comments on R. Popkin's Paper (Amos Funkenstein, University of California, Berkeley; University of Tel-Aviv) 3. Irrationality With or Without Reason: An Analysis of Chapter XV of the Tractatus Theologico-politicus (Jacqueline Lagree, University of Brest) 4. More, Newton, and the Language of Biblical Prophecy (Sarah Hutton, University of Hertfordshire) 5. "Making a Shew": Apocalyptic Hermeneutics and the Sociology of Christian Idolatry in the Work of Isaac Newton and Henry More (Rob Iliffe, University of London) 6. Newton on Kabbalah (Matt Goldish, Hebrew University. Jerusalem) 7. One Prophet Interprets Another: Sir Isaac Newton and Daniel (Matania Z. Kochavi, Jerusalem) 8. "Pray Do Not Ascribe that Notion to Me": God and Newton's Gravity (John Henry, University of Edinburgh) 9. Isaac Newton and Thomas Burnet: Biblical Criticism and the Crisis of Late Seventeenth-Century England (Scott Mandelbrote, All Souls College. Oxford) 10. The God of Abraham and Isaac (Newton) (James E. Force, University of Kentucky) II. "Moses's Principia": Hutchinsonianism and Newton's Critics (DavidS. Katz, University of Tel-Aviv) Index

vii

21

25 39

55 89 105 123

149 179 201 213

INTRODUCTION

In the spring of 1991, Rob Iliffe was a Fellow at the U.C.L.A. Center for 17th- and 18th-Century Studies. Taking advantage of his presence in Los Angeles, Richard Popkin organized a small conference at U.C.L.A.'s William Andrews Clark Memorial Library on the topic of Spinoza and Newton as Bible Scholars. The present collection of essays grew out of that one-day conference held at the Clark Library on January 26, 1991. Four essayists in the present volume, James E. Force, Amos Funkenstein, Rob Iliffe, and Richard H. Popkin, took part in the conference. A fifth contributor to this volume, Matt Goldish, made his presence felt at the conference as an astute questioner present in the audience. Everyone who participated in the conference felt that it was important to consider the nature of the contributions of both Spinoza and Newton to the study of the Bible and to examine the relationship of their contributions in these fields to other intellectual concerns at the time. During the conference in January, 1991, at the congenial Clark Library, much lively discussion, formal and informal, took place on this and related topics. The two editors of the current volume, Force and Popkin, decided to broaden the discussion. We decided to ask several other scholars, whom we knew to be interested in theological issues in the latter seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, to contribute essays to a proposed volume covering a wide range of themes relating to the understanding of philosophical, religious, scientific, and theological ideas during the general time frame between 1660 and 1730 in the Netherlands and the British Isles. We originally hoped that the authors would provide us with roughly equal portions on Spinoza's world and on Newton's world. However, possibly as a sign of growing interest in Newton's theology, many of the authors chose to examine aspects of Newton's theological views both in themselves and in contrast with others before, during, and after the period when he was working out his biblical interpretations. The essays in this volume are presented both by more established scholars and by younger scholars (some of whom are publishing their first studies here) who represent the vanguard of the next generation of those who will be dealing with these topics.

In many historical accounts, Spinoza's critical examination of Scripture is taken as the beginning of modem biblical scholarship. Spinoza, in his Tractatus Theologicovii
James E. Force and Richard H. Popkin (eds.}, The Books of Nature and Scripture, vii-xviii 1994 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

vm

Introduction

politic us ( 1670), had claimed that the study of the Bible was much like the study of Nature and that the Bible, like Nature, could be examined in a strictly scientific way. By examining the Bible in this fashion, Spinoza opened up many historical, philological, and philosophical-religious topics to be studied independently of any religious considerations. The questions of who was the author of various parts of the Scriptures, of when various books were written, of how the texts were transmitted to later generations, of what the author or authors were intending to convey, have become central issues of biblical scholarship since Spinoza's time. Also, many forms of modern Enlightenment irreligion grew out of the findings, theories, and hypotheses of thinkers who followed the Spinozistic way of rationally analyz-

ing the content of the Bible. The man who was perhaps the greatest European Bible scholar in the period immediately following the publication of Spinoza's ideas concerning biblical criticism, the French Oratorian, Father Richard Simon. said in his Histoire Critique du Vieux Testament ( 1678), that he accepted Spinoza 's method of examining the Bible, but that he did not accept Spinoza's conclusion. For Father Simon, the Bible was a divinely inspired document. The problem for human beings at any particular time was locating the one truly and directly inspired biblical text among the welter of ancient and modern manuscripts, written in many languages, and printed in many places, all claiming to be the text. Simon had far more scholarly ability and knowledge than Spinoza possessed. He knew many ancient languages and had studied all the manuscripts available at that time. In doing his researches, he revealed the myriad number of problems which arise when one tried to reconstruct the genuine, original, truly inspired, directly revealed text, the text God revealed to Moses out of which the many, many man-made texts have come down to us throughout the course of human history. Simon, in his various studies, presented believers with an apparently endless set of research projects if they wished to find the actual message which God communicated to Moses in ancient times. Many of the problems which Simon raised in following out Spinoza's discussions are still being examined and discussed by leading Bible scholars in the light of new textual discoveries and subsequent interpretations. Isaac Newton, writing privately about biblical matters from the mid-1660's until his death in 1727, was also very concerned with discovering the text of Scripture, but for very different reasons than those offered by Simon or Spinoza. Newton was convinced that God had presented mankind in Scripture with certain most important clues about the future history of humanity. Newton's explorations of the problems involved in uncovering the text and discovering the true meaning of the text was carried on in private in the vast amount of unpublished manuscripts that he drafted for almost sixty years. (About half of what Newton wrote was on religious and theological topics; most has never been published.) Newton clearly saw the historical and philological problems involved in establishing the true text. He also saw

Introduction

tx

the need for establishing precise rules for determining the actual meaning of Scriptural passages. He was willing to accept many points which Spinoza and Simon had raised (he owned a dogeared English translation of Simon's A Critical History of the Old Testament as well as other works by Simon.) But Newton still felt that with a proper method and with a proper moral and spiritual attitude, the serious truth-seeker could identify and understand God's message in spite of the many difficulties that existed. Newton was willing to consider that some of Scripture was intended for the common person. Such passages must be examined in just that light and not taken as literal truth. He also was convinced that from the human point of view, the intelligibility of Scripture was progressive or additive. As mankind got closer in time to the culmination of History, both our knowledge and understanding of God's message would become clearer. Those who were properly, i.e., spiritually, equipped would grasp what God was telling us. The task of unravelling God's message was, as Spinoza and Simon had said, historical and philological. It was also part of man's spiritual journey, a journey guided by God acting directly and providentially in human history. Only a small fraction of Newton's writings concerning the Bible and ancient history has ever been published. His Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended appeared posthumously in 1728 (with the Advertisement in the first edition that Newton "was actually preparing it for the press at the time of his death") while his Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the apocalypse of St. John was published in 1730, three years after his death, by the expedient of cobbling together two of his private manuscripts. Hints about his more radical theological views appeared in print in 1754 when two letters which he had written to John Locke were eventually published. In them, Newton explained why he believed that the Doctrine of the Trinity was NOT stated in Scripture and why it was an idolatrous corruption of true Christian doctrine. Nonetheless, most of the enormous volume of Newton's manuscript studies concerning the Bible and the development of early Christian doctrine remains unpublished. And due to the vicissitudes of fate, Newton's unpublished theological manuscripts are presently scattered all over the planet. His theological writings (and his alchemical ones as well) remained in the family's possession until 1936 when these documents were finally dispersed at an auction at Sotheby's in London after both Cambridge University and the British Museum refused to house them. The most significant portion of the theological papers are now located in the Jewish National & University Library in Jerusalem as part of the Yahuda collection and in King's College Library, Cambridge, as part of the Keynes collection. Various other libraries in Europe and America (e.g., the Babson Institute) possess significant collections or individual manuscripts. Finally, some individual pages of Newton's manuscripts are located in various collections, public and private, in Japan, Europe, and the United States. Items that now come

Introduction

up for sale are fetching enormous prices, far beyond what the entire 1936 auction realized. Abraham S. Yahuda, a Jewish Palestinian scholar of Arabic and other Near Eastern languages and literature, was a major manuscript collector. At the 1936 dispersal sale of Newton's theological manuscripts, Yahuda and Lord John Maynard Keynes, the English economist, bought the largest part of what was auctioned. Along with his own private papers, Keynes donated the collection of Newton manuscripts which he had acquired at the 1936 auction to his college library in Cambridge (King's College Library). Yahuda's collection of Newton manuscripts arrived at the Jewish National & University Library, Jerusalem, by a more circuitous route. Yahuda had been a professor of medieval Judaism in pre-Hitlerite Germany and Spain. With the rise of Hitler, Yahuda moved to England. Yahuda was not present at the 1936 Sotheby's auction but, when he finally became interested in Newton's papers, he managed to assemble his collection by buying manuscripts from dealers who had purchased various lots of Newton's manuscripts at the Sotheby's auction. When the American dealer, Gabriel Wells, died, Yahuda acquired most of Newton's manuscripts owned by Wells. In 1940, Yahuda became a refugee in the United States. He transported his vast manuscript collection with him to America where he tried, with the assistance of his close friend, Albert Einstein, to get Harvard, Yale, or Princeton to take over his very large collection of Newton's papers. All three institutions refused, even though Einstein tried to make them realize the importance of the papers for understanding how Newton's creative intelligence worked. Yahuda, on his deathbed in 1951, decided to leave his entire manuscript collection, which contains much Near Eastern material in addition to the Newton manuscripts, to what became the Jewish National & University Library even though he had, over the years, become a most forceful anti-Zionist and opponent of the new state of Israel. His family, after his death, attempted to block this bequest of manuscripts. A long legal process ensued in New Haven, Connecticut (where Yahuda died), but finally, in 1969, Yahuda 's huge collection of manuscripts was shipped off to Jerusalem. Since 1972. when Richard S. Westfall received a microfilm copy of the Yahuda collection of Newton's papers, they have begun to be studied by scholars. Some of the authors in this volume are currently exploring how to make Newton's theological manuscripts more accessible through advanced computer technology. From the manuscript documents, combined with Newton's correspondence, published writings, and the writings of his close associates, it becomes clearer how Newton fits into the seventeenth-century theological context and also, to some extent, how Newton's religious and theological writings relate to the rest of his intellectual concerns. It is obvious from the manuscripts that Newton was vitally interested in research about the Bible his entire adult life. His desire to fathom the secrets of the books of Daniel and Revelation was not a product of old age or senil-

Introduction

XI

ity. And when his attempts to understand prophetic writing are seen in the context of what others whom he knew, such as Henry More, Thomas Burnet, and Richard Bentley, were writing at the time on the same topic, it becomes possible to pinpoint Newton's originality. From the datings of the manuscripts, mostly done by Richard S. Westfall, it becomes possible to consider the progress or change in Newton's views on various matters over time. Finally, it is also possible to determine just how heretical Newton's views on certain central topics in Christian theology actually were and how aware he was of the social consequences of what he was saying and thinking. The fact that the papers remained unpublished indicates that the author realized the explosive nature of some of his claims. Some modem writers, such as Richard S. Westfall, have interpreted Newton's later manuscripts, especially Yahuda MSS 16.2 and 17, on the origins of gentile theology, as indications that Newton in later life saw the error of his ways and moved away from an heretical, idiosyncratic, proto-fundamentalism toward a more latitudinarian, deistic theology. Others, including some of the writers in this volume, see more of a continuity in Newton's thought and view Newton's most radical theological view, e.g., his anti-Trinitarianism, more in terms of his indebtedness to Jewish exoteric and esoteric teachings. Further study of the unpublished Newton manuscripts may deepen our understanding of Newton's contributions as a scholar of Scripture.

II

Our volume begins with two essays dealing with the biblical scholarhsip and interpretations of the Bible by Spinoza and his friend Lewis Meyer, plus a comment on one of these papers by Amos Funkenstein which grew out of remarks he originally made at the 1991 Clark Library Conference. In the first essay, Richard H. Popkin attempts to set the stage for the other papers which follow by examining Spinoza as a Bible scholar in the light of what the accepted Bible scholars of the time (and of previous periods) had said. The problems which Spinoza raised concerning apparent inconsistencies in the Bible, such as whether Moses could have been the author of the entire Pentateuch, and other matters, had not been ignored by the many, many commentators from biblical times down to the seventeenth century. Spinoza was well aware of the reasons which the Spanish medieval Jewish commentator, Aben Ezra, had given for deciding that Moses could not have written the last lines of Deuteronomy. Aben Ezra's statement on this point appeared in his glosses to the standard version of the Hebrew Bible available at the time which also included portions of the commentaries of Rashi and Isaac Abarbenel in the margins. Various commentators at different times had decided that Moses had not written the specific

xii

Introduction

lines in which Moses described his own death, but these commentators did not find this interpretation to be alarming or one which raised a question about the divine origin of the text. These interpreters were perfectly willing to consider the possibilities that Aaron, the brother of Moses, wrote those lines or that Joshua did or that, perhaps, God had given Moses foreknowledge of future events that included knowledge about his own death. Spinoza, then, was not a particularly original Bible Scholar. Most of the points which he considered had in fact been examined earlier by others. However, his perspective was radically different from that of almost all other commentators, ancient, medieval, or modem. He considered the biblical text that we possess to be man-made, an artifact written by human beings in antiquity who lived in particular social and political contexts and who had particular social and political problems. The naturalizing of the text, i.e., considering it as a totally human production, allowed for quite different ways of understanding what Scripture represented. Spinoza's re-evaluation of the perspective we ought to adopt in looking at the text, rather than any specific new data about the text, set off a revolutionary new way of considering what the Bible meant in human history. Amos Funkenstein, in his brief commentary on Popkin's paper, indicates where this evaluation of Spinoza fits in terms of prior Jewish biblical exegesis. Jacqueline Lagree examines a most puzzling chapter in Spinoza's Tractatus concerning how to consider the Bible. She shows that in order to understand what Spinoza was arguing about at this point, one has to go back to the extremely radical work written by Spinoza's close friend, Lewis Meyer, in 1666, in which Meyer sought to give a purely rational analysis of Scripture. Some of what seems most strange in Spinoza's presentation is clarified by juxtaposing it with Meyer's discussions. Turning next to Newton, one finds that he was using some of the very same scholarly and scientific techniques developed by both Spinoza and Simon. Newton tried most carefully to establish the actual text and to unravel the Divine clues, especially in the most symbolic books, Daniel and Revelation. However, unlike Spinoza, Newton was vitally concerned to find out exactly what had been prophesied in these writings and when these prophecies had been, or possibly would be, fulfilled, especially those prophecies concerned with "the end of days," which many of Newton's contemporaries thought was imminent. The relationship between Newton's work on interpreting prophecies and his work on interpreting nature is one of the recurring themes in recent Newton literature. In several of the studies in this volume, the authors offer their views on this intriguing subject. Sarah Hutton and Rob Iliffe, in their two essays, examine Newton's views on the Bible in relation to those of his older contemporary and colleague at Cambridge, Henry More, who, like Newton, was also very concerned about the apocalyptic messages in Scripture. Both derived their ways of interpreting the Bible from

Introduction

xiii

Joseph Mede, the leading English theoretician of millenarian textual interpretation. Mede, a Cambridge don who died in 1638, was personally quite calm about his expectations regarding the imminent Second Coming of Jesus. Nonetheless, he inspired many of the wilder millenarian writers when his most significant works on the apocalypse began to appear after 1640. Following the many excited predictions about the Second Coming of Jesus during the Puritan Revolution (expected around 1655-6) which were usually based in whole or in part on interpretations of apocalyptic passages in Daniel and Revelation, both More and Newton sought, during the Restoration, to bring a calming seriousness to Bible interpretation. More had published his work against enthusiasm in 1655. After 1660, he wrote a series of works about the Millennia! events which he thought would soon unfold. He and Newton originally had exchanged ideas about how to interpret the symbolism in Daniel and Revelation, but then had a falling out. Hutton examines More and Newton as followers, each in his own way, of Mede's synchronic scheme for understanding biblical prophecies. They diverged, however, in their ways of analyzing the language of biblical prophecy. More was more willing to recognize the poetic character of various statements in the Bible than Newton who stressed the literal, plain meaning whenever possible. Beyond this point of disagreement, Newton was, in contrast to More, convinced that there was an underlying set of consistent meanings which were codified in prophetic language. This difference, as Hutton brings out, led to More's emphasis upon the spiritual significance of the prophetic visions in Daniel and Revelation, while Newton stressed their literal, historial fulfillment. In his paper, Rob Iliffe gives a most detailed exposition of Mede's views and of how they were used up to 1670. He then examines the various expository works on apocalyptic matters written by More in the 1670's and 80's, placing them in the context of major social events taking place in Great Britain. Iliffe compares More's published writings on the apocalypse to what Newton was writing in his private manuscripts in the period between 1670 and 1684. From this comparison, he presents an interpretation of the dispute which arose between More and Newton in 1680 over how to interpret biblical prophecies. Iliffe's particular interpretation of why More and Newton fell out enables him to see this episode in terms of Newton's overall way of dealing with prophecies. Following these two essays on More and Newton, the next four papers deal with various aspects of Newton's own biblical exegesis. Two Israeli scholars, Matt Goldish and Matania Z. Kochavi, consider Newton's efforts in relation to Kabbalah and to the tradition of Hebrew prophecy. Some extreme claims have been made by some authors about Newton's use of Kabbalah in his metaphysical theory of God, space, and nature. Goldish examines what in fact Newton knew of Kabbalistic writings and what he used this knowledge for. Newton's information about the Kabbalah came from the 1677-8 publication

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of the Kabbala Denudata, a large set of Latin translations of Kabbalistic writings spanning the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries interlaced with some interpretations by the Christian editors of the work. Newton possessed a copy of the Kabbala Denudata and read it extensively. Goldish traces what Newton says about the Kabbalah in his unpublished manuscript and shows where Newton places the Kabbalah in Newton's understanding of the development of religious ideas in antiquity. Newton was not so much interested in using Kabbalistic notions as he was in understanding where the Kabbalistic theory of emanation fitted into the development of religious ideas. Newton accepted the then prevailing view that the Zohar dated from the second century and reflected part of the ancient wisdom which went back to Ezra and Egyptian Jews such as Philo of Alexandria. Gnostic and mystical heresies, Newton claimed, came out of Kabbalistic ideas and were part of a completely anti-Christian corruption of true Christian doctrine. Newton also tried to relate central Kabbalistic notions to those of the Neo-Piatonists and the Aristotelians. In addition, Goldish points out Newton's interest in understanding Kabbalistic alchemical symbolism. In his essay, Matania Z. Kochavi examines Newton's way of interpreting the prophecies of Daniel and argues that Newton's method involves understanding himself as a kind of prophet or. at least. as one who is in the tradition of Hebrew prophets in the sense that he is specially chosen by God to receive extraordinary insight and wisdom into God's providential ordering of nature and human history. Understanding cryptic discourse requires a special method. Kochavi surveys Newton's plan, found in his unpublished manuscripts, for decoding symbols by developing rules for the exegesis of prophetic texts such as Daniel. Kochavi traces how Newton unlocks the meaning of the most cryptic Biblical text and shows that Newton attacks monasticism, the adoration of the Saints, and Trinitarianism, as false interpretations, anti-Christian corruptions of the proper method. On the positive side, the proper method results in Newton's Millennialism and his Christology. The Second Coming of Christ and the time of its occurrence were the most important items to be discovered in the text, when it is properly interpreted. Kochavi claims that this proper interpretation and the positive doctrines it yields along with concomitant attacks upon false doctrine based upon incorrect interpretation leads Newton to the self-image of a prophet in the biblical sense of one who is chosen by God. On Kochavi's reading, Newton developed a "sense of chosenness" partly from his success in understanding God's creation, the "world natural," and partly from his success in deciphering Scripture. Newton's "sense of chosenness," claims Kochavi, "radiated" throughout his writings on God and Nature and gives rise to his self-image as a kind of prophet. In the next essay, John Henry tackles one of the touchiest subjects in the Newton literature, namely the relationship between Newton's theory of gravitation and his theology. The leading Newton experts all argue that Newton's view about how

Introduction

xv

gravitational action takes place is confused, inconsistent, and inexplicable in terms of the rest of his physics. Henry claims that the accepted "official" view is based upon misreading two statements where Newton is usually interpreted as denying that gravity is inherent in matter and that action at a distance is impossible. These statements are in Newton's published correspondence with Richard Bentley when Bentley was preparing his course of Boyle lectures, published in 1693 as A Confutation of Atheism from the Origin and Frame of the World. These lectures were consciously intended to glorify the religious implications of Newton's scientific achievements. Newton clearly said in his correspondence that gravity is not an essential, inherent property of matter. Henry contends that one can grasp Newton's real meaning by looking at what Bentley made out of Newton's remarks. First, it is clear that both of them are denying the Epicurean possibility that matter, by itself, can do anything at all. Bentley, and presumably Newton, also held that gravity is a power or virtue superadded to matter by God. Henry then puts this view in the context of Newton's theology and contends that, for Newton, there is an active principle which God has added to matter and which causes gravitation. In Henry's view, both Bentley and Newton thought that this conception of gravity and its cause would constitute "a new and invincible argument for the Being of God." Henry argues that all of the allleged confusion in Newton's statements about gravitation and action at a distance can be explained by taking Bentley as an accurate expositor of Newton, rather than accepting the "official" picture according to which Bentley is a mere popularizer who did not fully understand what he was popularizing. In the next paper, Scott Mandelbrote examines in detail and depth the issues involved in the discussion between Newton and Thomas Burnet about how to interpret the cosmology and history set forth at the beginning of Genesis. Seventeenthcentury biblical exegetes, concerned with relating the new science to an acceptable theology, offered various ways of avoiding a literal interpretation of the creation story. Following St. Augustine, these seventeenth-century exegetes viewed biblical accounts of events pertaining to the creation merely as vehicles designed to accommodate the limited understanding of the vulgar. For the learned, a more adequate account which squared these events with modem science was possible. In his Tell uris Theoria Sacra and his New Theory of the Earth, Thomas Burnet offered an interpretation that he claimed would be acceptable to the Latitudinarian theologians of his time while simultaneously appealing to scientists and natural philosophers. Burnet offered as his "serious" interpretation of the events of creation, a rational, scientific account in terms of Cartesian physics and contemporary scientific data while restricting the literal biblical account of these events merely to the sort of fairy tale which the ignorant Hebrews of ancient times would find understandable. Burnet sent Newton a copy of his first book in 1689. Newton wrote a reply which has been taken by some as indicating that Newton agreed with Burnet's easy

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Introduction

dismissal of the Mosaic account and his own similar preference for a purely scientific one. Mandelbrote argues that, although there were surface similarities in the exegetical methods of Newton and Burnet, their views about the Bible were profoundly different. Newton could not write it off as a popularization for the vulgar. The creation story in Genesis was a crucial way in which God had presented his message about what happened directly to mankind. Jewish history was Divine History and had to be taken seriously. Taking it "seriously" did not mean that one could not interpret parts of it in different ways. Some of what was involved in their differences was the importance of Church authority or lack of same. Burnet was trying to please the accepted Church and offer them a way of reading Scripture which could be scientifically and philosophically correct. Newton regarded the official church as a central part of the corruption of Christianity and wanted a way of reading Scripture which revealed the true Divine Message, not the message acceptable to corrupt, anti-Christian idolaters who just happened to control the official church and had done since the fourth century. The irony of this story is that Burnet was eventually severely criticized for his scientific understanding of the Bible and totally allegorical reading of Genesis and thereby lost his chance of advancing to high Church office while Newton. the secret Arian heretic, advanced to positions of real power and influence in both the university and society. In the next essay, James E. Force deals with one of Newton's radical and heretical theological views, his Christian mortalism, and shows how this heretical theory grows out of Newton's special kind of literalism in reading Scripture. Christian mortalism is the view that the soul does not continue to exist as a conscious, independent substance after the death of the body, but is only brought back to complete, conscious existence by the power of God at the time of the last judgement. Force argues that, in Newton's case, this heretical theological doctrine is but one more natural consequence of Newton's voluntaristic conception of the nature of the Lord God of supreme power and dominion. Force argues that it is Newton's voluntarism which underlies all of Newton's natural philosophy and theological metaphysics. Force presents the evidence for calling Newton a Christian mortalist of the psychopannychist school in terms, first, of Newton's particular form of "literalism" in interpreting scripture. The largest and clearest exposition of this particularly Newtonian literalism, Force finds in the early writing of Newton's successor in the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge, William Whiston. In Whiston's A New Theory of the Earth ( 1969), which, according to Whiston, was "well approved" by Newotn, there is a 95-page introductory discourse offering a "third or middle way" of reading scripture according to which we should generally strive to hold to the plain, obvious, literal sense unless there is a solid and succinct reason for doing otherwise. Force contends that, in Newton's correspondence with Thomas Burnet in the 1680's, there is evidence that Newton, with Whiston, subscribed to

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this "third way" which offered an alternative to either exclusive literalism or exclusive allegoricism. The most famous of Newton's and Whiston's heresies, their anti-Trinitarianism, results from this way of reading the Bible and so does Newton's particular psychopansychistic Christian mortalism. Force then goes on to show how Newton's Christian mortalism fits with Newton's core voluntarism, i.e., his essentially Old Testament view of God as the Lord God of supreme and absolute dominion. These views are then related to Newton's millennialism. One of the central parts of Force's reading of Newton is his use of Whiston's testimony about Newton's views concerning what happens to the soul after the death of the body. If Whiston can be taken as a correct reporter of his master's views, then one can see how mortalism fits with Newton's theology based on the core voluntarism of the God of Abraham and Isaac. Force finds Newton's adoption of Christian mortalism clearly stated in Newton's manuscript entitled "Paradoxical Questions concerning ye morals & actions of Athanasius and his followers" in the possession of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, U .C.L.A. The final paper in our volume is by David S. Katz. Katz examines what to us today appears to be a bizarre theory about how to read Scripture, a theory proposed by eighteenth-century followers of John Hutchinson as an "answer" to what they perceived as the irreligious implications of Newton's natural philosophy. Newton's clockwork universe is regulated by natural laws which, despite Newton's own religious predilections, may be viewed as tending to reduce the frequency of providential intervention and thus, so the Hutchinsonians believed, to strike at the heart of Christian belief. John Hutchinson's Principia Mosaica (1727) and the writings of his followers attacked the scientific-empiricist Newton who provided the eighteenth century with a universe governed by scientific laws discoverable through observation and experiment. The Hutchinsonians did not know of Newton as a Bible scholar, but rather saw him as ignoring or rejecting the Bible in favor of science and science alone as the sole method for understanding "nature and nature's laws" which "lay hid in night" prior to Newton's natural philosophy. The Hutchinsonians proposed, as an alternative to what they considered to be Newton's scientific atheism, understanding nature and nature's mysteries through biblical study. This study involved figuring out the message of Scripture by reading the text in the originallanguage, namely Hebrew without the vowels. The latter had been added by the Jews in order to distort the true message. Hebrew without the vowels would reveal the roots of words and concepts as well as their interconnections. Katz portrays this approach as a kind of Hebrew alchemy which had, in fact, a great vogue in England, Scotland, and America in the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. The Newton who was the inspiration for such radical Enlightenment deism and scientific atheism was the villain for the Hutchinsonians. They also decried Hebrew scholarship before their time because it was guided by the misguided and malevo-

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lent Jews. Hutchinsonian Hebrew scholarship claimed to get back to the original biblical text which only contained consonants. Katz points out that the Hutchinsonian theory was ultimately brushed aside by scientific biblical scholarship in England and Germany. But, nonetheless, this strange theory had much influence for more than a century and probably contributed to the "Fundamentalist" movement.

III
We hope that this collection of essays will contribute both t0 clarifying Spinoza's and Newton's biblical scholarship and to showing the importance of biblical and theological studies in the general intellectual atmosphere between 1660 and 1730 in the Netherlands and the British Isles. Many of the problems involved in the emergence of modem philosophy and modem science involved, for the participants examined in the essays in this volume, questions about what the Bible said and about how biblical statements related to knowledge in other areas. Instead of brushing aside these discussions of biblical and theological themes as outmoded and irrelevant to the march of intellectual ideas, we hope that they will be seen as vital in the context of the time for understanding the development of scientific and philosophical ideas. Ignoring the seriousness of biblical and theological discussions has created a distorted picture of what happened in the Netherlands of Spinoza's time and the British Isles of Newton's time. Perhaps this volume will redress this situation to some small extent.
RICHARD H. POPKIN

Washington University, St. Louis University of California, Los Angeles Emory Universitv