Isaac Newton and the Jerusalem Temple: science, religion and prophecy. Prof. Stephen D Snobelen

okay so um shalom hello um how is the sound can you hear me perfectly okay very good i'm borrowing my daughter's uh computer because it does a better job than mine so we'll keep our fingers crossed um i don't know whether this counts as my fourth visit to israel um i've been to israel in the flesh uh three times uh 2002 2007 and 2018. uh so it is a pleasure to be with you uh for me it's the afternoon it's two o'clock in the afternoon here in nova scotia canada on the east coast right on the atlantic so what i'm going to do is i'm going to try to share my screen i have a number of slides that i will show you i see my job today as twofold i want to talk about newton's studies of the jerusalem temple but i also want to showcase some of the archival holdings of the national library of israel in jerusalem so i'm going to show you some images of manuscripts newton theological and prophetic manuscripts from the national library of israel and they've been there since the late 1960s so i will now try to share my screen that works yes all right excellent okay so let's begin i want to uh preface my comments today with some uh with some comments about uh newton's uh uh biography he was born in woolsorp in lincolnshire in 1642 as it happens he was born on christmas day 1642 and this is newton the first portrait we have of newton it shows him around the age of 46 just after he published his famous book the principia mathematica now i want to bring you with me into newton's orchard this is newton's birthplace at wilson manor it's about an hour north of cambridge where he ended up and this is a wonderful picture here which shows uh his home from his youth and appropriately a double uh rainbow this was taken by a nova scotia astronomer way back in 1980 it was just a nice coincidence that that double rainbow came up so there is his house again and there is the famous apple tree it's over 350 years old they've dated it and it's still flourishing newton ended up at trinity college cambridge in 1661 right after the restoration of the monarchy there had been an interruption in the monarchy during the time of oliver cromwell uh king charles the second came to the throne and that's why they call it uh the restoration period so you can see this is a very grand college and this picture here shows it from the time that newton lived there now we are right now in the midst of a pandemic and a pandemic hits in the 1660s first in london and then it spread to some of the outlying areas and this engraving shows some of the devastation of that uh plague it was the bubonic plague otherwise known as the black death and just as we're seeing now they had to institute social distancing and the university of cambridge was closed down twice during this period i closed down and then it opened up again and then they had a second wave so it closed down again and when this happened both times newton went back to his home in woolsort and uh he had just finished his undergraduate degree he was in his early uh to mid uh 20s and he finds himself back in woolsorp and it's at this time that the famous moment when the apple fowl happened and this gave newton some insights into universal gravitation and there is a some there are some apples there from one of the apple trees at uh sort manner so what we see is that the university closes twice in 1665 and 1666 and if you go online you'll find lots of commentary about newton's very productive ani marabolis that's latin for his remarkable years his miraculous years or his wonder years and this period of about two years 18 months to two years uh was very productive for uh newton uh the plague came to an end with the the great fire of london in uh 1666 and newton goes back to cambridge but while he's at woolsour he lays some of the foundations of his famous uh calculus a mathematical um production and secondly he carries out important optical experiments on the nature of light and colors and as i've already mentioned that's when he saw the apple fall and this leads to a chain of reasoning that gets him thinking about the universal nature of gravity he wonders whether the same force that draws the the apple to the earth keeps uh the moon in orbit around the earth and indeed he was uh correct and this is what he said he said all this was in the two plague years of 1665 and 1666 for i was for in those days i was in the prime of my age of invention and minded mathematics and philosophy more than at any time since they say that mathematicians peak around the age of 24 that's rather early so that's why they always recommend if you want to go into mathematics don't take any time off after high school you go straight into mathematics one of the fascinating things about this uh this uh moment is uh what newton uh records about being in a kind of contemplative mood when he saw the apple uh fall and this is a rather important testimony what we've seen from research in recent years is that it's when you're disconnected also when you're out in nature out in the country that's when you can have some really original and creative ideas and that's not what a lot of people are doing during the current lockdown they are very much connected as indeed we are now i'm not suggesting that you disconnect now please wait until the talk is over but there's a a really good lesson to be learned from this that newton was relaxed he had an open mind and he was able to have these very important scientific thoughts during uh the plague years so he ends up back at cambridge and he becomes a fellow and there you can see his garden right in the center there with the trees it's a walled garden uh it's his own private garden and it's right beside the trinity college chapel and on the end of the chapel you can see in latin domus mayo domes orettationes vocabitur and this is actually a quotation from the book of isaiah so the context is uh the words are directed to the eunuch and to the children of gentiles who join themselves to the lord and love the name of the lord even them will i bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer their burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon my altar for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all people some translations have all nations the lord god which gathereth the outcasts of israel seth yets will i gather others to him besides those that are gathered unto him now i don't know whether this uh full passage was always in newton's mind when he was thinking about uh his studies on the temple but it is interesting that that uh engraving is on the chapel so he goes on to publish his very famous book the principia mathematica in 1687 and then in 1704 this time in english he publishes his optics his famous book on optics and this is how newton had how he achieved his fame and his fame still largely rests uh on that uh however people are becoming increasingly aware of newton's other projects including his study of alchemy but also and that is relevant to what we're talking about today his study of theology prophecy uh church history doctrine uh the texts uh the hebrew texts of the of the uh tanakh and the uh greek text of the christian new testament and you won't be able to see this in any detail and that's not the point i just want you to be overwhelmed with this very large collection of newton's theo theology manuscripts uh which can be found uh in jerusalem this is a tabulation that i drew up with the help of a research assistant a couple months ago and we have all the word counts and it is a very very uh large collection indeed it totals around two million words so to put that in perspective uh the total collection of newton's theological manuscripts which is strewn around the world is about three and a half million so the majority of newton's theological manuscripts are in jerusalem now you may ask how did they get there some of you i know are aware of this story this is abraham shalom yehuda he was born in jerusalem of an iraqi jewish family and went on to become a world-renowned scholar teaching at various institutions on both sides of the atlantic in 1936 newton's uh non-scientific manuscripts were auctioned at sotheby's in london this is right in the middle of the depression and the earl of portsmouth was on hard times at that moment and he decided to sell these manuscripts so they sold and a large number of them were bought by the economist john maynard keynes yehuda himself didn't make it to the sale he found out about it a few weeks later but once he found out about it he began to buy very very heavily making deals with other purchasers uh manuscript and book dealers and he ended up with this large collection which is now at uh the national library of israel uh he wrote some books two books on uh the ancient near east uh this book right here the language of the pentateuch and its relation to egyptian this is a copy that i own he gave it to the jewish biblical scholar nahim sarna and you can see his letter to professor sarna and this is another book that he published a little bit later the accuracy of the bible so that's asu huda this is one of the huda manuscripts and you can see that you may not be able to see it in a lot of detail but in the upper left hand corner there is a jewish blessing baruch shem etc newton did have some hebrew his hebrew wasn't uh of a scholarly uh nature but he did study hebrew his latin though was fluent and he knew greek quite well also now in 2003 a documentary was released by the bbc and it was my job although i didn't expect this to happen uh to reveal to the world that newton had made a so-called prediction about the date 2060. so you can see the date 2060 about halfway down just above that red wax uh seal this is the other side of that sheet and this is a transcription where newton is trying to figure out when the time of the end would happen and in this particular calculation he took the period of 1260 days which he believed represented years uh from the book of daniel and the book of revelation in the new testament and he added uh he took the year 800 and added 1260 to that to come up with uh the date 2060. this is the other manuscript which has the date 2060 on it both of them are in jerusalem so the bbc documentary showed me with uh the the first of those manuscripts and then there was a headline uh that went around uh the world uh first in israel and then it spread uh so you can see uh that's uh there are 57 years back in 2003 uh to the date 2060. uh in 2007 uh we held a a manuscript exhibition at the national library of israel and this is the guidebook it's bilingual in hebrew and in english and this is the entrance uh to that exhibition and i believe that archway is meant to evoke the jerusalem temple and as you walk inside you can see newton's sketch of the floor plan of the temple on the floor and there you can see some of the visitors to the exhibition looking at newton's manuscripts which were placed on display for a few days uh well this event also uh made the news this is the uh headline in rats the newspaper uh the english version father modern science calculated world to end in 2060. now we had realized that there would be some interest in the 2060 uh manuscript so we were very careful in our exhibition to explain that newton did not believe that the earth was going to be destroyed that a comet was going to strike the earth or anything like that in fact for newton this time wasn't absolutely certain he just believed that the time of the end wouldn't happen much earlier than 2060 and it's really not an end for newton it's more of a new beginning because he believed that it would be around this time that the millennium would be established a millennium in christian terms uh kingdom of god on earth uh the messianic age uh in uh judaic terms so despite our very careful um qualifications uh the newspapers uh nevertheless picked up on the 2060 date uh this one is a slightly more sober um and reflective uh story uh that's uh talks about newton's temple drawings now i want to just flag some scholarship on newton's studies of the temple tessa morrison who is based in australia a student of the history of architecture has now published two books this is a more scholarly book and this more popular book isaac newton and the temple of solomon uh also a spanish scholar mourinho morano rodriguez has published a full uh transcription and translation of newton's most important manuscript on the temple you can see newton's sketch of the temple that particular manuscript is now at the huntington library in los angeles uh my colleague in the newton project rob iliff in 2017 published this book priest of nature the religious worlds of isaac newton i encourage anyone interested in some of the themes of today's talk to to go to this book uh it's very uh well written and well researched rob is the editorial director of uh the newton project which ironically is not based in cambridge it's based uh in uh oxford uh rob iliff uh did come to israel in 2018 also earlier in uh 20 2007 for our exhibition and conference um i want to also point to some israeli scholars who have worked on newton uh my hebrew is i have some biblical hebrew and even less uh israeli hebrew but i know that the title of this book is isaac newton and the temple this is eval ramati who kindly gave me this book in 2007. it's all about newton and the temple and it's in the hebrew language and this is ezra harrell's hebrew language book on newton and there is the english translation i was honored to help edit this translation and provide an endorsement for it uh it's a wonderful book because it takes you through newton's ideas on theology but it also takes you through uh mr harrell's own voyage of discovery as he learns uh more about newton's theology mr harrell being a man of science himself i encourage you uh to look to those books now i want to set newton's studies of the temple in their um in in the original context of the 17th and 18th uh centuries uh just to give you a little bit of background what we're talking about here is an architectural plan that uh holds true from the tabernacle through to the first temple of solomon and the second temple uh revived rebuilt under the governor zerubbabel after the return from the babylonian captivity i should say the partial return uh because many uh iraqi jews of course came back to israel in the 20th century including my friend uh ezra harald and then it was renewed or or renovated or even completely rebuilt by herod's uh into the first century so this is the temple uh that is uh discussed mentioned in the new testament now the third temple well uh some scholars some believers don't believe there will be a third temple some believers some scholars do see a third temple insofar as uh people believe in the third temple they look to ezekiel's prophecy that is ezekiel 42 48. so this is a an illustration of the tabernacle and you can see there's the holy place and then the most holy the inner sanctum where the ark of the covenant uh is placed this is an uh an attempt to reconstruct what solomon's temple uh would have looked like the time of solomon right up to its destruction in 587 bce and this is at the israel museum i took this photograph in november 2018 and it shows you the herodian uh version of the second temple uh this is what is of course called the temple mount there is no temple there uh now obviously uh but uh newton and other believers saw the temple as being rebuilt in the future now there are some interesting ideas about the temple that newton picked up on uh two in particular so the first one is that the jerusalem temple was thought to be a representation of the cosmos uh who believes this well uh the jewish historian josephus the jewish philosopher philo judaism and many rabbinical writings take this view and secondly there is the argument that the jerusalem temple is a representation of god's sanctuary in heaven and we see this in the pseudopigrapha we now know uh that the writers of the dead sea scrolls uh held that belief and some other rabbinical writings as well newton certainly held to uh the first of those beliefs uh that the temple was a representation of the cosmos and he seems to have held also to a variation of number two uh we'll get to that in a few moments now baroque temples uh there was a a real fashion in the 17th century to produce reconstructions of the temple and so two spanish jesuits who did this are prato and villapando in their massive commentary on the temple in ezekiel's prophecy now they took the view that the temple uh of ezekiel's prophecy was more of an allegory more of a spiritual message and they didn't see a literal temple to be rebuilt then you also have jacob judah leon who was nicknamed templo a dutch sephardic jewish biblical and talmudic scholar who produced a recreation of the temple and both of these works are much emulated in this period there's a lot of discussion about architecture and its origins so one view is that the plan of the temple comes from god and this is the foundation for all later temples some of which were corruptions but nevertheless this is the foundation for uh temples and to a certain extent all architecture and then the roman uh architect vitruvius his book on architecture was rediscovered in the renaissance and he put forward a more secular view that architecture had developed from the primitive hut he had this notion that structures ideally have three quality stability utility and beauty but some people combine these two views and juan batista velopando uh was one of those he believed that in fact that vitruvius had obtained his architectural ideas from solomon's temple that vitruvius was in effect a plagiarist well here is the grand baroque structure that vilipando recreated on the basis of his study of the book of ezekiel and other sources as you can see it looks very much like a baroque structure like something that would have been created in the early modern period and of course scholars then had no access virtually no access to uh archaeology of the ancient near east and reconstructions of the temple we've already seen a couple are much more accurate uh today but you can see that these are very intricate engravings and you can also imagine how people would have found these endlessly fascinating this is the top-down view of villa pando's reconstruction and in the geometrical center there you can see the uh are the altar of burnt offerings and that's an important feature which i will come back to this is a a model of the temple partly based on villapando uh uh partly deconstructed but this is what remains of it and it was uh built in hamburg in germany in the 1690s sponsored by a man named gerhard schott and this model actually toured in england in the 1720s in the last decade of newton's life this is a another reconstruction of uh the temple platform and the temple by another scholar so uh this is in the air people are interested in the temple they're studying the temple and they have various motivations for doing that some people were interested in the history of architecture others believe that there were spiritual and mystical symbols in the jerusalem temple that could be unlocked by a careful study and others associated uh the temple with their study of prophecy and this is the most important starting point for newton himself so here are three prophetic motivations for newton to study the temple number one the jerusalem temple was the scene this is what newton believed it was the scene for the symbols of the apocalypse that is to say the book of revelation the last book in the christian new testament and he believed that understanding the layout of the temple and its rituals would help unlock the meaning of this prophecy so that is one of his motivations but he also saw the dates for the destruction of the first temple 587 bce and the destruction of the so the first temple was destroyed by the babylonians under uh nebuchadnezzar the neo-babylonian empire and then the destruction of the second temple herod's temple in 70 ce by the romans at both moments there is a dispersion of jewish captives and this is why we still have a diaspora today of course so newton saw these as demarcation points for some of his prophetic time periods but newton also believed he didn't write as much about this but he also believed that in the future the temple would be rebuilt and that the jews would return to their land he wrote quite a bit about the jews returning to to their land not as much about the future of the temple uh but this was uh his beliefs so newton in other words did believe in a third temple uh he had some other motivations for studying the temple uh a general interest in the bible uh that's kind of a cavalier uh relaxed way of putting it newton was absolutely passionate about the bible he studied it all his life and john locke his his friend the philosopher said that he didn't know anyone who knew the bible better than newton he could quote it from memory uh he spent uh much of his life studying the bible also an interest in jewish ritual and its relationship to the early christian church so this would involve the tabernacle and the temple worship services there is his belief that the plan of the temple mapped the cosmos and number four he has an interest in ancient ancient metrology this is the study of measurement and this includes such things as the roman foot how long is the roman foot but especially the sacred cubit of the jews he's very interested in trying to find out how long that was because that will help them to reconstruct the temple now when newton was a relatively young man in the 1670s he encountered the prophetic writings of joseph mead of christ college cambridge mead died four years before newton was born so they never met uh but newton uh did acquire uh a copy of his works so this is mead's clawis apocalyptica the key of the apocalypse and this is uh newton's very own copy of joseph mead's works from 1672 it was a kind of an accident but i discovered this at the huntington library where it had not been uh fully cataloged and it has all kinds of dog ears in it and i'll show you those after i just mentioned this say something about this wonderful fold-out plate so this is joseph mead's attempt to take the symbols of the book of revelation and put them on a timeline so the arrow of time starts on the left and goes right through to the right and you can see the latin word finis there which means the end so mead and newton i did not believe that the book of revelation was merely symbolic and mere and merely allegorical they believed that it would unfold through christian history from the time of christ right up to the time of the end and also that there would be a 1 000 year millennium when christ would reign on earth in fact mead helps revive this idea in the english context newton held to that uh view so it's essentially the same idea as a messianic age in judaism here you can see one of newton's dog years and this is the inside of it and so we're not allowed to uh fold them because we want to preserve the the artifacts so what we've been doing is creating these uh virtual dog ears and newton would fold the page to point to a portion of the text that was interesting to him this is um from mead's works and you can often cross-reference these page markings to his manuscript on that page you can see the latin mele annos which is just to the right and above the point of the triangle there that's a thousand years a thousand years in uh jerusalem this is the first page of one of newton's earliest in fact it is we think the earliest treatise that he wrote on the book of revelation this is in jerusalem part of the yehuda collection here's the same manuscript newton's rules for interpreting the words and language of scripture he believed that the prophetic books of daniel and the book of revelation were written in a prophetic language and you had to learn that language if you wanted to understand uh these uh prophecies but mead is also interested in the temple he's interested in the measurements of the temple he sees time periods embedded uh in the proportions of the temple uh architecture uh he believes that the scene of the book of revelation is the temple so newton picks up these ideas from me this is from newton's copy of need an engraving of the temple and here you see one of the yehuda manuscripts and at the very bottom upside down and i'll give you that flipped up uh the latin there says uh the scene of the vision of the apoc apocalypse is judea and principally the temple with its atria or its its rooms and there you see in one of the yehuda manuscripts a map of the near east there's an enlarged version of it and you can see that he has jerusalem down there you can see the dead sea above it damascus above that aleppo in syria and baghdad and nineveh are over on the right so he sees the larger geography of judea as being the geography of the book of revelation but in particular the jerusalem temple so here's one of the huda manuscripts where he articulates this idea the temple formed according to the proportions of the tabernacle being the scene of these visions of it that you may understand the visions better i will first describe uh the temple and then in additional uh places he says the tabernacle or temple is the common scene of all the apocalyptic visions for the land of judea and therein the temple is the common scene of all the apocalyptic visions so you you need to understand the geography of judea of ancient israel uh you need to understand the architecture of the temple if you're going to understand the apocalyptic visions and the temple as being god's dwelling place and a representation of heavenly things is put for heaven so you can see that newton here is hinting at that second view of the temple that i mentioned earlier which is held in the dead sea scrolls etc and then the scene of the visions to be judea and in judea the temple so this is one very compelling reason for newton to study the temple because he wants to understand the apocalypse here is a depiction of the great white throne with 24 elders bowing down uh an animator has created this um this image so this is the sort of thing that newton is trying to do he's trying to imagine the scenes of the book of revelation and he sees in the symbols of various features of the temple the trumpets uh being part of temple worship the the singing part of the temple worship uh the uh the fire the altar burnt offerings uh the fire the sea uh mingled with fire that would be the large wash basin with the reflection of the fire from the altar burnt offerings so this is uh the way he's thinking okay isaac newton's temple studies proper let's say a little bit about that newton looked to the uh the bible uh as his main source for the understanding of the temple in particular the descriptions that you have of solomon's temple and the much more detailed descriptions of ezekiel's temple in chapters 40 to 48. now newton does seem to believe that there is a very close similarity between solomon's temple and ezekiel's temple not all scholars believe that in fact one of his followers william whiston who i'll mention at the end uh did not believe that he believed that ezekiel's temple was was larger and different in many respects and it was important to make that distinction but newton also goes to other sources including uh maimonides and uh this is a latin translation from maimonides the sephir avodah and that he had a copy of that in his uh library now the most important the single most important manuscript that newton wrote about the temple is his pro-legomana and this is the manuscript i alluded to it briefly earlier it is now at the huntington library huntington library in just outside of los angeles it's part of the babson collection and it was moved there in around 2006. this is a newton's most detailed sketch of the temple and you can see it there and it's very important for him that the altar of burnt offerings is in the geometrical uh center i'll come back to that but you can see it's not just the temple but it's also the entire uh temple platform the courtyards uh everything here's his sketch side profile with measurements of the altar as depicted in ezekiel's prophecy and then some other sketches here various architectural features of the temple so he spent a lot of time looking at various sources looking at the bible uh looking at jewish sources any sources he can get his hands on to try to reconstruct the temple here you see from the national library of israel a manuscript about ezekiel 40 and chapters following you can see latin there but you can also see a little bit of hebrew well at least i can see it you'll have to trust me it is there and this is also from the national library of israel so the the really grand manuscript is in los angeles but there are other manuscripts on the temple at jerusalem and this is one where you can see uh some sketches much more rudimentary sketches but uh there they are this manuscript also at the national library of israel it has uh at the top of the page there of the temple and synagogues of the jews so he wants to study the temple but also the synagogues of the jews and this is part of his study of church history and uh prophecy here are newton's notes from maimonides by way of this latin translation they call to divino the manuscript there is a little bit faded but it has been preserved carefully at the national library of israel and it is now as you can see nicely digitized as well here you can see newton's notes on villa pando he didn't take too many notes on filipino but he was aware of his his writings and this is also the national library of israel here you see again at the national library of israel uh a text and the uh the latin at the top of the page uh says uh concerning the length the magnitude of the sacred cubit so he wants to understand how long the cubit is he needs to know that uh because you need to know that to understand the dimensions the true dimensions of the temple and newton was very interested in doing that this one right here isn't a private collection but it's also a manuscript that has his calculations uh from various sources of the length of the qubit okay the temple in uh the world to come here's a wonderful chart there are various versions of this chart at the national library of israel this is one of them and what it is is it's newton's attempt to create a schematization of the various symbols of the book of revelation or the apocalypse now you can't see the text in any detail but you can see certainly that there's a great deal of care that has gone into producing this and i will tell you that time the arrow of time moves from the top of the manuscript right down to the bottom and here's a close-up of the bottom right hand corner uh where he's using language from the book of revelation which also comes originally from the book of isaiah a new heaven and new earth new jerusalem comes down from heaven prepared as a bride adorned for her husband so this is the messianic age that newton sees coming in uh the future and you can see i've underlined his uh one example of his use of the word jerusalem and then at the bottom uh you can see the stamp of what used to be called the jewish national university library with the hebrew for jerusalem so it's kind of nice to see the english there jerusalem and then yerushalayim in the in the in the hebrew so this is again one of the manuscripts at the national library of israel so what newton believes is that uh in the future uh he is a christian so he believes in the return of christ but unlike most christians he does not believe in the doctrine of the trinity he believes that the doctrine of trinity is a corruption of the original pure monotheism and it's very interesting because if you look at newton's manuscripts you will see that he believes that the original religion the religion of noah and his family was a pure monotheism that was untainted with idolatry and in his manuscripts he talks about this early religion and he says that the the temples of these early worshipers were were meant to depict a heliocentric cosmos with the sun in the center and the the sun is represented by uh an altar where fire is burned now newton doesn't believe that the first religion was a form of pagan uh polytheism rather again as i said he believes that uh the original religion was pure monotheism practiced by noah and his family but then over the centuries it became corrupted and became polytheistic and lapsed into idolatry uh so newton believes this about the original religion but he also believes that the original religion uh recognized that there was a creator but there was one god who created uh the world and and humans and animals and and everything and he believed that these the priests of this early uh these early um this early religion this early monotheistic religion were both astronomers and also uh religious priests and they studied uh the heavens now he's thinking a little bit here of the the babylonian magi of course now he also believes in the seven precepts of the sons of noah so he believes that before the time of moses the gentiles held to these seven precepts and one of them is to refrain from idolatry and to be monotheists another is uh not to be cruel to animals another is to set up magistrates so newton wrote about this and this for him was the original religion that had become corrupted so why am i telling you all this well it's part of the science side of newton's study of the temple but it will also come back now to this uh image right here newton believes that the original religion is going to be restored uh he is as i said a christian but he doesn't believe in the trinity so he believes that the majority of christians have fallen astray and that the uh the true pure form of of christianity is going to be restored at the time uh of the end and this uh would happen at some time in the future perhaps around the date 2060 or or afterwards here is another manuscript from the national library of israel and it looks kind of messy but i have a transcription here for you and here we see newton speaking about uh the building of a new temple this is yehuda manuscript 7.1 c the israelites in the days of the ancient prophets when the ten tribes were led into captivity expected a double return from captivity and that at the first the jews should build a new temple inferior to solomon's until the time of that age should be fulfilled and afterwards they should return from all places of their captivity and build jerusalem and the temple gloriously so uh here is a place where newton argues that the ancient jews believed there would be two returns from captivity there would be a return from the wrong the babylonian captivity uh which happens um in the time of ezra and nehemiah a partial return as i mentioned earlier uh but then that um first that that second temple would uh would be destroyed paris temple would be destroyed uh and and that was in 70 ce so there would have to be another return uh to to the land of israel so he sees two returns um including one that was still future from his uh point of view and at that time around that time uh the temple would be built a much grander temple than even solomon's he sees a worldwide peace being instituted this is also from the huda collection tis in the last days that this is to be fulfilled and then the captivity shall return and become a strong nation and reign over strong nations of far off and the lord shall reign in mount zion from henceforth forever and many nations shall receive the law of righteousness from jerusalem and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks and nations shall not lift up a sword against the nation neither shall they learn war anymore all which never yet came to pass so what newton is saying is that interpreters who believe that that the language that you see here from isaiah chapter 2 and micah chapter 4 that it would be fulfilled maybe in the church or maybe it was fulfilled at the time of the return from the babylonian captivity uh newton says no this hasn't been fully fulfilled yet he believes it's going to happen uh in the future and here you see he's actually quoting from isaiah 2 and micah chapter four from the huda uh collection okay now i want to uh wind down uh we've been going for maybe about uh 45 minutes or so so another five minutes or so and and we'll conclude uh the reception of newton's temple studies well after newton uh passed away in in 1727 some of his writings on prophecy uh were published in this book observations upon the prophecies of daniel and the apocalypse of saint john 17 33 and there you see a printed version of that text that is now in jerusalem about the return of the jews the double return and the temple being built gloriously in the future in other words a third uh temple and also shortly after his death in 1728 the book that newton was writing uh in his dying days uh the chronology of ancient kingdoms amended which is a history book about ancient empires and in this book is this wonderful engraving of uh based on newton's sketches of the temple which we've already seen and this one right here is a close-up of the the temple and i just you might be able to see but i'll tell you if you can't in the lower right hand corner a copyright jewish national and university library so this is actually held by the national library of israel this was part of the exhibition from 2007. and here's a another engraving from newton's chronology and you can see at the bottom again i will tell you if you can't see it uh a scale of sacred cubits and we've seen that uh the sacred cubit is important for newton and indeed in 1737 newton's writings in latin on the sacred cubit were translated into english and published as an appendix to the works of john greaves who had actually visited the pyramids of egypt and wrote quite a bit about the uh the cubit this is uh newton's follower william whiston who succeeded him at the lucasian professorship of mathematics in cambridge uh wiston not only was a convert to newton's science but he was an acolyte of his theology and prophecy and this is one of this is newton's uh uh sketch time chart of the book of revelation and whiston was much bolder than newton who did not want to make uh firm predictions uh but in this case whiston has actually calibrated the chart with uh centuries you can see going right up to the year 2000 this is from 1706 by the way uh this is what newton beli sorry this is what whiston newton's follower believed about the jewish restoration i observed that the restoration of the jews to their own land in general and the rebuilding of their temple with the restoration of their sacrifices according to ezekiel's description and model is not a thing of doubt or uncertainty in the prophetic writings but the thing that above all others they everywhere foretell and describe and the plainest and most emphatical words imaginable now what whiston is saying and this is uh long before newton's death so what newton would have known about this text is that the temple that is described in the book of ezekiel the temple of ezekiel's vision is going to be rebuilt winston was absolutely certain about that and he believes that it's going to be a grander larger temple complex than that of solomon or herod uh this is whiston's um recreation of the uh the temple platform and as with newton and many others the altar burnt offerings is in the geometrical center remember newton believed that that altar represented the sun in the heliocentric uh solar system and at the bottom you can see some uh engravings there's a close-up of the uh the temple uh even closer you can see the altered burnt offerings there and there's a perspective view of uh the temple that one's actually a little more accurate than uh some of the other ones we've seen uh this map was published in newton's sorry i keep saying newton um newton's follower whiston's translation of the jewish historian flavius josephus and this is a sketch showing uh whiston he's he's the the figure in black with a cane on the far right of this uh sketch walking away from the crowd this is tonbridge wells in the late uh 1740s which was a resort town and what whiston did is he had a he had a a model of the jerusalem temple belt in in the night in the 1720s and he would take it on tour and he would lecture about it and so this is one of those lectures depicted here in this uh in this sketch um just before i conclude i want to ask answer a question that maybe some people will have uh given newton's interest in the temple uh was he a freemason uh the answer is we we have no evidence that newton uh ever became a freemason or that he was a member of the rosicrucians what we do know is that two of his supporters did become masons john theophilus desagulies was the third grand master of england in london in 1719 and william stukeley who picked up newton's interest in uh temples uh became a mason in 1721 so at least two of newton's followers became masons uh but we have no evidence that newton himself did okay so i promised we would conclude and about five or so minutes ago and we are about to do that now at least formally what can we say uh well if um you want to look more deeply into newton's theological manuscripts i would encourage you to visit the newton project the main website of the newton project newtonproject.ox.ac.uk and you can search the manuscripts using a search engine for example if you want to you can search for the word temple and see all the times that newton has used the word temple we have about 95 of newton's theological manuscripts uh in transcription searchable transcription we're not quite there with all of them but uh in the next year or so we should have them all available and uh sorry the bottom one there isaacnewton.ca is the newton project canada which i run here in canada i have a have transcribers who do uh transcription work but all of that transcription work goes to the newton project website um we're near the end of our funding cycle we have almost completed the uh transcription of the 3.5 million words of theology uh we are still happy of course to accept donations uh we can't provide tax receipts for israelis but we can provide u.s canadian and british tax receipts and i've given you a sense of how much it costs to transcribe a single page it's about 20 to 50 u.s depending on how messy uh the tren the uh the text is um so that's all i have to say formally um if we were at the national library of israel we would no doubts uh be very close to the ardonne stained glass window display this is a picture i took of it in 2007 and i thought that would be a a nice uh and a fitting uh end to our presentation uh in this stained glass window installation you see symbolized the text of isaiah 2 which we referred to earlier which is about the nations coming to to zion to learn the law of the lord okay so that i am formally done now thank you very much professor that was fascinating there are many many many questions in the chat i'm not sure we'll have time for all of them but uh we'll give it a go um mirala asked if newton knew hebrew um he did know hebrew to a certain extent uh he was by no means a hebrews uh there is a a very useful uh article that was published a few years ago uh by scott mandebrotz and michael joland um uh i think maybe about 2016 2017 something like that uh where they where they um explain the degree to which newton understood hebrew he was um he was able to to write it out he was able to even put the vowel points in uh he he could recognize words but he still had to rely on on lexicons and grammars to to understand thank you very much um bracha wrote a question in hebrew and i'm freely translating right now so please excuse me if i'm not uh precise uh in what way did newton's unhappy childhood affect his faith and is his uh suspicion or skepticism expressed in his theory about the end of the world well there are some interesting theories about newton's childhood the historian frank manuel in his 1968 biography argued that because newton was a posthumous child that is to say his father died three months before he was born that he was perpetually searching for a father figure and he found that father figure in none other than god himself and this might help explain uh newton's belief that god is is one person rather than three persons um having a view of god that's actually in some respects closer to judaism um that's that's difficult to say uh you can't psychoanalyze newton he's been dead for centuries you can't put him on a couch and and ask him these things and of course many children who were posthumous uh did not become anti-trinitarians like uh newton did but it's fair to say that newton did face some challenges uh his mother remarried and um it seems that he did not like his stepfather who was much much older than his mother and in fact in a list of sins that he wrote at the time he became an undergraduate he wrote he confessed that he had threatened to burn the house over his stepfather and mother's heads so i think there was some childhood uh anger there uh certainly uh in terms of the uh his thinking about the end of the world um that was i think much more of a scholarly thing for newton um his approach to prophecy was very scholarly having said that newton was raised in the the english commonwealth under uh uh oliver cromwell and at that time england was very calvinist and there was a lot of writings about prophecy and that sort of thing so i think newton absorbed that kind of thinking uh when he was quite young thank you very much marion asked would newton have been a puritan so we could uh subdivide puritan into puritan with a capital p and puritan with a small p uh i would say that he definitely was puritan with a small p that is to say he was very morally austere uh but also there are some uh hints of the the calvinist puritan uh thinking um i've already alluded to this uh kind of revved up interest and prophecy that occurred during newton's youth that certainly he would have been aware of so i think in some senses he could be called a puritan thank you uh stefan asks did newton comment on subtite's v or his movement at any point that you know i don't think he did i could be wrong but i don't think he did thank you um there's a few more here uh masahiro asked uh what was newton's view on kabbalah are there any kabbalistic ideas in newton's theology or jerusalem temple so there has been a lot of discussion about this um and the discussion has yielded different results i have not studied newton's in his i've not studied newton's study of the kabbalah in any depth but i'll refer to the work of matt goldish who's in ohio uh he published a book called sir isaac newton and judaism and he concluded that newton was was not really an advocate of the kabbalah in that respect he would differ from gottfried leibniz the german mathematician who was this sort of his nemesis uh who was much more interested in it now we have to maybe distinguish between kabbalah proper uh the actual kabbalistic doctrines and kabbalistic kind of thinking and and maybe uh in the second sense there there is something to that in terms of his interest in um uh interpreting symbols uh his interest in uh gemitria that is to say uh numerical significance in um uh names and such uh most importantly for him uh the the number 666 in the book of revelation so there's a little bit of that but um i i again i have not studied this in any depth and and i'm just uh giving you a summary of what scholars have said thank you um laura asked a question uh newton tried to look at the phrase no this is latin and i don't know if i'm reading this correctly but many men uh tequil uh a person the phrase written on the wall as a unit of measure what do you think about it um i think it's actually aramaic not latin it's definitely not latin uh it's in um it's in the book of daniel this is uh daniel uh chapter five the writing on the wall um uh when the medo-persian empire uh took over the the neo-babylonian empire um yeah i i i'm not sure whether he the degree to which he saw that is signifying uh measurements as opposed to the judgment on you know it's weighed weighed found in the balance is found wanting uh is how it's generally translated um so yeah he he has a uh an interest in it because it appears in the in the book of uh daniel but i'd have to look more particularly at the the aspect of measurement there that's a very good question thank you thank you very much and excuse my um ignorance i think that's just about all we have time for as far as questions but i will open the microphones now so that people may thank you personally um and thank you very very much hope to see you very soon back in jerusalem and uh thank you it was uh incredibly interesting thanks a lot well thank you and thank you for all the good questions thanks for a great lecture you're welcome hi steve hello ima good to see you it's uh bob hartman in chicago much appreciated professor thank you thank you thank you very much for a very interesting lecture i wasn't expecting it to be interesting but it was it was fascinating okay thank you okay thank you for filling in many details yes hello thank you i'm david barco yep yeah i recognize you naomi from toronto to tell you that you just opened a new door that i didn't even know that existed okay very happy about you i'm about it and i just wanted to ask because i uh i want to send it to all my uh friends who are into sciences and don't believe in god and we have some arguments on some level whether your lecture is taped or where can i refer them i believe it's being recorded right now oh it is so how can i get hold of it um i posted the link several times i'll post the link once more in the chat room okay thank you thank you very much it was wonderful thank you the lecture will uh be up uh probably within uh two to three days okay thank you very much sure okay thank you very much everybody have a great night or afternoon or morning wherever you are in the world and hope to see you soon please visit us on our site and uh i also uh put it in i also put in a survey in hebrew or whoever has a little bit of time thank you very very good okay thank you philadelphia oh hello thank you i'm from philadelphia bye hello professor this thank you you too how did you feel about them i mean when you visited the museum what did you see [Music] which happened or something uh relating to the the research of isaac newton was there anything uh that was related um i mean the uh return from theo from babylon to toyon and yeah there were i mean there are a lot of things that are related to this research yes absolutely yeah yeah and and you know newton you know he died in in the year 1727 so he never saw uh the the big uh movements to return jews to return to israel starting the 19th century but i i am absolutely certain he would have been beyond thrilled uh to to see this and of course the babylonian uh jews being very very important part of the uh the diaspora and uh written about already in the tanakh so he was very familiar with with the tanakh and uh so yeah i i think he would have i think newton would love to visit your museum and another question uh the synagogues you said that he studied the synagogues and so i i believe it were uh there were uh european synagogues not um in the east or in babylon or other elsewhere well what kind of where where were these synagogues that we studied yeah so so newton would have he would have been familiar with um with synagogues in um you know in in amsterdam and um and in northern europe but um his study of synagogues involved uh researching historical sources like maimonides and and so on so he would have been also familiar with um uh you know sephardic and other uh synagogues also but not not from personal experience just from from reading history books oh yeah i understand did he visit did he ever visit uh synagogue has he been to a synagogue um we don't we don't know uh that he did um we don't know that he had any uh extensive relations with with jews some of his followers definitely did so william whiston personally knew uh jews um but so newton's relationship with jews was was more bookish it was through books uh and and and uh reading about uh jewish uh worship and that sort of thing uh through the various uh sources that he had in his library he's a very bookish man we don't even know if newton saw the ocean uh he didn't he didn't travel that widely uh london uh cambridge and his hometown that was about it he visited oxford once he may not have even seen the ocean thank you very much everyone have a good night good day okay see you soon thank you very much thank you so much

Channel: הספרייה הלאומית

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Length: 71min 25sec (4285 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 24 2020