The Books of Nature and Scripture: Recent Essays on Natural Philosophy, Theology and Biblical Criticism in the Netherlan
Dick Popkin and James Force have attended a number of recent conferences where it was apparent that much new and important research was being done in the fields of interpreting Newton's and Spinoza's contributions as biblical scholars and of the relations
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ARCHNES INTERNATIONALES D'HISTOIRE DES IDEES INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS
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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. -- 66 To back up his claims he cites passages from Job, Chronicles and Jerome. More systematically Keynes 5 and Yahuda 9 set out his conclusions with plentiful chapter and verse to back up his interpretations. It is as if the prophecies were some kind of divine algebra the values (meanings) of whose symbols can only be deduced by comparing all the occurrences of a particular symbol (i.e., rigorous application of the protestant principle of interpreting scripture through scripture). Newton is not content to provide single interpretations applicable to particular instances. The scope of his enquiry is as ambitious as it is systematic: he collates his findings taken from the prophetic books of the Old as well as the New Testaments, and sets them into a panoramic schema where the natural world represents the political world. "The original of the figurative language of the prophets was ye comparison of a Kingdom to l W orlde & the parts of one to ye like parts of the other." Or, as he puts it in Keynes 5, "I received also, much light in this search by the analogy between the world natural and the world politique. For the mystical language was founded in this analogy & will best be understood by considering its original.'' His aim is, to use his own term, to "methodize" the