In his cursive English, occasionally laced with Hebrew words, Sir Isaac Newton applied his scientific mind to measurements of the ancient Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and predicted the end of the world in the year 2060.
Above: Sir Isaac Newton
Israel’s National Library is in the beginnings of an attempt to digitize every Hebrew manuscript in existence, and it’s also in the middle of building a new National Library building next to the Knesset in Jerusalem.
This week, the Associated Press was given a private tour of the library’s special collection, which includes ancient siddurim (prayer books), Franz Kafka’s Hebrew notebook, the oldest Hebrew Bibles known to exist, and many other rare treasures.
One of those rare treasures are Sir Isaac Newton’s handwritten theological writings. According to the AP:
Sir Isaac Newton gave the world three laws of motion that bear his name. But he had other theories too: about Hebrew scripture and the apocalypse.
In his cursive English, occasionally laced with Hebrew words, Newton applied his scientific mind to measurements of the ancient Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and predicted the end of the world in the year 2060.
These writings should have ended up at Cambridge University, where his descendants donated most of Newton’s original manuscripts in 1872. But at the time, Cambridge expressed no interest in Newton’s theological scribbles, said Milka Levy-Rubin, curator of the Israel national library’s humanities collection.
In 1936, his descendants sold the manuscripts at Sotheby’s auction house. But bidders were far more interested in an auction of impressionist paintings at London’s rival auction house Christie’s the very same day.
Jewish scholar Abraham Shalom Yahuda caught wind of the manuscripts, bought the theological writings, and donated them to what would become the national library.