English scholar
Joseph Mede
[1]
(1586 in
Berden
? 1639) was an English scholar with a wide range of interests. He was educated at
Christ's College, Cambridge
, where he became a Fellow in 1613.
[2]
He is now remembered as a biblical scholar.
[3]
He was also a naturalist and Egyptologist. He was a Hebraist, and became Lecturer of Greek.
[4]
Early life
[
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]
In the will of Thomas Meade of Berden, 1595
[5]
there is a bequest "Item I give and bequeath to Joseph my son sixty pounds of good and lawful money to be paid to him at his full age of one and twenty years."
According to Jeffrey K. Jue, in Heaven Upon Earth,
[6]
“Little is known of Mede’s childhood, other than the fact that at ten years of age both he and his father fell ill from smallpox. His father never recovered and his mother remarried a certain Mr. Gower from Nasing. Mede had two sisters, Rebecca and Sister Casse.” That Joseph had a sister Rebecca is confirmed in his father’s will:
[7]
“Item I give and bequeath to my two daughters that is to say Anna Meade and Rebecca Meade to every of [them] xxvii li vi s viii d of lawful money to be paid to them and every of them as they come to their several ages of xviii.”
According to Venn's Alumni Cantabrigienses,
[8]
Thomas Meade, who had also been at Christ's College Cambridge, matriculating 1564, was "doubtless son of Edward Meade of Berden, Essex".
In 1603, while a student at
Christ's College, Cambridge
, Mede came across an open copy of
Sextus Empiricus
'
Outlines of
Pyrrhonism
on another student's desk. Upon reading the book, he underwent a
skeptical
crisis. In search of some foundation for truth, he turned to studies of texts about the Millennium in the Bible.
[9]
Works
[
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]
His
Clavis Apocalyptica
[10]
(1627 in Latin, English translation 1643,
[11]
Key of the Revelation Searched and Demonstrated
[12]
) was a widely influential work on the interpretation of the
Book of Revelation
. It projected the end of the world by 1716: possibly in 1654.
[13]
The book also posited that the
Jews would be miraculously converted to Christianity
before the second coming.
[14]
Christopher Hill considers that Mede deliberately refrained from publication.
[15]
His interpretation of the
Book of Daniel
[16]
and
The Apostasy of Latter Times
[17]
were published posthumously. On
demons
, he explained at least some
mental illness
as demonic.
[18]
His collected
Works
were published in 1665, edited by
John Worthington
.
Theology
[
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]
Joseph Mede held
Arminian
theological views.
Influence
[
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]
Those following Mede in part as a chronologist and interpreter included
Thomas Goodwin
,
Pierre Jurieu
,
Isaac Newton
,
[20]
[21]
and Aaron Kinne (1745?1824). As a critical scholar of the Bible, he started the discussion of the possible multiple authorship of the
Book of Zechariah
, subsequently taken up by
Richard Kidder
(1633?1703) and many others.
[22]
Richard Popkin
[23]
attributes Mede's interpretation to countering
scepticism
, which gave it power to convince others, including the
Hartlib circle
. John Coffey
[24]
writes:
The ecumenist Scotsman
John Dury
, the German scientist
Samuel Hartlib
, and the Czech educationalist
Comenius
had each been profoundly influenced by the millenarianism of
Alsted
and Mede, and seem to have seriously entertained the idea that London was the centre from which human knowledge and divine rule would spread.
Coffey also says, however, that
millenarianism
was rare in the 1630s, coming in only later as an important force.
William Twisse
, of the
Westminster Assembly
, added a preface to the 1643
Key to the Revelation
, a testimonial to its convincing power.
[25]
Among Mede's pupils at Christ's was
Henry More
.
John Milton
studied at Christ's in Mede's time, and is considered to have been influenced by his ideas; but scholars have not found evidence that he was a pupil.
[26]
Those following Mede's views in
Doctrine of Demons
include
Arthur Ashley Sykes
and Dr.
Richard Mead
.
See also
[
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]
Notes and references
[
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]
Citations
[
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]
- ^
Joseph Meade, Joseph Mead.
- ^
"Meade, Joseph (MD603J)"
.
A Cambridge Alumni Database
. University of Cambridge.
- ^
Book of Revelation in England
- ^
Concise Dictionary of National Biography
, under Joseph Mead.
- ^
Will of Thomas Meade of Berden, Essex, 1595, Consistory Court of London, at London Metropolitan Archives
- ^
Jue, Jeffrey K., ed. (2006),
"Biography"
,
Heaven upon earth
, INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS, Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, pp. 7?16,
doi
:
10.1007/1-4020-4293-0_2
,
ISBN
978-1-4020-4293-5
, retrieved
12 October
2023
- ^
"Mead family history - 1550-1600"
.
sites.google.com
. Retrieved
12 October
2023
.
- ^
"Alumni cantabrigienses; a biographical list of all known students, graduates and holders of office at the University of Cambridge, from the earliest times to 1900"
. Cambridge, University Press.
- ^
Richard H. Popkin,
The History of Scepticism : From Savonarola to Bayle: From Savonarola to Bayle
p.64-65
- ^
Illustration of a timeline from the work
- ^
online text
- ^
Hugh Trevor-Roper
,
Religion, the Reformation & Social Change
(1956) says by the MP Richard More (p. 248); also CDNB, giving constituency Bishop's Castle, death in 1643.
- ^
Christopher Hill
,
Milton and the English Revolution
, p. 33.
- ^
Scult, Mel (1978).
Millennial Expectations and Jewish Liberties: A Study of the Efforts to Convert the Jews in Britain, Up to the Mid Nineteenth Century
. Brill Archive. pps. 20?21.
- ^
A Nation of Change and Novelty
(1990), p. 54.
- ^
"online text"
. Archived from
the original
on 3 March 2016
. Retrieved
16 May
2007
.
- ^
"online text"
. Archived from
the original
on 15 September 2007
. Retrieved
16 May
2007
.
- ^
Keith Thomas
, Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971), p. 585; Mede,
S. Iohn 10.20. He hath a Devill, and is mad
, published posthumously;
[1]
- ^
Newton developed a method for the interpretation of prophecy based on the writings of the early seventeenth-century Cambridge divine, Joseph Mede. Mede's views were widely accepted and the scheme that Newton propounded to bring consistency to the unravelling of prophetic symbolism was not in itself controversial.
(PDF)
Archived
6 June 2007 at the
Wayback Machine
- ^
"The Life and Work of Isaac Newton at a Glance"
.
- ^
Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913).
"Zacharias"
.
Catholic Encyclopedia
. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
- ^
Pimlico/Columbia,
History of Western Philosophy
(1998), p. 334.
- ^
PDF
Archived
27 September 2007 at the
Wayback Machine
, p. 126.
- ^
Christopher Hill (1993),
The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution
, p.304.
- ^
Mede, Milton and More: Christ's College Millenarians
by Sarah Hutton, in Milton and the Ends of Time, edited by Juliet Cummins,
ISBN
978-0-521-81665-6
,
ISBN
0-521-81665-3
.
Sources
[
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]
Further reading
[
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]
- Jeffrey K. Jue (2006),
Heaven Upon Earth: Joseph Mede (1586?1638) and the Legacy of Millenarianism
, Dordrecht: Springer.
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