The documents, purchased by a Jewish scholar at a Sotheby's auction in London in 1936, have been kept in safes at Israel's national library in Jerusalem since 1969. Available for decades only to a small number of scholars, they have never before been shown to the public.
Are these unknown or rather unpublished documents?
Newton's lengthy "
Observations Upon the Prophecies of Daniel,and the Apocalypse of St. John" is well known. The full text is on the internet at several sites.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and claim to be the person on CF who knows the most about Isaac Newton. I know, big claim, and perhaps I am wrong, BUT... I have a Ph.D. in the History of Science from UCLA and the time period I specialize in is 17th century. Although Newton is not my primary interest, I nevertheless know quite a bit about him -- ya kinda have to if you do 17th century science.
Anyways, as to this quote from the article:
The documents, purchased by a Jewish scholar at a Sotheby's auction in London in 1936, have been kept in safes at Israel's national library in Jerusalem since 1969. Available for decades only to a small number of scholars, they have never before been shown to the public.
The author makes it sound as if these documents have been kept in hiding. Let me explain how academic archives work.
Rare manuscripts are ALWAYS kept in vaults are highly secured rooms in buildings. The rooms are also closely monitored for climate, because documents have a nasty habit of disappearing in high humidity environments. So, the fact that they are "kept in safes" is standard operating procedure. There's nothing strange about it at all.
Second, these kinds of documents are VERY fragile. Thus, not just anyone can go in and ask to see them. A visitor must demonstrate that he or she has need to see them. Usually that means providing one's academic credentials: a photo ID (passport or Driver's license), an academic ID card, and often a CV (curriculum vitae, aka resume). The CV establishes that you have done/are doing work in a field which would require looking at Newton's papers (history of science, religious studies, literature), as opposed to being in a field which wouldn't normally need to see something like this (e.g., someone from the music or public health department).
Thus limiting access is not for the purpose of keeping something secret, it's for keeping it safe.
These documents have been looked at quite closely, and much of the content has been written on. One scholar that I can think of who I know worked with these documents was a woman named Betty-Jo Teeter Dobbs, who wrote two books on Newton before she died.
These documents in Israel were actually a portion of a much larger lot (auction houses make more $$$ when they split things up!). Another portion of the lot was purchased by the Andrew Clarke Memorial Library in Los Angeles. I myself have worked on those documents. Yet more have ended up in the Dibner Library at the Smithsonian.
As for the provenance SINCE 1936?? (Did you mean
before 1936?)
Well, when Abraham Yahuda purchased them, his intent was to turn them around for a quick sale and make some cash. Unfortunately, WWII got in his way. When he died, the literary portion of his estate eventually went to the Jewish National and University Library. That's the provenance SINCE.
Before 1936? That's an interesting story. In the late eighteenth century, most of Newton's surviving manuscripts came into the possession of some distant relatives (his niece's daughter) where they remained for some time. In the late 18th century, an Anglican minster named Samuel Horsley attempted to compile a 'complete works' of Newton, and consulted these papers. While Horsley much admired Newton's mathematical acumen, he scoffed at Newton's alchemical pursuits, and loathed Newton's theology: Newton was an anti-Trinitarian.
In the late 19th century, those portions of Newton's papers which had "scientific value" were given to Cambridge University Library. Those deemed to have "no" scientific value remained in the family collection, which through various inheritances, now belonged to the family Portsmouth.
It was the Earl of Portsmouth who gave the papers to Sotheby's to be auctioned off in 1936.
As I stated above, Newton was an anti-Trinitarian; he was also a practicing alchemist. His time period was rife with "end-of-the-world" doomsayers. His point in trying to calculate the date of Christ's return was not so much to be exact, but to silence the current day prophets of doom.
Having said all of that, I don't put much credence in Sir Isaac's calculations.
