The Sabbatean Prophets

The Early Modern Context 19
faiths. 71 There might, of course, be multiple antichrists. The Jews were often
put in this role. 72 This sharp increase in the desire to point to a concrete
antichrist, present in the world, was another expression of the belief that the
End of Days was fast approaching.
Messianic Prophecies, the Sciences, and the Humanities
In the West we have been conditioned to think that science and religion
generally, and science and messianic mentalities in particular, are antithetical.
Andrew Dickson White’s 1895 classic, A History of the Warfare of Science
with Theology in Christendom, epitomizes the influence of this assumption,
whose potency has only recently begun to abate. What is certain is that no
such dichotomy existed in the seventeenth century, when science and theology
were intensely intertwined.
In an abstract sense, messianic prophecy and science clearly share certain
common goals. They are both concerned with methods for getting beyond
the surface world and understanding its underlying dynamics. They both
strive to define the boundaries of the knowable. Science and some forms of
prophecy attempt to plumb the future and what will happen under prescribed
circumstances. Both seek to improve the human condition through
knowledge. Daniel (12:4) declared that in messianic times, “Many will run
to and fro and knowledge will be increased.” This was widely taken to be the
significance of the great geographical and scientific discoveries in early modern
Europe. 73 Among early modern scientists messianic thinking took several
forms, most of them conservative and hopeful rather than violently
apocalyptic. 74 The Sabbatean movement broke out at the height of the scientific
revolution, in the very anni mirabiles of Sir Isaac Newton’s greatest
discoveries. These two events can be traced to a common universe of discourse
through elements of the underlying seventeenth-century mentality.
Over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, what we now
call science developed more or less directly out of approaches that are today
considered antitheses of science: astrology into astronomy, alchemy into
chemistry, prognostication into statistics, and so on. The scientific method
created the shift by insisting on concretizing and testing the results of natural
studies. In other fields, however, attempts at applying the scientific
method met with less spectacular results. The interpretation of biblical
prophecy and the related attempt to calculate the time of the Second Coming
are prime examples of this trajectory.
John Napier (1550–1617) exemplifies the early modern relationship be-