Joseph Mede was an English scholar with a wide range of interests. He was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he became a Fellow from 1613. He is now remembered as a biblical scholar. He was also a naturalist and Egyptologist. He was a Hebraist, and became Lecturer of Greek.
Early life
In the will of Thomas Meade of Berden, 1595 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, “Little is known of Mede’s childhood, other than the fact that at ten yearsof 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: “Item I give and bequeath to my two daughters that is to say Anna Meade and Rebecca Meade to every of 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, Thomas Meade, who had also been at Christ's College Cambridge, matriculating 1564, was "doubtless son of Edward Meade of Berden, Essex".
Works
His Clavis Apocalyptica 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. The book also posited that the Jews would be miraculously converted to Christianity before the second coming. Christopher Hill considers that Mede deliberately refrained from publication. His interpretation of the Book of Daniel and The Apostasy of Latter Times were published posthumously. On demons, he explained at least some mental illness as demonic. His collected Works were published in 1665, edited by John Worthington.
Those following Mede in part as a chronologist and interpreter included Thomas Goodwin, Pierre Jurieu, Isaac Newton, and Aaron Kinne. 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 and many others. Richard Popkin attributes Mede's interpretation to countering scepticism, which gave it power to convince others, including the Hartlib circle. John Coffey writes:
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. 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. Those following Mede's views in Doctrine of Demons'' include Arthur Ashley Sykes and Dr. Richard Mead.
