Education
He was educated at Christ"s College, Cambridge, where he became a Fellow from 1613.
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Joseph Mede
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He is now remembered as a biblical scholar. He was also a naturalist and Egyptologist. He was a Hebraist, and became Lecturer of Greek.
Those following Mede in part as a chronologist and interpreter included Thomas Goodwin, Pierre Jurieu, Isaac Newton, 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 Richard Popkin attributes Mede"s interpretation to countering scepticism, which gave it power to convince others, including the Hartlib circle.
John Coffey writes:
The ecumenist Scotsman John Dury, the German scientist Samuel Hartlib, and the Czechoslovakian 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.
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 Doctor Richard Mead.
