In 1728, the posthumous publication Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended by Sir Isaac Newton quickly became a source of controversy regarding the nature of sacred history and the criteria for judging reliable evidence about the past. Jed Z. Buchwald and Mordechai Feingold's meticulous study of the development of Newton's system of chronology traces the methodologies and scientific approach that the protagonist employed to solve the problem of accurately ordering historical events which accounted for the rise of human civilization after the Deluge. Drawing from the construction of Newton's arguments in scientific experiment, such as the calibration of the prism during his investigation of light, Buchwald and Feingold show how Newton applied these same principles to his study of the ancient human past. For example, according to Newton the senses were inherently defective. The prism replaced the senses rather than improving them; it was the prism, not the observer's eye, that produced workable data for calculation. In chronology, Newton treated the history of idolatry like the ‘sensibly’ hidden colours of white light, and he calibrated biblical figures and events according to profane history through the averaging of historical deviations. Buchwald and Feingold discuss the results of this novel approach to chronology through the consolidation of multiple biblical figures into a single person, such as Sesac and Sesostris, and Newton's unusual calculation of regnal lengths. That Newton based his system of chronology on mathematical principles and calculations rather than philological, theological and classical traditions polarized the reception of Chronology, as it challenged the meaning of reliable evidence for the ‘men of taste’ who regularly pursued that historical study.

Buchwald and Feingold's book is roughly divided according to three periods of Newton's life: the Cambridge years, the days at the London Mint and the reception of the Chronology manuscript before and after its publication. Newton initially became interested in decoding the meaning of idolatry and prophecy as a form of intellectual relaxation from natural philosophy whilst at Cambridge in the late 1670s, and he continued to meditate on the issue of reliable evidence in ancient texts until his death over forty years later. Like his contemporaries, Newton recognized that the Old Testament was composed at different times by different authors, yet he remained convinced of its veracity. His first ventures into chronology focused on the last six chapters of the Book of Daniel because the prose, according to Newton, displayed evidence of original testimony, which suggested that Daniel himself had written these chapters. Here, Daniel provided the years for various events and predicted the rise and fall of four monarchies. Essentially, the text presented fixed points of historical orientation from which Newton correlated prophecy with later empires. Buchwald and Feingold explore in detail the reasons and methods that Newton employed to calculate the repopulation of the Earth since the Deluge. The brevity of the Masoretic timeline that Newton supported, which fixed Creation at 4004 BCE, contracted the rise of civilization and forced Newton to argue that the ancient empires of Assyria and Egypt were little more than city kingdoms. The thinly populated postdiluvian world that Newton presented through evidence of regnal lengths and military numbers was an unorthodox vision of sacred history.

The expedition of the Argonauts became the second cornerstone for later calculations in Chronology, which the authors place at the same time as Newton's work at the London Mint. As Warden of the Mint, Newton investigated fraud cases, which involved the calibration of verbal testimony with concepts of credible argument within a court of law. His experience battling fraudulent testimony through the careful coordination of multiple testimonies become the model for interpreting the location of the colures in an asterism, as recorded in ancient texts. Using Hipparchus' remarks about the position of the Sun rising in a particular constellation during an equinox or solstice during approximately the era of Troy, Newton was able to calculate the precession of the Sun across the sky and thus date the year of an event, thereby adjusting the year of the Argonautic expedition. The controversial nature of using mathematics to date the ancient past is particularly clear from Buchwald and Feingold's later chapters addressing the reception of Chronology in England and France during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

As the focus of this book rests on the history of Newton's ideas and the methods used to achieve a system of chronology, Buchwald and Feingold are primarily concerned with understanding the Newton archive. Beyond the immediate aims of the Chronology manuscripts, there is little political or social context, yet there is ample discussion of orthodox chronologies that influenced Newton's calculations. Since chronology depended on a minutia of evidence for establishing the order of events, the story that Buchwald and Feingold trace is a rich and complicated one. The debates are mathematically technical and require a good understanding of ancient Egyptian and classical mythology and biblical history. It would be advantageous for the reader to be fluent in these matters; however, given the nature of Newton's overall approach, this book would certainly benefit a more general reader, particularly one interested in debates about the reliability of textual accounts. This study also compliments scholarship on early modern studies of the Earth where mineralogists and geologists used the history of ancient civilizations as an analogy for establishing Earth chronology, and it potentially sheds light on the regular use of astronomy as a model for thinking about credible arguments in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century geology. As the first study to seriously engage with Newton as a chronologer since Frank Manuel's Isaac Newton, Historian (1963), Buchwald and Feingold's publication significantly adds to scholarly commentary on Newton. The authors' detailed examination of the making of history in the early modern world clearly demonstrates Newton's novel approach in Chronology and its lasting influence on subsequent history writers who were governed by connoisseurship and taste rather than mathematical certainty.