Hi John:
Thanks for this interesting posting. Just a few points:
1) Having a King James' AV with numbered chapters I observe that central
to the full complement of 1189 is Psalm 117 (the 595th), not Psalm 118
as your friend believes. This fact - though spoiling his argument -
raises another matter that we might well ponder viz, that the shortest
chapter is also the central chapter. We further observe that its words,
though few, get to the heart of things:
O Praise the Lord, all ye nations: praise him all ye people.
For his merciful kindness is great toward us: and the truth
of the Lord endureth forever. Praise ye the Lord.
2) 594 (the number of chapters which both precede and follow Psalm 117)
is significant, for consider: (a) it is the difference between those
mysterious numbers given in the Book of Revelation, 666 and 1260 (see
Rv.12:6,14; 13:5,18 - noting the equalities 1260 days, 3 and a half
years, and 42 months) and, (b) two sheets of A4 (standard and most
popular paper size in most places outside North America) laid lengthwise
end-to-end have a nominal length of 594 millimetres. These matters are
detailed in my page
http://homepage.virgin.net/vernon.jenkins/Remarkable.htm
3) I would like to draw attention to another biblical mystery involving
number. It concerns Psalm 46 as it is given in the King James' AV.
Counting words from the beginning of the psalm we find the 46th to be
"shake"; discarding the closing "Selah" and counting words backwards, we
find the 46th to be "spear"; the final drafting and polishing of this
Bible took place in 1610 - the year of Shakespeare's 46th birthday!!
I have made available at the following URL an article (published in The
Times of London, 23 April 1976) in which further details are given of
this truly amazing coincidence:
http://homepage.virgin.net/vernon.jenkins/Psalm46.htm
With all good wishes,
Vernon
John Burgeson wrote:
>
> I was sent the numerology below by a good friend. My response follows.
> I think I was not too skeptical.
>
> Burgy
> ----------------------------------
> >>
> 1 Psalm 118 is the middle chapter of the entire Bible.
> 2 Psalm 117, before Psalm 118, is the shortest chapter in the
> Bible.
> 3 Psalm 119, after Psalm 118, is the longest chapter in the Bible.
> 4 The Bible has 594 chapters before Psalm 118 and 594 chapters
> after Psalm 118.
> 5 If you add up all the chapters except Psalm 118, you get a total
> of 1188 chapters.
> 6 1188 or Psalm 118 verse 8 is the middle verse of the entire
> Bible.
> 7 Should the central verse then not have an important message?
> >>
>
> An interesting interplay of numbers. I wonder if the person who assigned
> verses
> to the scriptures (I think in the Middle Ages) did this on purpose?
>
> Items 4 and 5 are a restatement (quantification) of item 1. No significance
> that I can see to the number 594.
>
> Items 2 and 3 don't seem all that significant. And items 5 and 6 are
> significant only if you use the
> decimal system of counting. Not all civilizations have used that.
>
> Still -- interesting phenomenon. I really think the greatest probability
> lies in attributing it to the verse inventor.
> But I could be wrong.
>
> John
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