First, I would like to say that I am very pleased with the tenor of this
conversation. My hope is that we will be able to clearly discern between
facts and opinions, and converse long enough to agree at least on the facts.
One of your statements helps in this regard:
> Note that I am not claiming that this 3-fold division of the OT is
> "inspired" or even that it's more logical than some other divisions. It
is
> arbitrary, though convenient for some purposes.
> & that's really the point of my first few objections to your whole
> approach. It's not that your divisions are wrong but just that they are
> arbitrary, though perhaps convenient for some classification purposes. &
the
> fact that they have some tradition behind them (not nearly as monolithic a
> tradition as you suggest) doesn't change this.
I don't think you see how strongly your point argues for the validity of my
thesis! Consider the simple combinatorial mathematics of the situation. What
are the chances that anybody who takes 66 objects and combines them into
seven ARBITRARY divisions will arrive at a structure that is both radially
and bilaterally symmetric? I won't bore you with the details (especially
since I haven't worked them all out yet) but I will assert that the
probability of such a structure arising by chance is EXCEEDINGLY TINY.
Yet that is but the beginning. How can we ignore the symmetric sevenfold
structure of the Canon in light of the universally recognized Biblical
significance of the Number Seven? And how can we ignore the theological
significance of the line of bilateral symmetry dividing between the Aleph
and the Tav, the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet? And how can
we ignore that all of this is going on in a book that declares itself to be
the Word of God? The nimbus of divine associations is overwhelming!
Yet there is still more! Even if we ignore the incredible sevenfold symmetry
of the Canon, we still have to deal with the underlying structure of the 66
books. Read my article called "A Great Cloud of Witnesses." In it, I
demonstrate how numerous scholars, innocent of any bias towards the Wheel by
reason of complete ignorance of it, have borne witness to the thematic
correlations linking the books on each Spoke. Most notable is the great
thematic river that unites Genesis, Isaiah and Romans, which constitute
Spoke 1 of the Wheel, as detailed in the article just cited.
Yet there is still more! The thematic correlation can be mathematically
measured by the distribution of words throughout Scripture. A notable
example being given in my article called "Creation." (Select Spoke 1 - Aleph
and go to the article called Creation.) In this article I demonstrate the
distribution of words based on the roots bara (Hebrew) and ktidzo (Greek)
occur on Spoke 1 with a frequency that is TEN TIMES THE STANDARD DEVIATION!
This is an example of how the _semantic content_ of Scripture correlates
with the _geometric structure_ of the Canon.
As a final note -- I must ask how a man with a PhD in Physics can fail to
immediately recognize the profound significance of this symmetry, since
symmetry is one of the most fundamental concepts that unites our study of
God's other great work, Creation itself?
Charis kai agape,
Richard
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Aug 06 2001 - 22:39:10 EDT