From: Vernon Jenkins (vernon.jenkins@virgin.net)
Date: Fri Apr 18 2003 - 18:07:29 EDT
----- Original Message -----
From: "George Murphy" <gmurphy@raex.com>
To: "Vernon Jenkins" <vernon.jenkins@virgin.net>
Cc: "Michael Roberts" <michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk>; <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2003 3:26 AM
Subject: Re: The power of ten
> Vernon Jenkins wrote:
> >
> > George,
> >
> > Thanks for writing. Perhaps you will allow me to answer your question in a
> > structured fashion.
> >
> > 1. Regarding Rev.13:18, it is God who poses the riddle, and it is He who has
> > assigned the unique number 666 to the beast.
> >
> > 2. Our attempts (as 'understanding believers') to solve the problem are
> > intended to further some serious purpose - the words of Rev.22:19 and the
> > imperative of the riddle itself making this abundantly clear - and we are
> > encouraged by the promise of wisdom.
> >
> > 3. At first sight, the matter appears to consist in equating some
> > individual's name with the number 666. Clearly, this requires us to read its
> > constituent letters as numerals and apply some acceptable rule of bonding in
> > order to obtain the number represented by the name.
> >
> > 4. At the time of John's writing, two systems (in which all letters assumed
> > a double identity as numerals) would have been in common usage, viz the
> > Hebrew and the Greek. It would therefore have followed that the original
> > documents upon which all our Bible translations are based would, in God's
> > wisdom, have been as much sets of numbers as life-giving scriptures.
>
> Not exactly. The letters of the human languages in which the biblical documents
> were written were used to designate numbers by human beings & this provided a natural
> way (_gematria_), & one comprehensible to people of the 1st century, for the author of
> Revelation to encode a particular name in one verse. But as I said originally, this in
> no way ensures that any additional revelation is to be obtained by applying the process
> of gemetria to other words of scripture.
>
But you would surely agree that those who had a mind to might fairly read these words as numbers.
> > 5. So, to return to the matter of the riddle, we have to question its direct
> > interpretation, for that would lead inevitably either to a seemingly
> > purposeless 'witch-hunt', or else a realisation of the obvious after the
> > beast had assumed power. But if not this, what, then, can be its true
> > purpose?
>
> It had already assumed power. The name undoubdtedly refers to claims of the
> Roman imperium to divine authority & is probably _kaisar theos_ in Greek or _nrw [or
> nrwn] qsr_ in Hebrew.
>
But if, as you believe, the beast had already assumed power in John's day, what was the purpose of Rev.13:18? Where was the promised 'wisdom', and where the 'overcoming' of the number of his name?
> >
> > 6. Because the use of gematria (ie the reading of words as numbers) was
> > implicit in the process of identifying the beast, we infer that it is - in
> > this context, at least - a divinely-sanctioned procedure.
>
> It is "divinely sanctioned" in Rev.13:18 because we're explicitly told so there.
> We are not told this for any other words of scripture. Besides, what we're told in this
> verse is the _opposite_ of what you're trying to do. Here we're given a number which is
> used to conceal a name. You're taking perfetly clear words & turning them into numbers.
>
But you must agree there can be no definitive solution to the riddle, for the names of many fancied candidates - both then and since - have appeared to meet the requirement. Further, when you refer to my reading 'perfectly clear words' as numbers, you appear to speak as a literalist.
>
>
> > 7. But has the same procedure a wider application as a tool of biblical
> > exegesis? While Rev.13:18 has nothing to say about this possibility, I
> > believe the favourable outcomes obtained by applying it to the Greek form of
> > the Lord's name and the Hebrew of the Bible's first verse must be considered
> > decisive. Thus, we find the letters forming the word 'Jesus' have a combined
> > value of 888 (as opposed to the 666 of the Antichrist); the number 296 being
> > a factor of both 'Jesus' and 'Christ'; the same number appearing as 7th word
> > of Genesis 1:1 ('...the earth.'); 666 appearing three times in a geometrical
> > representation of this first verse with its outline of 6.6.6, and so on.
> >
> > 8. The numbers indelibly associated with the Hebrew words of the OT and the
> > Greek of the NT appear to have a complementary and precious message to bring
> > to an increasingly apostate world, viz God is; He is exceedingly able; and
> > His Word, undoubtedly true.
>
> This adds nothing at all to the clear and unambiguous words of scripture.
>
But whereas the words of the early chapters of Genesis are, for me, 'clear and unambiguous', they surely create problems for one of your persuasion. Perhaps the numbers are to help us understand that He really means what He has said!
> In sum, I see nothing here to change my original statement.
[which was: From the fact that the writer of Revelation tells readers to "calculate
the number of the beast" it does not remotely follow that there is any
biblical authority
for trying to get any theological result by "calculating" any other words
of scripture.]
George, you obviously missed the significance of my '...and so on.' from #7 above. The following is an extract from Peter's posting of 22 Feb last:
At this time, I don't want to deal with the integers. I find the claims
about transcendental numbers even more astonishing. On 20 Jun 2001
(asa-digest #2178), Vernon presented a rather simple formula which
produces pi from Gen. 1:1 in Hebrew, and Euler's e from John 1:1 in
Greek, both with fractional errors of about 10^(-5) only (each letter
traditionally has a certain integer value). I checked and confirmed both
claims. First, my result for e was off by half a percent instead of
10^(-5), but after being told by Iain that a iota has to be added to the
Greek word ARCHE in John 1:1 (in the text, it is a subscript to the
eta), the fit was as claimed.
I was not sure that assigning the probabilities of 10^(-5) to these
results is correct. So I asked any on the list with mathematical
competence for comments on this. Iain argued that it is correct. No one
else commented, although some derided the whole enterprise as misguided.
Evidently, they did not attribute any significantly small probabilities
to the results, although no one documented this opinion on the basis of
any other reasoned probability estimates.
Now, with respect to the actual discussion, I would assume that the
writer of Gen.1:1 might have known pi, but certainly not to this
precision. However, I doubt that Euler's e was known at all to John. So
how could they just make it up, as Grattann-Guinness believes? It would
certainly be even much harder to do than making up patterns of integers.
And how could these transcendental numbers serve as "decorations" if
they were not known at all, or not to the precision produced by the
text?
He wrote again, on 26 Feb:
Wayne, I am not a numerology buff. But I was intrigued by a question of
probability. Everybody just _assumes_ that these results with pi and e
etc. are made up artificially. My question was whether there is any
_evidence_ that this is possible. This question should be answerable by
a mathematician doing the appropriate probability calculations. But
since Vernon brought this up more than one and a half years ago, no one
has even tried to answer this question (apart from Iain, whom I
mentioned, and who seems to be similarly intrigued by the
probabilities), although there were probably dozens of posts condemning
such "number games" as nonsense - which is not very congenial if they
don't even try to answer the probability question. A solid demonstration
that the probabilities involved may be higher than, say, 0.001 could put
to rest the numerology claims once for all. But just assuming such
results can be made up, without any evidence, will not.
I am grateful to Peter for these lucid comments. Clearly, until such time as someone steps in with a serious (and successful) challenge to my findings, the strong probability must be that my claims are correct - and highly significant. Wouldn't you agree?
Shalom,
Vernon
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