VERNON:
>I'm wondering if you'd
>care to comment on something I've been taxing the list with over the past
>months, viz my contention that the Bible's first verse, in the original
>Hebrew, is the most remarkable combination of words ever written, and a
>tanding miracle. To support this claim I have prepared a brief summary of
>my writings which you may find at
>http://homepage.virgin.net/tgvernon.jenkins/Wonders.htm
>Sincerely,
>Vernon (Jenkins)
>www.otherbiblecode.com
ED: Vernon! Hi buddy! I read your article concerning the coincidences that
you have found between the gematric values (of the first seven words in
Genesis), and various numbers of significance to modern mathematicians.
The first and most obvious point I would make is that discovering "Pi,"
for instance, in the Bible does not prove that every story and teaching in
the Bible is true, nor does it make it any easier to distinguish between
opposing or tricky interpretations of verses and teachings in the Bible,
nor clear up questions of ancient Biblical history, science, psychology,
sociology, spirituality, and ethics.
I am sure you could find various numbers of significance to modern
mathematicians all over the place, from nature to your cereal box, if you
looked for them with enough enthusiasm and with a wide enough knowledge of
the entire realm of mathematics.
Be that as it may, here's some questions or points to ponder concerning
gematria, the history of gematria, and mathematical coincidences:
--------------
QUESTION OR POINT #1: What exactly is the translation of the first seven
words in Genesis, is it even a complete sentence? And are there no ancient
textual variants in words or spelling?
----------------
QUESTION OR POINT #2: Have you studied the history of "gematria?" The
Universal History of Numbers : From Prehistory to the Invention of the
Computer by Georges Ifrah contains a small section on gematria that's
worth reading.
------------------
QUESTION OR POINT #3: The early Hebrew alphabet is not the same as the
later Hebrew alphabet, and "gematria" came into use only after changes
were made in the Hebrew alphabet -- in about the 3rd century B.C. I think,
based on the following paragraph I found on the internet:
According to Diringer (Story Aleph Beth, 136), one of the distinctive
differences between Early Hebrew (which is very much like Phoenician) and
Square Hebrew (which is influenced by and perhaps derived from Aramaic) is
the presence of final forms in the latter, so this form of gematria cannot
have been used before Square Hebrew. Diringer (135) says, "a distinctive
Palestinian Jewish type of script - which we can definitely regard as the
Square Hebrew script - can be traced from the second and the first
centuries B.C.E. According to Prof. W. F. Albright, it became standardized
just before the Christian era." He adds (136), "In the Square Hebrew
style, unlike the Early Hebrew, ... there are five letters which have dual
forms, one when initial or medial, the other when final.... The dual forms
in great part go back to the period before the various offshoots of the
Aramaic script assumed their distinctive features; they are found, indeed,
in some third-century B.C.E. cursive documents in Egypt, in Nabataean
inscriptions, and in the earliest Square Hebrew inscriptions and other
documents. In some early documents, the letters 'aleph, he and taw also
have dual forms." And finally (p. 137), "It was during the second century
C.E. - according to Prof. Tur-Sinai - that our present Square Hebrew
script, in its current form, became more or less fixed, and it was only in
this period that the consistent Massoretic tradition regarding the use of
the dual forms of the letters kaph, mem, nun, pe, sade was established."
Therefore the use of the final forms in gematria is not likely to predate
the second cent. C.E., and their use in numeration cannot have predated
their invention in the third or second cent. B.C.E. (Further, as noted
above, they were originally assigned the same numerical values as the
corresponding medial forms, which would agree with their originally
inconsistent use in medial and final position.)
----------------
QUESTION OR POINT #4: What system of gematria are you using? Apparently
there are different gematric values depending on which system of gemtaria
you are using. There's the so-called "standard" value, the "sofit" value,
the "katan" value, the "full" value, and the "ordinal" value. Which value
are you using?
http://www.biblewheel.com/GR/GR_intro.asp#std
---------------
QUESTION OR POINT #5: Translators disagree on exactly how to translate the
first few words of Genesis 1:1-2:
A. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth
was unformed and void.” [30]
B. “When God began to create the heavens and the earth -- the earth being
unformed and void.” [31]
C. “At the beginning of the creation of the heavens and the earth, the
earth was unformed and void.”
D. “At the beginning of the creation of the heavens and the earth, when
the earth was unformed and void.” [32]
Notice that none of these translations state, “In the beginning God
created the heavens and the earth ‘out of nothing.’” Rather, “In the
beginning” only means “at the commencement of time, in the remotest past
that the human mind can conceive, God created the heavens and the earth.”
How God did that is depicted in the verses that follow Genesis 1:1-2. [33]
For instance Genesis states that heaven was formed on the second day of
Creation “in the midst of the water.” And the earth was called forth on
the third day from the watery “deep.” But what was this primordial
“water” from which (or in which) heaven and earth were created? Nought
but primordial Apsu and Tiamat, their waters commingling as a single body
(Enuma Elish)! Because it was agreed among all the Hebrew’s neighbors that
vast primeval “waters” existed “in the beginning”:
“At the beginning the world was a waste of water called Nu, and it was the
abode of the Great Father. He was Nu, for he was the deep...and Ra bade
the earth and
the heavens to rise out of the waste of water.”
-- Creation Myth of the Sun Worshippers (Egyptian) [34]
“Nothing existed except the vast mass of Celestial Waters.”
-- The Book of Knowing How Ra Came Into Being (Egyptian) [35]
“In the beginning there existed neither heaven nor earth, and nothing
existed except the boundless mass, of primeval water which was shrouded in
darkness.”
-- Another Telling of the Origin of the Gods (Egyptian) [36]
“Sing the sacred race of immortals...who sprang from Earth and starry
Heaven, and murky Night, whom the briny Deep nourished...In truth then
foremost sprang
Chaos.”
-- Selections from Hesiod’s Theogony (Greek) [37]
“The beginning of all things was a...windy air...and a chaos, turbid and
black...destitute of form. But when this wind became enamored of its own
first principles (the chaos), an intimate union (commingling) took
place...(and) from its embrace with the wind was generated Ilus
(Mud)...the putrefaction of a watery mixture, And from this sprang all the
seed of creation and the generation of the universe.”
-- A Phoenician (Canaanite) Creation Myth [38]
Eusebius of Caesarea quoted Philo Byblius on the ancient Phoenician
cosmogony, “As the beginning of all things he assumes (i.e., Philo
Byblius) a dark and windy air or a blowing of dark air and a marshy, dark
chaos.” [39]
One cannot fail to see how much the Hebrew creation story owes to its
neighbors’ conception of “primordial waters.” However, the Hebrew God,
unlike the rest, is not portrayed as being born of those waters. Instead,
they simply exist "in the beginning," and the Hebrew god is commanding
them. Kind of like the Hebrews were playing "one-up-man-ship" with the
stories of the gods and watery creation that already were common in the
ancient world.
---------------------------
QUESTION OR POINT #6 : Exactly how many "seven word" series in the entire
Bible and in other books, have you examined with an eye to finding as many
coincidences between those words' gematric values and mathematical
figures?
Suppose you discovered additional "seven word" series whose gematric
values were filled with mathematical coincidences?
Suppose you didn't, but someone with a great knowledge of mathematics (and
more determination) did find some seven word series with an equal or
greater number of such mathematical conicidences?
Exactly how many interesting mathematical values are you aware of in both
the realm of higher and lower mathematics (let's not limit ourselves to
just prime numbers and pi and e). There are probably lots of intriguing
values you can find in any seven word sequence if you know a lot about
mathematics and the many possibly significant numbers and equations in
higher mathematics.
-----------------
QUESTION OR POINT #7: Isaac Newton was fooled by Pyramidology. "Pi" was
found, along with numerous "amazing numberical coincidences," connected
with the external and internal measurements of the Great Pyramid. The
earliest Pyramidologists found a few simple mathematical coincidences, and
later pyramidologists kept building on the basic ones, finding more
"fine-tuned" and more "amazing" mathematical coincidences. The seeker's
mind acting like a sieve, ignores all negatively significant, or
contradictory coincidences in favor of coincidences that she or he can
creatively interpret as "significant," until they have a bookful of
coincidences, while the REST of the story remains untold, the countless
numbers of mathematical significance that were not found, or were found in
odd out of the way verses when the entire Bible is analyzed gematrically.
The articles at the websites below explain why such numerical coincidences
are not as "amazing" as one might think at first glance. Even Christians
eventually debunked Pyramidology claims (though it was Christians who
first propagated such claims) and show why the discovery of "Pi"-related
numbers in the pyramid's measurements are not so "amazing." Even a
mathematical genius like Isaac Newton was taken in by both Pyramidology
and Alchemy in his day and age, so no one need kick themselves for being
taken in by gematria.
http://answers.org/CultsAndReligions/pyramid.html
http://www.greatdreams.com/pyramid.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/pyramidology_01.shtml
If you study pyramidology in depth you begin to understand how easy it is
to "find" numerical coincidences when you "look" for them.
I guess we all have a tendency to “see” what’s most important to us,
sometimes even in the most unlikely places. It’s based on the way our mind
filters information. Or as Francis Bacon once put it, “The general root of
superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss,
and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other.”
Cheers,
Ed
------------------------
"Vernon Jenkins" <vernon.jenkins@virgin.net> writes:
>Hi Ed,
>
>Welcome to the ASA list. You may remember writing to me way back in
>Aug/Sept
>2003 with a number of observations re my interest in Bible numerics. As I
>recall, our dialogue finished rather abruptly, and I'm wondering if you'd
>care to comment on something I've been taxing the list with over the past
>months, viz my contention that the Bible's first verse, in the original
>Hebrew, is the most remarkable combination of words ever written, and a
>standing miracle. To support this claim I have prepared a brief summary of
>my writings which you may find at
>http://homepage.virgin.net/tgvernon.jenkins/Wonders.htm
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Vernon (Jenkins)
>www.otherbiblecode.com
>
>PS I still await a reply from Brendan McKay.
>
>V
>
>
Received on Tue Oct 5 18:03:39 2004
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