Re: On Bradford's defense of Vernon's gematria hypotheses

Ed,
I have added my responses immediately after your questions.

Regards
David

----- Original Message -----
From: "ed babinski" <ed.babinski@furman.edu>
To: "David Bradford" <david.bradford1@which.net>; "Vernon Jenkins"
<vernon.jenkins@virgin.net>
Cc: "ASA Message Board" <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Thursday, October 07, 2004 2:43 AM
Subject: On Bradford's defense of Vernon's gematria hypotheses

Thanks Bradford,

For

1) distinguishing between the literal Genesis and flood geology
conclusions that Vernon has tired to draw, based on his numerological
claims.

2) agreeing that there are different types of gematric values depending on
the version of gematria one employs.

Further Important Questions:

a) Can anyone provide a literal translation of the first seven words of
Genesis? Do those seven words by themselves constitute a completed
thought or do they appear to constitute an incomplete thought or
incomplete sentence?

DSB: The RSV is as good as any you will find, but none can be truly faithful
to the colloquialisms of biblical Hebrew. Take the very first word as an
example. Within its six letters it contains the 3-letter word for 'head' (we
may transliterate this word as <rosh>): head is top is beginning. There is
an interesting comparison at the start of the book of Numbers. In the second
verse, RSV translates "Take a census of all the congregetion ..". Yet the
original Hebrew does not say this at all. It transliterates as <se'u et rosh
.. >, meaning 'raise the head'. This was not a civil census but a divinely
ordained version in which raising the head respects the value of each
individual. It was also Jewish, so everyone had to hand over half a sheckel
for the privilege.

But you see the problem. You could have a billion different but equally
well-meaning translations and not do full justice to the subtle nuances of
the original. Imagine the damage done to someone's proper understanding when
they rely on one oe just a handful of alternative translations.

b) Does anyone have access to the earliest known written manuscripts that
contain the first few words of Genesis?

DSB. Unlike the major civilisations that surrounded them, the early Hebrew
people did not normally commit their writings to stone. The 'official'
copies of the Torah have always been on parchment, papyrus or paper, so
there are no longer any early manuscripts available to consult. But bear in
mind that Orthodox Judaism regards the Torah as the directly spoken word of
God, not just divinely inspired. In large part, this is the reason that the
Jewish faith has survived in continuity for 3400 years, while their one-time
overlords, Egypt, Babylon and Rome have long since ceased to exist as a
viable civilisation.

c) If Genesis was first composed over a thousand years B.C. (mainstream
historians would probably suggest that the final edited version of Genesis
arose around 600 B.C.), then does anyone know of any books or
archeologists who can tell us what variants in Hebrew spelling have been
found as far back as 1000 to 600 B.C., such as ancient Hebrew words found
on ancient archeological artifacts, compared with their modern
equivalents? In other words, what types of known spelling changes have
been documented from the time Genesis was believed to have been first
written to the time Vernon came up with his gematric calculations based on
the spellings of the first seven words?

DSB. Due to the sacred nature of the Torah - being the directly spoken word
of God - the Jewish process for creating and replacing Torah scrolls is
meticulous in the extreme. There are mechanisms that allow for the
correction of a minor error, but anything more than the odd wrong letter and
a whole scroll will be destroyed and another one started. There are enough
independent 'family lines' of scrolls so that error-detection comparisons
may be made from time to time. The bottom line is that the Torah scrolls in
every Orthodox Synagogue in the world should be indistinguishable in content
from Moses' original. The script has, of course, changed to the later
Aramaic square type.

It is easy to find variants of the same word within the Torah, but these
have been perpetuated over time. Its not that the language has evolved,
although it evolved outside of written Torah. But judging by the number of
spelling variants I have found, they could not all have been the result of
transcription errors. They can only have been there from the start; maybe we
will find they contribute to a deliberate purpose. Perhaps the Bible Code
people could answer that one.

d) Would someone be willing to perform a wide comparative study of phrases
that begin other "holy" books, both ancient ad modern, and study their
gematric values and compare those gematric values with a wide range of
numbers commonly found in both simple and complex mathematical equations?

DSB. I hope you get some positive feedback on this one, but I sense it would
be a job for a small army. I also feel it could lead to some heated
arguments when it is found that the presumed holy texts of some other faiths
do not posess the same Creator's watermark. Dangerous territory!

Cheers,

Ed

"David Bradford" <david.bradford1@which.net> writes:
>Hello, Everyone,
>
>This is my first post to ASA, but I have been an interested observer for
>at least 2 or 3 months.
>
>I feel slightly awkward about making this thread the subject of my first
>contribution, but it seems to me that the findings of Vernon Jenkins are
>something the Author of the Torah always intended should be discovered at
>the right time. So it obliges the educated reader to afford that text the
>same serious consideration that went into its original composition.
>
>Ed Babinski wrote: *** far too much to reprint here ***.
>So, rather than address every one of EDs seven points, I will speak to
>the parts that worry me the most.
>
>To begin with, I do not place too much trust in any particular
>translation from the original Hebrew into English. They all have some
>merit, but only the original can say with unswerving accuracy what the
>Author intended. I have good reason to believe that the text in use today
>by Orthodox Jews is a faithful transcript of that which was dictated to
>Moses, letter by letter, at Sinai (or Horeb). I concur that the character
>set now in use is derived from the Aramaic alphabet (or alephbet) of
>c.300 BC (let's agree to dispense with this BCE nonsense). But the
>one-to-one equivalence of the 22 letters has been preserved, and there is
>strong evidence (not offered here) that the present letter count of
>304805 is the same as in the original. Incidentally, the Hebrew word we
>translate as scribe (sopher) comes from the root meaning to count, not to
>write.
>
>As for the final forms of kaf, mem, nun, peh and tzadee, all true Torah
>scrolls do not show word breaks, so the use of Sofit values is, as ED
>suggests, hard to justify. Although I do rather like the story of one
>Rabbi Avraham Abulafia (1240AD - 1291+ AD) who noted that these special
>values are usually tagged onto the end of the normal letter sequence,
>following tav, and are given the values 500 to 900 in steps of 100. Then
>it is easy to see that if there had been another letter after the 27th,
>it would take the value 1000. But in Hebrew, the number 1000 is called
>Eleph, and Eleph has the same spelling as Aleph, the first letter which
>has a value of 1. Therefore, said AA, the alphabet has a cyclic nature,
>in which the last letter (final form of tzadee) is succeeded by the first
>letter Aleph/Eleph. So there is no need for another letter after the last
>since Aleph IS the next.
>
>Here, said AA, was a construction, involving established principles of
>Gematria (the sofit values), which can explain the phrase: "O that they
>were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their
>latter end! How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to
>flight, except their Rock had sold them, and the LORD had shut them up?
>(Deuteronomy 32:29-30).
>
>But back to the script and, having examined Vernon's website, I recognise
>that he is using standard Gematria letter values. For my part, I am
>conducting research using mainly reduced (ie katan) values and restricted
>to the 22 regular Hebrew letters only.
>
>As for the origins of Hebrew Gematria, I agree that its first known use
>can be dated to 300BC at the earliest. In his book: BIBLICAL HEBREW Step
>by Step, Menahem Mansoor writes of numerical letter values: "This usage
>is not biblical. The earliest traces of it are found on Maccabean coins
>(about the second century B.C.)". This is a perfectly reasonable point of
>view for anyone who's principal interest lies in the literal meaning of
>the written text. However, appropriate study can lead to a strong sense
>that Gematria is not invented but is discovered. Perhaps it was known in
>the Jewish Oral Tradition that sits alongside the written Torah text. Or
>perhaps it was first noticed as a set of unexpected coincidences. But one
>thing is fairly certain, Hebrew numerology was not overtly in use until
>about 1100 years after the Torah was first set down in writing. If
>Gematria is a genuine artefact of the Hebrew language, then the best
>evidence comes from findings like those of Vernon Jenkins and not from
>history books. By analogy, we do not check for proof of Quantum Mechanics
>by looking in 19th century or earlier writings. We can assess the
>evidence only as it becomes available. We are talking original research
>here, not the review of past writings that often passes for research when
>originality flies out of the window [return to tranquil mode].
>
>On ED's final point about 'hits' and 'misses', I would like to ask where
>the contributors to this site would elect to set the threshold between an
>acceptable coincidence and an unacceptable coincidence. As Bacon
>suggested, people are often fooled because they like the look of the hits
>and ignore the misses. So what should we think if there are no misses?
>Even then one hit out of one would still not be very convincing. 5/5
>might start to raise eyebrows. And 20/20 hits would surely exceed any
>reasonable threshold. Vernon Jenkins' findings I suggest belong to the
>third category and constitute strong, perhaps overwhelming evidence for
>deliberate design in the early part of Genesis.
>
>I would certainly value seeing a well thought-out, formal critique that
>addresses VJ's findings as a package, an assessment worthy of
>consideration by the scientific community.
>
>I have seen in a different thread that Vernon has, at least temporarily,
>taken a step back from insisting on drawing certain unpopular conclusions
>from his results. This should give everyone enough space to assess the
>'facts' without prejudice to any particular doctrinal position. So, come
>on, let's see what collective ASA grey matter is capable of!
>
>Regards
>David
>_________________
>David S. Bradford
Received on Thu Oct 7 13:37:15 2004