christian@topaz.UUCP (12/12/86)
Since you posted Pinyele's(sp?) article(s) featuring a
Kabbalistic interpretation of the Bible, I thought I would throw
in my favorite book along these lines. Be sure to check out the
bibliography at the end of this short posting before you shake
your head in disbelief and reject this line of Biblical research
-- gematria has a long history in ancient Jewish and Greek
thought. If Washburn's discovery is fact, the question that I
find fascinating is: which came first the number or the word(s)?
Read on for an explication!
This off-the-wall book seems to relate to the subject of Jewish
esoteric ideas as they have penetrated the NT writings:
Lucas, Jerry and Del Washburn. Theomatics: God's Best
Kept Secret Revealed. Stein and Day, 1977. (ISBN
0-8128-6017-9 pb)
Jerry Lucas' name, a former basketball player, is on the book
mainly to sell it I believe. Fundamentalist Christian Del
Washburn is the force behind the contents of the book. What
Washburn says is that the NT writings are full of gematria --
Washburn invents his own term "theomatics" in apparent ignorance
of the Jewish/Greek tradition of gematria. (Gematria is, of course, a
form of numerology where numbers are assigned to letters so that
each word or phrase becomes associated with the sum of the
number-letter correspondences. Gershom Sholem explains in one
of his books that there are many varieties of gematria.
Washburn uses one of the simplest varieties.)
Washburn organizes the chapters of the book around the various
theomatic themes in the NT writings -- "Jesus", "The 153 Fishes
in the Net", "Light, Darkness, and Power", "The Satanic
Kingdom", etc. In each chapter he gives many, many examples of
phrases and words that add up to a sum, which then factors into
some number and invariably into THE number that is the essential
number of the theme of the word or phrase. For example, the
essential numbers of the 'Jesus' concept are 37 or 111 (= 37 x
3). Here are some examples:
Messiah is coming, the one called Christ 37 x 100
Jn 4:25 Messias erchetai o legomenos Christos
We have found the Messiah 37 x 42
Jn 1:41 eurekamen ton Messian
The Messiah 37 x 25
Jn 1:41 ton Messian
Jesus 37 x 8 x 3 = 888
Iesous
Christ 37 x 8 x 5
Christos
Jesus Christ 37 x 8 x 8
Iesous Christos
Only begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father 111 x 37
Jn 1:18 monogenes theos on eis ton kolpon tou patros
God sent His only begotten Son into the world 111 x 40 (888 a factor)
1 Jn 4:9 oti uion autou monogene apestalken theos eis ton kosmon
Son of Man 37 x 80
Lk 22:22 uios ton anthropou
Lord of the Sabbath 111 x 8 (=888)
Mk 2:28 kurios sabbatou
This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee 111 x 40 (888 a factor)
Mt 21:11 outos estin o prophetes Iesous apo Nazareth Galilaias
The name of Jesus Christ, the Nazarene 111 x 56 (888 a factor)
Acts 4:10 to onomati Iesou Christou tou Nazoraiou
I am the good shepherd 37 x 43
Jn 10:11 ego eimi o poimen o kalos
The great shepherd of the sheep 111 x 30
Heb 13:20 poimena ton probaton ton megan
And so forth and so on...
(I hope I transliterated the Greek OK.)
Washburn recognizes that all this is pretty incredible so he has
asked Laverne Stanton, a statistician of California State
University at ??? (he doesn't say), to demonstrate based upon
statistics that the number correspondences are indeed there and
not an artefact of the Greek language as used by the NT writers.
My command of mathematics is not such that I can rely on my own
expertise to say yea or nay to Washburn's thesis, but I do find
it at least partly plausible. However, it bears a lot more
scrutiny at the very least! You should be able to find a copy
of this book at Christian book stores or possibly in a large
public library. I would very much appreciate your comments on
this book.
Here's a short bibliography to show you that this guy is not
quite just plain crazy. I would very much appreciate any leads (books,
scholars, articles) any of you out there can pass on to me about
gematria and especially gematria in the NT. Thanks much.
Keith Rowell
Gematria and Sacred Bibliography
Bond, Frederick Bligh and Thomas Simcox Lea. Gematria: A
Preliminary Investigation of the Cabala contained in the Coptic
Gnostic Books and of a Similar Gematria in the Greek Text of the
New Testament. Thorsons Publishers Limited, 1977. (ISBN
0-7225-0355-5) This book comes closest to any I have come
across to lending some credence to Washburn's thesis. Appendix
C corroborates Washburn's analysis of the names, epithets, and
"types" of Christ as being reducible to 37. The book also
mentions the 153 fishes business. Unlike Washburn's book,
however, this one relates the numbers to what is called sacred
geometry, which has to do with the dimensions built into ancient
temples. See Michell's book below.
Bullinger, Ethelbert W. Number in Scripture: Its Supernatural
Design and Spiritual Significance. Kregel Publications, 1967
(1894). (ISBN 0-8254-2238-8) This is a reprint of an old book
by a Christian minister. He doesn't quite get into gematria,
but treats the simpler forms of number symbolism, which most
people are familiar with like, for example, the number 7
represents "spiritual perfection". Bullinger just goes through
the integers and shows you how he thinks the Bible
writers/editors used the numbers.
Butler, Christopher. Number Symbolism. Routlege and Kegan Paul,
1970. (ISBN 0-7100-6766-6) Butler's book is a history of
number symbolism in Europe from its apparent beginnings with
Pythagoras to Milton and beyond. This book doesn't treat
gematria but shows the uninitiated that many great thinkers and
artists have been deeply involved with the mystical significance
of numbers down through the centuries.
Ellis, Keith. Number Power in Nature, Art, and Everyday Life.
St. Martin's Press, 1978. (ISBN 0-312-57989-6) This
journalist has written a general introduction to the rational
uses and meanings of numbers, but strangely for a rationalist-
oriented person he gives some credence to gematria in Chapter 9
"Is God a Number?". Here he quotes a section of the Bond book
cited above, and he (Ellis) says, "I have quoted it [an analysis
of Cephas] in full to show how an elaborate gematria can be
taken up in the twentieth century not just by Kabbalists and
Theosophists but by orthodox [!!] Christians, though they are,
of course, far from typical [whew!]."
Michell, John. The View Over Atlantis. Ballantine Books, 1972
(1969). (SBN 345-02881-3-150) This book shows in detail how
gematria and sacred geometry relate to each other. When you
come to this far out stuff cold, it is hard to swallow. And, I
must confess, even after reading a number of other books
relating to this subject, it still is hard for me to swallow.
The many pyramidology books grind this subject into the ground.
But I can't help thinking that a very careful scholar could
separate the wheat from the chaff -- if there is any wheat!
Scholem, Gershom. Kabbalah. Meridian Books (New American
Library), 1978. (Keter Publishing House, 1974.) (LC 73-77035)
This great scholar has written a very good historical summary of
Kabbalah. The second half of this book is arranged by topic.
Gematria is topic ten. He makes it clear that there are many
kinds of gematria. Permit a longish quote here please, " The
use of letters to signify numbers was known to the Babylonians
and the Greeks. The first use of *gematria* occurs in an
inscription of Sargon II (727-707 B.C.E.) which states that the
king built the wall of Khorsabad 16,283 cubits long to
correspond with the numberical vbalue of his name. The use of
*gematria* (to isopsephon[?]) was widespread in the literature
of the Magi and among interpreters of dreams in the Hellenistic
world. The Gnostics equated the two holy names Abrazas
(Abraxas) and Mithras (Mithras) on the basis of the equivalent
numberical value of their letters (365, corresponding to the
days of the solar year). Its use was apparently introduced in
Israel during the time of the Second Temple, even in the Temple
itself, Greek letters being used to indicate numbers (Shek. 3:2)
"In rabbinic literature numerical *gematria* first appears in
statements by *tannaim* of the second century..." (page 337)
Suares, Carlo. The Qabala Trilogy: The Cipher of Genesis; The
Song of Songs; The Sepher Yetsira. Shambala, 1985. (ISBN
0-87773-337-6) This modern day kabbalist has analyzed parts of
the OT for us to show how mystical insights are immanent in the
texts themselves. Suares does treat a portion of the NT
writings in The Cipher of Genesis book. The Sepher Yetsira is
"the fundamental text book of the Qabala". I need a lot more
background before I can make much out of Suares' books.harwood@cvl.UUCP (David Harwood) (12/18/86)
Sorry I didn't reply before by email to the author of the original article, which purports to discover numerlogical identities, associated with NT concepts, in the form of certain numbers which are said to be factors of sums, obtained by gematria, for relevant phrases of NT Greek text. For example, the number 37, said to be associated with the concept of Christ, is a factor of the sum 888 for Greek "Iesous", and is said to be a factor of sums for related NT phrases with unusual frequency. [Examples were posted from John] However, admittedly naive statistical reasoning suggests that, if such magic numbers are small relative to variation of sums for words, then arbitrary magic number F is a factor of the sum for an arbitary string of words with probability 1/F. Also, whether such a string has this property is roughly independent of whether some right/left expansion has this property. Then, naively, we should expect that the probabilty that an arbitrary word-token of text is included in some short phrase with length <= L with sum having factor F is P= 1- [(F-1)/F] exp [L*(L+1)/2], the number of such short left/right expansions. This would be somewhat reduced if there were syntactical conditions on admissability, but not importantly. For example, using the values F=37 and L=6, reported in the original article, we have P= .44, so that 44% of all word- tokens of text, or of selected "relevant" subtexts, might be expected to be included in some short phrase with length <= 6 having sum with factor 37. For F= 111, P= .17, etc. Now when you consider that there might well be several such magic factors, some composite, then it might well be miraculous that there are even a few words of the New Testament which are not contaminated by this dangerous heresy, which might be neatly epitomised by a "prime theological factorization theorem". God forbid ;-) Friends, the moral is: anybody can expand any word of text to obtain a phrase with sum having any sufficiently small magic factor with any large probability. Now if the sum of the entire Codex Vaticanus is a perfect number, then we really have something ;-) David Harwood