tjp@athena.mit.edu (Thomas J Piccone) (04/10/91)
Recently completed - a study of the numerical phenomena displayed by the first chapter of the New Testament (Matthew 1). Resulting document totals 43 pages, and includes interlinear Greek-English text, descriptions of numerics, tables of results, summaries, and appendix giving Greek vocabulary with definitions and forms in Matthew 1. Hopefully a reasonably good introduction to the topic and a fairly thorough documentation of results. See sample of results below. Copies of the document, entitled *Bible Numerics: A Study of the Numerical Phenomena of the First Chapter of the New Testament*, will be provided *free of charge* to those who request it. Since there is a fair amount of Greek in it (in a special commercial font), and many formatted tables, the document *cannot* and *will not* be sent by email. (Sorry, but those are the facts). I will send only *one* copy to a person until I can assess the demand. I am willing to keep them *free of charge* unless I get swamped with requests and cannot afford the expense (about $2.50 per copy with cover, not including envelope and postage - for the first batch of 50 sets of photocopies). To receive a copy, send your complete mailing address (*not* email address) to tjp@eagle.mit.edu. Do *not* post replies to this announcement on the network, please! If you wish to send your mailing address, please do *not* include any of this article with your request (I have already seen it!). A short note is quite sufficient. Sample of results: Matthew 1:18-25 is a narrative concerning events related to the conception and birth of Jesus, particularly in relation to Joseph. The number of words in the passage is 161 (23x7). The vocabulary of the passage has 77 words (11x7). These 77 vocabulary words occur in the passage in 105 forms (15x7). An angel speaks to Joseph in the passage. Of the 77 vocabulary words, the angel uses 28 (4x7), and does not use 49 (7x7). Of the 105 forms, the angel uses 35 (5x7), and does not use 70 (10x7). The 77 vocabulary words (7x11) have a total of 396 letters (36x11). Of the 77 words, 33 begin with a vowel (3x11), and 44 begin with a consonant (4x11). The 33 words which begin with a vowel have 143 letters (13x11), and the 44 words beginning with a consonant have 253 letters (23x11). At the time when the New Testament was written, the Greeks did not have a set of numerals to express numbers. Instead, they used the latters of their alphabet. When this system was devised, the alphabet had 27 letters (three were dropped later, leaving 24). The first nine letters had values from 1 to 9. The second nine had values from 10 to 90, by tens. The third nine had values from 100 to 900, by hundreds. Each word therefore has a numeric value, equal to the sum of the numeric values of its letters. The 161 words of the passage have a total numeric sum of 93394 (13342x7). The 77 vocabulary words have a total numeric sum of 51247 (7321x7). The 105 forms in the passage have a total numeric sum of 65429 (9347x7). And so on - there is plenty more. All of the above is only part of the results for the single passage of eight verses at the end of the chapter. The writer who did this work originally about a century ago (I am just verifying and documenting it) saw two uses for Bible numerics: (1) to prove divine inspiration of the scriptures, and (2) to test the differences among the existing ancient manuscripts and reproduce the original text (as a kind of supplement to textual criticism). These matters are also discussed in the document offered above. Please note that the above announcement is absolutely serious. I spent more than two months (in my spare time, of course) working on the document using a Mac SE/30 computer. Word and letter counts were done using Microsoft Word 4.0. Numeric value calculations were done using HyperCard 2.0 and Microsoft Excel 1.5. The text and tables were prepared using Microsoft Word 4.0, and the title page using Ready,Set,Go! 4.5a (Letraset). It was printed on a Hewlett- Packard DeskWriter printer using UltraScript for the Macintosh (Postscript emulator from QMS, Inc.).