A Second Channel of Communication?

[blue triangle]

Whatever gives you the notion that the Bible is about ultimate origins; any more than other such tales? What should I, or anyone, be worried about what you find of import?



Leaving the theme of your trembling goosebumps, here you display prominent confirmation bias: you declare the location primary and thus a watermark is inevitable. You inject the importance into both ends of an hermetic hermeneutic.

Wherewith you continue your cowardly streak. Engage with criticism, or confess that you're here to evangelize.

I do engage almost solely with pertinent criticism, which is why I haven't answered many of your posts. But you do argue a point above, about me assuming that the first verse must inevitably contain a watermark. This is you being presumptive, not me. I never expected anything. I recognise that it seems to be a watermark of some kind, which is a post hoc rationalisation, I realise, but one for which there is ample evidence. I've been accused of looking for patterns then finding them because I expected them, and now I'm accused of explaining them after the fact because there are patterns there!

 

[asydhouse]

You sound like a young person. I haven't the time to give this the reply it is itching for, but I'll come back to it.

Ha!

When I was young I was willing to entertain the sort of foolish mystical traps you are flirting with, from xtianity itself through ESP and all the myriad mumbling methods of madness dressed up as holy seeking, only to find that it all leads nowhere.

Perhaps you are far younger than I. If you have reached my age and are still fumbling in this darkness you call light, there's no hope for you.

You seem young to me, which is why I'm wasting these precious minutes trying to help you to wake up, and stop wasting your life.

Actions are real. Do something. Get your hands on the world.

Jimi Hendrix made connections with his sounds and his love. Make some music. Make love.

Just quit yr cool tomfoolery. (Captain Beefheart). These musical references may give you a clue as to how long I've been around. I don't care.

I don't care, if the hippies cut off all their hair.

 

[Donn]

blue triangle,
Given that you place so much stock in your faith and its evidences, I will take it you think you're not only right but fully so: you are in the presence of a real force, let us call it god, which forms a concrete basement for all else.

Small mistakes in math aside —you can repair such with some art— you are on certain ground. Given this, I must ask why you are so set upon this evidence?

For if your god is real then it is so — no further evidence aids. All such is mere debris by the wayside to your marriage. You dwell in the presence of the terminally real; or so I gather. Why can you not forgo the arithmetic — simply describe the profundity? Why can you not gather new comprehension to school strangers? New means of transporting this raw reality to parched minds?

In short — why is your very best god-guided lecture so poorly received?

Alike, find the example of an engineer who cannot write nor solve equations, straining to build a bridge. Is this not a bind? Is the engineer not falling short of the depth of his moment? Yes: so you.

Study also in your heart this contradiction: by failing to confer the stunning fact of your god, you are dooming others to its final mercy; which is shorter than shrift — as your very Bible sums with no allowance.

Thinkest! You are the failure. For every one who, at your revelations falleth not to their knees to sob, you betray another soul; and the black marks accrue. Your living god will clutch at you upon the final exit from your spreadsheet.

Thinkest thou.

 

[Donn]

I do engage almost solely with pertinent criticism, which is why I haven't answered many of your posts.

I shrug and your arrows fall. What of my post challenging the opening line of your thesis? Well, perhaps you missed it on your way to infinity.

But you do argue a point above, about me assuming that the first verse must inevitably contain a watermark. This is you being presumptive, not me. I never expected anything. I recognise that it seems to be a watermark of some kind, which is a post hoc rationalisation, I realise, but one for which there is ample evidence.

Wherein you slap my cheek while admitting impediment. Fair then: at least you did. Foul then: the retreat into conjured evidence — which merely completes your journey to the origin of error.

I've been accused of looking for patterns then finding them because I expected them, and now I'm accused of explaining them after the fact because there are patterns there!

The finding is in the seeking in waters so filled with coin.

 

[fagin]

Is all this based on the assumption that your god speaks English?

I always assumed the bible was written in other languages first.

More fool me I suppose.

 

[Garrette]

To answer your last question first, I think I was talking about the fact that the patterns are in the first verse, and not some verse in the middle of the Bible. I don't think it's too much to see meaning in that, because if you tested every verse in the Bible you almost certainly would find striking patterns somewhere.
Yes, textual analysis has shown that Genesis was edited many times. However, you are presupposing (and I've seen a lot of presupposition so far in the replies) that only the original words 'whispered' would be the encrypted ones. I suggest it was a teleological process, Guided by a force spanning space and time towards a desired end point. I believe that these patterns were meant to be discovered now.

This is very similar to your precognitive dream interpretations in which you see meaning in something that could just as well mean a coxswain as it means death-by-stroke.

Since you have said that the particular religion is no matter, what patterns and/or numerological findings would or would not be significant if I were to go seeking patterns in the Bhagavad Gita?

If your answer is simply to search it to see if something comes up, I am afraid you will have provided no answer at all. Rather, if you can say that a predetermined method that results in a finding of X on only the third or fifth iteration or recursion (or whichever number you determine has value ahead of time), then you will be on your way to demonstrating it is not simply numerical pareidolia.

 

[MRC_Hans]

Where did you learn arithmetic?

Yes, it had to sum to a number, but the number the first verse happens to sum to is a particularly interesting one. Doesn't that strike you as curious? Not only that but this is only the beginning . . .

No, it doesn't strike me as curious. The number is a part of the sequence of numbers. It has the be there.

Hans

 

[blue triangle]

Ha!

When I was young I was willing to entertain the sort of foolish mystical traps you are flirting with, from xtianity itself through ESP and all the myriad mumbling methods of madness dressed up as holy seeking, only to find that it all leads nowhere.

Perhaps you are far younger than I. If you have reached my age and are still fumbling in this darkness you call light, there's no hope for you.

You seem young to me, which is why I'm wasting these precious minutes trying to help you to wake up, and stop wasting your life.

Actions are real. Do something. Get your hands on the world.

Jimi Hendrix made connections with his sounds and his love. Make some music. Make love.

Just quit yr cool tomfoolery. (Captain Beefheart). These musical references may give you a clue as to how long I've been around. I don't care.

I don't care, if the hippies cut off all their hair.

The hippies had the right idea: love is the answer. But their definition of love was too small and they were well before their time. In the long run, their kind will triumph though.

 

[blue triangle]

blue triangle,
Given that you place so much stock in your faith and its evidences, I will take it you think you're not only right but fully so: you are in the presence of a real force, let us call it god, which forms a concrete basement for all else.

Small mistakes in math aside —you can repair such with some art— you are on certain ground. Given this, I must ask why you are so set upon this evidence?

For if your god is real then it is so — no further evidence aids. All such is mere debris by the wayside to your marriage. You dwell in the presence of the terminally real; or so I gather. Why can you not forgo the arithmetic — simply describe the profundity? Why can you not gather new comprehension to school strangers? New means of transporting this raw reality to parched minds?

In short — why is your very best god-guided lecture so poorly received?

Alike, find the example of an engineer who cannot write nor solve equations, straining to build a bridge. Is this not a bind? Is the engineer not falling short of the depth of his moment? Yes: so you.

Study also in your heart this contradiction: by failing to confer the stunning fact of your god, you are dooming others to its final mercy; which is shorter than shrift — as your very Bible sums with no allowance.

Thinkest! You are the failure. For every one who, at your revelations falleth not to their knees to sob, you betray another soul; and the black marks accrue. Your living god will clutch at you upon the final exit from your spreadsheet.

Thinkest thou.

To answer your first question, I'm not out to convince myself by the evidence of patterns in the Bible, but others. And even that will not convince most, especially here. But for anyone on the brink of change, it might be enough - and I have convinced others.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'small mistakes in maths'. Perhaps you could explain.

If you imagine God might be short on mercy, you are mistaken. But of course since you appear to have no faith you mean something else entirely. And you pile assumption upon assumption!

 

[blue triangle]

I shrug and your arrows fall. What of my post challenging the opening line of your thesis?

I did miss it. If you direct me to it I'll answer it.

Why do you hide behind Shakespearian language?

 

[blue triangle]

Is all this based on the assumption that your god speaks English?

I always assumed the bible was written in other languages first.

More fool me I suppose.

These particular patterns are not in modern versions, but in widely read versions of the original scriptures, which are the Masoretic text, used for the Biblia Hebraica and written in biblical Hebrew (plus a little Aramaic) and, for the New Testament, the Textus Receptus, written in Koine Greek.

 

[Slowvehicle]

I do engage almost solely with pertinent criticism, which is why I haven't answered many of your posts. But you do argue a point above, about me assuming that the first verse must inevitably contain a watermark. This is you being presumptive, not me. I never expected anything. I recognise that it seems to be a watermark of some kind, which is a post hoc rationalisation, I realise, but one for which there is ample evidence. I've been accused of looking for patterns then finding them because I expected them, and now I'm accused of explaining them after the fact because there are patterns there!

...except that you are ignoring the macculate history of what you want to call the "first verse" of "the scriptures". Further, despite one bit of lip service,you are, in fact, dealing with one set of "scriptures", a set that notoriously concerns itself (however contradictorily), with one 'god'.

 

[blue triangle]

...except that you are ignoring the macculate history of what you want to call the "first verse" of "the scriptures". Further, despite one bit of lip service,you are, in fact, dealing with one set of "scriptures", a set that notoriously concerns itself (however contradictorily), with one 'god'.

There is little doubt that Genesis 1.1 is the first verse of the Bible and always was, although I'm aware that it probably developed from Babylonian creation myths. As far as the patterns are concerned that hardly matters since it's the wording we have now that is important. The wording of the first verse has actually been fixed for a very long time, at least 1000 years, and I believe may have been guided to this form by some kind of teleological process, rather than having been given all at once on Mount Sinai. Biblical literalists have centuries of textual analysis to argue with there. The versions of scripture used, the Masoretic and Textus Receptus are pretty much the 'standard' versions of the original scriptures. There are others, but it hardly matters. It's these versions that are used by most, which counters any possible suggestions of picking through the versions to find one with apparent patterns. The appearance of these patterns in the first verse likewise counters suggestions of cherry picking suitable verses.

I'm not exactly sure what your last point is, but the patterns have to be explained or explained away on their own merits, not because some think they contradict their view of what others believe scripture is saying! And that would only be a problem for biblical literalists anyway. I'm not saying that 'the triune God of scripture who made heaven and earth in six literal days and wrote every word of the Bible' did it, simply a force that worked through the unconscious minds of the writers and editors and which also appears to have the characteristics of omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence.

 

[fagin]

These particular patterns are not in modern versions, but in widely read versions of the original scriptures, which are the Masoretic text, used for the Biblia Hebraica and written in biblical Hebrew (plus a little Aramaic) and, for the New Testament, the Textus Receptus, written in Koine Greek.

You've read those, have you?

 

[Nowhere Man]

You're right, it does. Both are hexagram numbers too.

The first verse of John's gospel sums to 3627, which is 39 X 93. A trapezium can be formed from 3627 counters and triangle 2701 will rest on it to give triangle 6328. This is the 112th triangle, 112 being the numerical value of YHVH Elohim (the Lord God) in Hebrew.

Numerology aside, which translation or translations are you using? Are you a KJV-only person or would Good News for Modern Man (now called The Good News Bible) do just as well?

Fred

 

[fagin]

Numerology aside, which translation or translations are you using? Are you a KJV-only person or would Good News for Modern Man (now called The Good News Bible) do just as well?

Fred

He says...

These particular patterns are not in modern versions, but in widely read versions of the original scriptures, which are the Masoretic text, used for the Biblia Hebraica and written in biblical Hebrew (plus a little Aramaic) and, for the New Testament, the Textus Receptus, written in Koine Greek.

 

[Nowhere Man]

OIC. Thanks.

Fred

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

You don't have to look very hard or for very long in the first verse of Genesis. It's watermarked with patterns. For the love of God, or truth, or yourself, just have a look!




The bible is a huge data set of numbers. No question about that. But this is the first verse, the apex of scripture, where one might expect to find a watermark. How does TLOTLN explain that? Only if you give no meaning to the fact that it is verse 1 of 31102 verses. If you do attach meaning to it, then everything changes.

We have only God to thank for writing the inerrant Bible in inerrant English that has survived for lo these many generations of foolishness.

 

[Slowvehicle]

There is little doubt that Genesis 1.1 is the first verse of the Bible and always was,

Actually, this is, simply, not true.

Are you so very innocent of the macculate (and distinctly peccable) provenance of your own "scriptures"?

...although I'm aware that it probably developed from Babylonian creation myths. As far as the patterns are concerned that hardly matters since it's the wording we have now that is important. The wording of the first verse has actually been fixed for a very long time, at least 1000 years, and I believe may have been guided to this form by some kind of teleological process, rather than having been given all at once on Mount Sinai. Biblical literalists have centuries of textual analysis to argue with there. The versions of scripture used, the Masoretic and Textus Receptus are pretty much the 'standard' versions of the original scriptures. There are others, but it hardly matters. It's these versions that are used by most, which counters any possible suggestions of picking through the versions to find one with apparent patterns. The appearance of these patterns in the first verse likewise counters suggestions of cherry picking suitable verses.

OK, got it, Dinstincly, and apparently, purposefully innocent of the process of collection, edit, redaction, and sectarian "canonization" that led to the form of the "wording we have now". Not to mention, for a "book" that is to be supposed to authoritatively chronicle "events" from 6,000 years (or more) ago, boasting about the "wording we have now" being "fixed" for "1000 years" is bragging about paint that has not dried yet.

I'm not exactly sure what your last point is, but the patterns have to be explained or explained away on their own merits, not because some think they contradict their view of what others believe scripture is saying! And that would only be a problem for biblical literalists anyway. I'm not saying that 'the triune God of scripture who made heaven and earth in six literal days and wrote every word of the Bible' did it, simply a force that worked through the unconscious minds of the writers and editors and which also appears to have the characteristics of omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence.

And yet, somehow, you personify this 'god' as strongly resembling the badly-plagiarized and unoriginal 'god' of the Hebrew "bible". How very droll. Further, you declare this 'god' to be a "force" and give it imaginary powers, all without the slightest scintilla of actual evidence.

Nothing new, here...

 

[Delvo]

Is all this based on the assumption that your god speaks English?

I always assumed the bible was written in other languages first.

Numerology aside, which translation or translations are you using? Are you a KJV-only person or would Good News for Modern Man (now called The Good News Bible) do just as well?

This doesn't involve English translations. It's based on ye olde Hebrew (for Genesis) & Greek (for John). Both are easy enough to find with a search for the chapter-&-verse in standard format plus the appropriate language's name, and Wikipedia has articles on both of their alphabetic numeration systems. When the numerologists start adding the values of the resulting Hebrew & Greek numbers, that seems like a strange thing to do, but the later authors would have known of the older book and had the option of tailoring theirs to fit together with it.

It wouldn't make sense to try something like this in any modern language using the Latin alphabet, not only because of the translation issues you're thinking of, but also because the Latin alphabet has never had a numeration system like this. In the Hebrew & Greek alphabets, every letter has a value, not just a few of them, and they're purely additive, not subtractive, so every word, and for that matter every possible stream of random gibberish in those alphabets, has a numeric value. Most words' letters aren't arranged the way they'd really write a number if the number is what they meant (they'd use as few symbols as possible by going as far as possible with the highest-value ones, and write in ascending or descending order, not back & forth in a single word), but still, the fact that letters in any & all words could be added up like this is a side effect that writers in these languages were aware of at the time and known to occasionally play with for deliberate numerical effects.

I've double-checked Genesis 1:1 and confirmed that it does indeed add up to the claimed number. I've tried John 1:1 and gotten something different but similar enough to make me think I might have made a mistake, so I'll try again soon. I expect the math to be correct, since whoever came up with this stuff must have expected some people to check it.

The problem is with what it would "mean" even if it is all accurate. Most of it's not particularly unlikely overall even as pure coincidence; for example, the geometric stuff would work for any odd number, or at least half of the odd numbers, in that triangular series, and, although most numbers don't define triangles like that, a lot of other numbers do other similarly funky things instead. Even to the extent that it is conspicuously coincidental, most of it is stuff that would have been known to the original authors, who would thus have been able to choose their words to aim for a funky number just as well as a god or a space alien could. Finally, even if there are parts that seem especially unlikely to be coincidences and the authors couldn't have known, what is the message that God, or Yyblax of Zebulon, was trying to send by telling the humans what to write? The information in this consists of no more than "the author knew somebody who knew some fun numerical stuff". You can get more than that from the YouTube channel "Numberphile". As long as we're judging things by how likely or unlikely they feel, an ultimate creator sending a great message for humanity that ends up being just that might be the most unlikely thing in here of all. That's less of a message than "Be sure to drink your Ovaltine".

There is little doubt that Genesis 1.1 is the first verse of the Bible and always was

No, actually, there is no doubt that it was not. There wasn't even a Bible for it to be the first verse of anyway until long later. And even when later people came up with the idea of collecting edited versions of some of their old writings in an anthology, being the beginning of a creation story didn't even guarantee it that first spot in the collection, because they had other creation stories. Any of the others, both the ones that didn't make the cut at all and the one that did and ended up as Genesis 2, could just as well have ended up first.