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Help me debunk biblical numerology

arthwollipot

Observer of Phenomena, Pronouns: he/him
arthwollipot
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Feb 11, 2005
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Someone on another forum posted this:

GOD COUNTS

This material comes from Ivan Panin's little book, now long out of print called God Counts. It’s about the Hebrew text of Genesis 1: 1.

It is the most staggering collection of numerical facts I have ever read, and I can well remember the shock to my system when I first came across these.

This verse, and the associated facts Panin mentioned, alone proves the inspiration of the Bible. There are problems, of course, but this verse stands at the gateway to the Bible, flaunting the fact that no human could have contrived it.

That's a big claim. But I challenge any and all readers to do anything like this by whatever means you choose.

As you may not know, ancient Hebrew did not have characters which acted as numbers like 1,2,3... They used the letters of the Hebrew alphabet instead. So aleph stood for 1, beth stood for 2 etc etc. Any textbook of Hebrew grammar will tell you what the values are.

Genesis 1

1 There are 7 words

2 There are 28 letters = 7 x 4

3 The sentence divides into 2 equal halves.
The first 3 words contain 14 letters = 7 x 2
The second 3 contain 14 letters = 7 x 2

4 The second half divides into 2 equal halves
“The heavens” contains 7 letters
“And the earth” contains 7 letters

5 The 3 nouns God, heavens, earth have 14 letters = 7 x 2

6 The numeric value of the 3 nouns is 777 = 7 x 111

7 The numeric value of the verb created = 203 = 7 x 29

8 The middle word and the word after it contain 7 letters

9 The middle word and the word before it contain 7 letters

10 The value of the first and last letters of the first half = 42 = 7 x 6

11 The value of the first and last letters of the last half = 91 = 7 x 13

12 The value of the first and last letters of all the words taken together = 1393 = 7 x 199

13 The value of the first and last letters of the first and last words only = 497 = 7 x 71

14 The numeric value of the 1st letter of the first and last words is 7 = 7 x 1

15 The numeric value of the last letters of the 1st and last words = 490 = 7 x 70 = 7 x 7 x 10

So there are 15 features of 7 in a single sentence.

Have a go at trying to do something similar for yourself. Then stop and realize that Our Creator is just that teensy little bit brighter than us.
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Can the wonderful folks here provide me with some ammunition that I can use against this numerological garbage? I'm not that great with number puzzles and to be honesst I haven't the time to sit down and come up with something myself. Are there any JREFers who have a ready copy & paste that I can pass on?

Thanks.
 
Ask over in the CT subforum, too. They have to deal with all the "OMG ONOES look how many times the numbers 9 and 11 coincidentally appear in a random series of events we strung together only because they somehow contain the numbers 9 and 11!!!!11!!!! Look, it just happened again, right there, ONOES!"
 
arthwollipot said:
Can the wonderful folks here provide me with some ammunition that I can use against this numerological garbage?
Click to expand...

Any tome will offer mathematical permutations. The more words - the more permutations. For example, I'm confident War And Peace would yield some mathematical 'coincidences' also.

But to uncover a permutation - and then claim supernatural intervention is wrong-headed.
 
slingblade said:
They have to deal with all the "OMG ONOES look how many times the numbers 9 and 11 coincidentally appear in a random series of events we strung together only because they somehow contain the numbers 9 and 11!!!!11!!!! Look, it just happened again, right there, ONOES!"
Click to expand...

The above made me want to reveal something that is a personal truth.

My People,

You would not believe what has been happening to me lately. 90% of the time I look at a clock - it is 11 minutes after the hour. It's been going on now for about 6 months. I just kinda chuckle now - it's crazy. Everytime my wife's in the room I will mention it to her - "Look, It's 8:11." - but it happens all the time! It even happens when I inadvertently look at clocks, so it can't be "clock brain". Maybe I should head for Vegas.
 
The Quran uses the Arabic word for "sea" x times, and the Arabic word for land y times. And the ratio of sea to land on planet earth is exactly the same as the ratio of x to y. And Mohammed didn't even realize the earth was round, really, and certainly didn't know about the Americas and Antarctica and the Pacific Ocean, so that proves the Quran was written by Almighty Allah, who DID have those facts at his holy fingertips in Allah's Almanac.

Honestly, I wouldn't even try to argue numerology. Those guys are just a hair's breadth away from paranoid schizophrenia, and doing all that math may be the only thing that's keeping them from filling out the paperwork on an assault rifle. You might try to get them interested in crossword puzzles too.
 
triadboy said:
The above made me want to reveal something that is a personal truth.

My People,

You would not believe what has been happening to me lately. 90% of the time I look at a clock - it is 11 minutes after the hour. It's been going on now for about 6 months. I just kinda chuckle now - it's crazy. Everytime my wife's in the room I will mention it to her - "Look, It's 8:11." - but it happens all the time! It even happens when I inadvertently look at clocks, so it can't be "clock brain". Maybe I should head for Vegas.
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I find dimes. Never any other kind of change. Just dimes.

Seriously, I'd ask over there, too. They've spent some time explaining randomness and coincidence. Typewriters and monkeys.
 
I don't have a link, but one of the Bible code enthusiasts once said he'd believe it was nonsense when someone could apply the same rules to Moby Dick and get similar results.

This was done.

(And ignored, naturally, because it impacts the sales of Bible code books.)
 
It's possible that numerical characteristics found in ancient Hebrew was cherished as a kind of a "poetry", and that some of these numerical coincidences were planted there intentionally. Maybe.
 
1 There are 7 words

Might be intentional. After all, the (human) authors held 7 holy.

2 There are 28 letters = 7 x 4

Every 7th number is a multiplum of 7, so the probability for this is at least 1:7, but since it is noted below that several of the words have 7 letters, it is really far greater.

3 The sentence divides into 2 equal halves.
The first 3 words contain 14 letters = 7 x 2
The second 3 contain 14 letters = 7 x 2

Ehr, didn't you just say there were 7 words? The how can it divide into 3+3 words? Try again.

4 The second half divides into 2 equal halves
“The heavens” contains 7 letters
“And the earth” contains 7 letters

With 7 words, several of which have 7 letters, the number of ways it can divide becomes very limited.

5 The 3 nouns God, heavens, earth have 14 letters = 7 x 2

Pick arbitrary words out of any sentence, and you can find practically any sum.

6 The numeric value of the 3 nouns is 777 = 7 x 111

One needs to know hebrew to assess that.

7 The numeric value of the verb created = 203 = 7 x 29

Again, every 7th number is a multiplum of 7, so arbitrary words derived from a sentence can easily yield such numbers.

8 The middle word and the word after it contain 7 letters

9 The middle word and the word before it contain 7 letters

Oh, now we admit there is a middle word? In other words there are three words in a row with 7 letters. So what? Which proprtion of all words have 7 letters?

10 The value of the first and last letters of the first half = 42 = 7 x 6

11 The value of the first and last letters of the last half = 91 = 7 x 13

12 The value of the first and last letters of all the words taken together = 1393 = 7 x 199

13 The value of the first and last letters of the first and last words only = 497 = 7 x 71

14 The numeric value of the 1st letter of the first and last words is 7 = 7 x 1

15 The numeric value of the last letters of the 1st and last words = 490 = 7 x 70 = 7 x 7 x 10

Again, you can pick arbitrary patterns in any sentence and have them conform to numerical rules, which you have made up for the occasion.


So there are 15 features of 7 in a single sentence.

So even if this is true and intentional, why is this the proof of divine origen? This is a holy text, and what would keep human authors from crafting a text that held such features (after all, it seems a human could unravel them)?

Isn't that something like what human poets are constantly doing?

Hans
[
 
MRC_Hans said:
Every 7th number is a multiplum of 7, so the probability for this is at least 1:7, but since it is noted below that several of the words have 7 letters, it is really far greater.[
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Nice post Hans, but a minor correction - in Hebrew the numerical values are not assigned as in English (1-26), but instead start at [aleph = 1] through to [yod = 10] and then start taking leaps of 10 (so that [mem = 30]), and so on and so forth, amen. :p
 
bokonon said:
Honestly, I wouldn't even try to argue numerology. Those guys are just a hair's breadth away from paranoid schizophrenia, and doing all that math may be the only thing that's keeping them from filling out the paperwork on an assault rifle. You might try to get them interested in crossword puzzles too.
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What those guys are doing is quite natural, they see patterns, and because of that they think that they see deeper than normal meaning. Sometimes they feel "blessed" because they are the only ones who see them. Lucky for me, (I think) I knew that most everyone feel that they are blessed-and they are. Only... if everyone is blessed, no one is.

The problem that some of these people have though, have to do with what they do with what they see. Good stock brokers are a shining example of what happens when they get it right, but most of us do it everyday. For some though, because no one is listening to them, they may feel that they have no other choice but to stand out in traffic and "express themselves". Unfortunately, and sometimes because of their approach, and unless they have retreated into the deepest corner of denial, their self esteem often suffers the consequences. But I think I can understand some of their dilemmas. And some of them do get it right. The maker of Famous Amos cookies, must have sounded like an idiot when he went around saying that his cookies were good, that they should be famous even.
 
This is more silly bible numberlogy, the bible already has a secret code and clues. It is call Kabbalah and it is the oral tradition that exists along side the written tradition.

here is the silly part , letter are numbers in hebrai, so ADM (aleph, daleth, mem) can have a vaule of 45 (1+4+40) or 605 (1+4+600) and this applies to all the owrds of hebrai, chiam (life) is 18 Ch+I , I don't know where the a and the m go. Certain vowels are not written in hebrai but are marks that are not numbers.

So when the bible says, "the age of methuselah was 999" it means that there is a word that translates to those numbers and that it is some sort of symbol. Then you have even stranger things where a word such as JHVH was not spoken aloud but another words but in it's place when spoken 'adonai' meaning 'lord. Then there is the fact that the modern bible is heavily edited and redacted from the original oral tradition.

But who cares if the first verse of the bible has seven words of seven letters, there already is a secret code and mystery in the bible. Such as the second creation in genesis, the first creation was destroyed when god extended 'punishment' without 'justice' and the creation collapsed.
 
Beerina said:
I don't have a link, but one of the Bible code enthusiasts once said he'd believe it was nonsense when someone could apply the same rules to Moby Dick and get similar results.

This was done.

(And ignored, naturally, because it impacts the sales of Bible code books.)
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Over on the CT Forum, Gravy posted the link. It's the third one down:

Gravy said:
Here's some debunking that's specific to Panin
http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/panin.html
http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/panin_mark.html
http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/moby.html

Mathematicians' Statement on the Bible Codes
http://math.caltech.edu/code/petition.html

Extensive links and discussions of Bible code refutations from the same site
http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/torah.html

Drosnin's The Bible Code discussed here, with some good links
http://skepdic.com/bibcode.html
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mbiblecode.html
http://www.csicop.org/si/9711/bible-code.html

I wonder which is better for the obsessive-compulsive person: this nonsense, counting ceiling tiles, or picking at scabs.
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Fight fire with fire! Perhaps the answer to this is to show them MORE biblical numerology.

We're talking about numbers in the Bible, specifically the King James Bible. Since Numbers is the 4th book in the bible, we'll create a 4 by 4 grid starting with the number 4:

Code: 
4   5   6   7
8   9   10  11
12  13  14  15
16  17  18  19

Start by circling any number in the grid. Write that number down, and cross out the numbers in the same row and column (For example, if you circled 10, you'd write down 10, and cross out 8, 9, 11, 6, 14 and 18).

Next, circle any number that hasn't been already circled or crossed. Write that number down, and again cross out all the numbers in the same row and column.

Repeat this process until the whole board has been either circled or crossed out. Because of the biblical perfection of this grid and the process, you will miraculously always get 46!

What importance does 46 have? We've been talking about Numbers (strangely enough, I'm watching Numb3rs while typing this), so check out the 46th verse of Numbers:

Even all they that were numbered were six hundred thousand and three thousand and five hundred and fifty.
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Hmmm...603,550. 6+0+3+5+5+0=19, and 19 is the final number in our grid! We're obviously on the right track. But this is just the beginning of the biblical perfection!

What is the 19th book in the King James bible? Psalms! Using the 46 we got from the grid, go to Psalm 46, and count to the 46th word. What is it? The word is SHAKE.

How about the 46th word from the end of the 46th Psalm (Not counting "Selah", which is simply "Amen")? The word is SPEAR.

Hmmm...SHAKE and SPEAR! It's about to get stranger...

Total all the numbers in the grid that you didn't add. Due to the grid's biblical perfection, it will always be 138. What is 1+3+8? 12. What is the 12th word in the 138th Psalm? WILL!

Wow! WILL...SHAKE...SPEAR. That sounds quite a bit like Will Shakespeare. Obviously, William Shakespeare has cleverly hidden this message to prove he wrote the King James Bible. But why the 46 connection?

Shakespeare was born on April 23rd and died on April 23rd. 23 + 23 = 46!

Shakespeare's first credited play was published in 1598. 1 + 5 +9 + 8 = 23!

Shakespeare's first folio of all his plays was published in 1623! Added to the previous 23, we again get 46.

Even weirder, the King James bible we've been using was published in 1610. How old was Shakespeare in 1610? You guessed it - 46!

What if we assign numbers to Shakespeare's name as follows?

Code: 
1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   0
S   H   A   K   E   S   P   E   A   R
E

Add up the total value of the numbers in his name, and you get 46!

(Apologies to Allan Slaight, Walter Gibson, Phil Goldstein, Martin Gardner, Maurice Kraitchik and Stewart James)
 
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arthwollipot said:
Can the wonderful folks here provide me with some ammunition that I can use against this numerological garbage?
Click to expand...

Sure. Just ask them which version of the Bible they are using. Then tell them they're using the wrong version.
 
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