This volume quickly made the best-seller lists.The publisher boasted: “For three thousand years a code in the Bible has remained hidden.Now it has been unlocked by computer - and it may reveal our future.” In the early 1990’s, some Israeli mathematicians contended they had discovered certain “letter codes” in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament).Exploiting these claims, Michael Drosnin, a popular journalist (formerly affiliated with The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, produced a book that was titled, The Bible Code (Simon & Schuster, 1997). Within the last decade, highly publicized claims about mysterious numerical codes, hidden within the Bible texts, have heightened curiosity concerning this topic. In Medieval times theologians began to imagine that they had discovered symbolic meanings in numbers.And while there is some basis to believe that occasionally numbers are used as symbols (e.g., “seven” in the book of Revelation), the mystical numerologists went much too far with their baseless views. ![]() Others, however, opposed such speculations as a fanatical misappropriation of the sacred text (see Irenaeus – c. In the post-apostolic age, some of the “Church Fathers” were mesmerized by the mystical use of numbers. 245).The absurdity of such a procedure is evident on the very face of it. Green, Dictionary of Judaism in the Biblical Period, Hendrickson, 1996, p. Shabbat 70a), Nathan interprets the statement “these are the words” (in Exodus 35:1) in the following fashion.The Hebrew is eleh haDebarim, which is supposed to signify thirty-nine different categories of work forbidden on the Sabbath.“Thirty-nine” is derived “from the numerical equivalent of eleh - thirty-six - plus two for the plural form debarim and one more for the definite article ba” (Jacob Neusner, William S. (or later).A passage in that work states that God “by measure and number and weight” ordered all things (11:20).Ĭertain ancient Jewish writers attempted “exegetical wizardry” by the mystical use of numbers.For example in the Hebrew Talmud (B. ![]() There may be a reflection of this ideology in the Jewish apocryphal book, The Wisdom of Solomon, written by an unknown Alexandrian Jew in the late 2nd century B.C. ![]() ![]() Davis, Biblical Numerology, Baker, 1968, pp. 569-500 B.C.), who founded a cult based upon the idea than numbers were basic to nature, and that any phenomenon could be explained in terms of numbers (see John J. Generally, the mystical use of numbers is traced to the Greek mathematician, Pythagoras (c. Ancient TheoriesĪt ancient Khorsabad, a wall was supposed to have been constructed according to the numerical value of the name of Sargon the king. The idea that certain pieces of literature are characterized by numerical codes that smuggle important messages to those who are able to decipher them, has roots that reach far back into antiquity.Within the past few years, interest in this issue has emerged again - with considerable sensationalism.
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