Numerical Secrets of the Bible
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Numerical Secrets of the Bible Numerical Secrets of the Bible Rediscovering the Bible Codes by Casper J. Labuschagne BIBAL Press North Richland Hills, Texas BIBAL Press An imprint of D. & F. Scott Publishing, Inc. P.O. Box 821653 BIBAL N. Richland Hills, TX 76182 Copyright © 2000 by D. & F. Scott Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Printed in the United States of America 08 5 4 3 2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Labuschagne, C. J. [Vertellen met getallen. English] Numerical secrets of the Bible : rediscovering the Bible codes / by Casper J. Labuschagne. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-941037-67-9 (alk. paper) 1. Numbers in the Bible. I. Title. BS680.N8 L3313 2000 221.6'8--dc21 00-009699 Contents Preface ix A Personal Note xiii 1 Counting Hebrew Letters, Words, and Verses in Jewish Tradition 1 Introduction 1 The Function of Numbers in Antiquity 5 The Counting of Letters, Words, and Verses in the Masoretic Tradition 7 Seeking and Locating of the Center of the Text 9 The Significance of Such Counting Activities 10 Well-Known Numerical Compositions: the Alphabetic Poems 12 The Book of Lamentations as a Numerical Composition 14 Conclusions That Could Have Been Drawn Long Ago 18 2 Some Significant Numbers in the Bible 21 A New Awareness of the Significance of Numbers in the Bible 21 Explicitly Mentioned Symbolic Numbers in the Bible: 40, 12, and 7 22 Explicit References to the Number Seven in the Bible 26 The Hidden Presence of the Number Seven in the Old Testament 31 Examples from the Four Gospels 33 More Examples from Other Books of the New Testament 33 v Contents 3 Clusters and Series of Seven Divine Speeches 41 The Divine Speech Formulas as an Incentive to Counting 41 Series of Seven in the Tabernacle Laws 42 The Significance of the Menorah in Center Position 48 Series of Seven in the Book of Leviticus and the Sabbath 49 More Examples of Manifestly Designed Series of Seven Items 53 4 The 7+4=11 Pattern in the Pentateuch 57 The Primeval History in Genesis 1–11 57 The Eleven Divine Monologues in the Pentateuch 62 Three Genealogies in Genesis 1–11 64 The Eleven Toledoth-Formulas in Genesis 66 The Role of 7 in the Life Spans of the Patriarchs 67 How Did 7 Acquire its Symbolic Meaning? 69 The Number of Fulfillment, 11 70 5 The Secret of the Hidden Sacred Numbers 17 and 26 75 Significant Numbers in the Divine Speeches in Genesis 75 Examples from the Book of Exodus 79 Conspicuous Numbers in the Divine Speeches in Deuteronomy 82 Counting Verses in Deuteronomy 85 The Symbolic Meaning of 17 and 26 88 The Divine Name Interwoven in the Fabric of the Text 92 The Purpose of the Hidden Numerical Structures 93 The Divine Name Numbers Signifying God’s Presence 96 17 and 26 in the Life Spans of the Patriarchs and in the Genealogies 98 The Watermark of the Name of God as the Hallmark of Holy Scripture 103 vi Contents 6 The Bible as a High-Grade Literary Work of Art 105 Investigating the Numerical Structure of the Biblical Text 105 The Layout Markers in the Hebrew Text of Genesis 107 The Numerical Architecture of the Hebrew Bible Rediscovered 111 The Pioneering Work of Claus Schedl 114 The Theoretical Foundations of Schedl’s Thesis 117 Schedl’s Numerical Analysis of New Testament Texts 120 Significant Compositional Models Discovered by Schedl 121 a) The “Minor Tetraktys” 121 b) The “Major Tetraktys” 127 c) The Pentateuch- and Decalogue-Model 127 d) The YHWH-aechad Model 128 e) The Numerical Menorah-Structure and the Balance-Model 130 Keywords Determining the Number of Words in a Text 135 7 Proper Use and Misuse of Numbers 141 The Significance of the Numerical Aspects of the Bible 141 How Numerical Structures Support the Message of a Text 143 a) Psalm 82 143 b) Psalm 8 145 c) Psalm 19 147 d) Isa 8:19 – 9:6 149 The Misuse of Numbers by Numerologists 153 A Theological Assessment of the Numerical Aspects of the Bible 157 Notes 163 About the Author 183 Index of Scripture Citations 185 vii Preface hrough the ages no literary work has received so much attention as the Bible, which has been handed down Tfrom generation to generation so carefully, studied so diligently and commented upon so thoroughly. Many avenues of its writings have been explored and numerous aspects inves- tigated in detail. Especially during the past century biblical scholars have devoted much time and energy in addressing the many questions, both literary and historical, raised by this com- plicated body of literature. One would think that by now the Bible must have yielded all its secrets. Yet nothing is less true, judged by the discovery in recent times of a virtually unde- tected and practically unknown facet of the biblical writings. This discovery concerns a hitherto unrecognized principle of composition: the use of specific numbers in the organization and formation of the text of the canonical books of the Bible. Scholarly research the last couple of decades led to the conclu- sion that the biblical writings are numerical compositions. This means that they were not written off the cuff, but carefully devised and meticulously composed and structured with the help of certain numbers. These numbers have a specific sym- bolic meaning, on the basis of which they seem to have been used to deepen and enhance the meaning of the text. Since I have been deeply involved personally in the discovery of the numerical aspects of the Bible, I intend to take the readers on an exploratory expedition in order to let them discover for themselves what has been uncovered in this respect. ix Preface The people responsible for handing down the canonical books of the Old Testament confront us with the fascinating phenomenon of counting verses, words, and letters. We shall survey the striking occurrence of certain explicitly mentioned numbers in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Moreover, exploring the structure of the text more deeply, we shall become aware of the exceptionally high frequency of a limited number of extremely holy numerical symbols, repre- senting God’s name and presence, woven into the very fabric of the text of Scripture. We shall become acquainted with the fascinating world of the biblical writers and with the way in which they constructed their literary compositions with great professional skill and craftsmanship. The present book was not written for specialists. As a matter of fact, apart from a few tyros, including myself, there are no scholars with any specialized knowledge of these matters; for this is a completely new field of study. The book is intended for everyone who is interested in the Bible as literature, regardless whether the reader is a professional scholar or a lay reader, Jew or Christian, churchgoer or not. The reader might find some pages a bit technical—which was unavoidable—but I have tried to use clear and comprehensible language. A previous version of the book was published in Dutch under the title Vertellen met Getallen: Functie en symboliek van getallen in de bijbelse oudheid in 1992 and has since then been reprinted. The publisher, Uitgeverij Boekencentrum, has kindly given me permission to publish it in English. Since I was free to bring about whatever changes I deemed necessary or desirable, and to add more detail, the present version is a total rewrite. I am indebted to Professor Duane L. Christensen and Dr. William R. Scott, who showed interest in the book and willing- ness to include it in the publications of BIBAL Press. Duane Christensen, one of those Old Testament scholars who have come to realize that biblical study can benefit from taking the numerical aspects of the Bible seriously, has worked through x Preface my translation and offered several valuable suggestions. More- over, he brought my English to a higher level. For all this I wish to thank him most sincerely. Haren, The Netherlands. Winter 1998/1999 xi A Personal Note hen I began to carry out my scholarly investigations into the numerical aspects of the Bible from ap- Wproximately 1981 onwards, I was not sufficiently aware of the recent upsurge in kabbalistic mathematical exer- cises, number speculations, and other types of numerological practices and number juggling. Neither did I realize how deeply sceptical the biblical scholarly world was about numeri- cal matters in general. What I could not sense either, was the danger of being associated with such unscholarly practices and having my work rejected out of hand. With hindsight, one of the mistakes I made in the beginning was that I failed to demarcate my numerical research at the outset clearly from these dubious numerological activities. It was only ten years later, in the Dutch version of the present book, that I dissoci- ated myself explicitly from such practices. It is hard to say whether that would have changed the course of events. What I did not realize and could not possibly foresee, was that the plain fact of my embarking on numerical research would put my scholarly reputation at risk and that I would be sidetracked from the inner circle of serious biblical scholar- ship. Knowing what happened to the Austrian orientalist and biblical scholar Claus Schedl during the sixties and seventies, whose numerical investigations were greeted with ridicule on the part of colleagues and summarily rejected, I was naively confident that the evidence I presented would enjoy favorable acceptance.