The Narrow Path Ministries

I hope I am placing this question in the right category - nevertheless, here goes

I have recently tripped over a fellow by the name of Ivan Panin who was big on numerics. An example is below

The first 17 verses of the Gospel of Matthew are a logical unit, or section, which deals with a single principal subject: the genealogy of Christ. It contains 72 Greek vocabulary words in these initial 17 verses. (The verse divisions are man's allocations for convenience, added in the 13th century.)
The number of words which are nouns is exactly 56, or 7 x 8.
The Greek word "the" occurs most frequently in the passage: exactly 56 times, or 7 x 8. Also, the number of different forms in which the article "the" occurs is exactly 7.
There are two main sections in the passage: verse 1-11, and 12-17. In the first main section, the number of Greek vocabulary words used is 49, or 7 x 7.
Why not 48, or 50?
Of these 49 words, the number of those beginning with a vowel is 28, or 7 x 4. The number of words beginning with a consonant is 21, or 7 x 3.
The total numbers of letters in these 49 words is 266, or 7 x 38 - exactly! The number of vowels among these 266 letters is 140, or 7 x 20. The number of consonants is 126, or 7 x 18 - exactly.
Of the 49 words, the number of words which occur more than once is 35, or 7 x 5. The number of words occurring only once is 14, or 7 x 2. The number of words which occur in only one form is exactly 42, or 7 x 6. The number of words appearing in more than one form is also 7.
The number of the 49 Greek vocabulary words which are nouns is 42, or 7 x 6. The number of words which are not nouns is 7. Of the nouns, 35 are proper names, or exactly 7 x 5. These 35 names are used 63 times, or 7 x 9. The number of male names is exactly 28, or 7 x 4. These male names occur 56 times or 7 x 8. The number which are not male names is 7.
Three women are mentioned - Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth. The number of Greek letters in these three names is 14, 7 x 2.
The number of compound nouns is 7. The number of Greek letters in these 7 nouns is 49, or 7 x 7.
Only one city is named in this passage, Babylon, which in Greek contains exactly 7 letters.

To say the least - it is interesting!

What think ye?

blackheart wrote:What think ye?

I think that like statistics, these types of studies can be manipulated to say almost anything you want them to.

Some of the examples strike me as amazingly insignificant:

The total numbers of letters in these 49 words is 266, or 7 x 38 - exactly! The number of vowels among these 266 letters is 140, or 7 x 20. The number of consonants is 126, or 7 x 18 - exactly. (Yeah, so?)

I wonder, also, if these statistics would be the same for every existant manuscript.
I know some numbers have a certain general significance, but this is ridiculous. (just IMHO)

I have no faith in numerics whatever, and believe it to be a form of superstition, belonging in the same category as astrology. Notwithstanding, I think Suzana's "Yeah, so?" question is answered in that every one of Panin's numbers are multiples of 7.

Observations like Ivan Panin's are in the same category as the "Bible Code" fad that was popular in the late nineties. Hank Hanegraaff refers to this kind of thing as "magic apologetics." It obviously arises from a more "magical" view of the BIble than that which can be justified by the Bible's own claims.

There is one bit of Biblical numerics which may have validity. I am thinking of the number of the name of the beast in Revelation:

Revelation 13:17,18 ... so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name. This calls for wisdom: let him who has understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number, its number is six hundred and sixty-six.

Among the Greeks, every name had a number. This number was calculated by adding up the numeric value of each letter in the name. The numeric values of the Greek alphabet are as follows:
α-1 β-2 γ-3 δ-4 ε-5 ζ-7 η-8 θ-9 ι-10 κ-20 λ-30 μ-40 ν-50 ξ-60 ο-70 π-80 ρ-100 σ,ς-200 τ-300
υ-400 φ-500 χ-600 ψ-700 ω-800

If you are wondering what happened to 6, 90, and 900, they are represented by characters outside the alphabet.

So for example the number of the name of my dog φιλια (philia) would be 551 (500+10+30+10+1).

Irenæus proposed several possible names for the beast, one of which was λατεινος (lateinos - Latin man) In adding the numeric value of the letters of λατεινος, we get 30+1+300+5+10+50+70+200 or 666. The author of Revelation, presumed to be John the apostle, said that this was the number of man. Some say that 7 is the number which represents perfection, but 6 falls short of perfection as does man.

The interesting aspect of all this is the results of calculating the number of ιησους (Jesus).
We get 10+8+200+70+400+200 which adds to 888. So does the number 8 represent that which exceeds perfection?

I wonder if there is any Biblical Greek name whose number is 777.