Numerical Secrets

It appears that the biblical text was composed according to preconceived models and patterns shaped by certain numbers that regulate the amount of words, sentences, and verses,” writes CJ Labuschagne in his Numerical Secrets of the Bible (1). Like music, “literary texts in biblical antiquity were composed and structurally organized with the help of certain numbers. In short, the art of writing practiced by the biblical writers seems to have involved compositional techniques inextricably bound up with counting” (1).

Important as numbers are to the writers of Scripture, numerical patterns have been neglected in the interpretation of Scripture. He suggests that this neglect is the result of the catastrophic loss of scribal knowledge in the early centuries of the church: “we are confronted with a rather esoteric compositional technique, a skill known only to insiders, the scribes. As a result of the continuous series of catastrophes suffered by the Jewish people, culminating in the annihilation of Jewish life in Palestine and resulting in the dispersion of the Jews and their persecution through the ages, the precise knowledge of this scribal secret fell into oblivion. What was handed down in Jewish tradition were vague reminiscences still reflected in the Kabbalah, more particularly in the gematria based on the principle that each letter of the Hebrew alphabet has a numerical value” (3).

Labuchagne’s book is an initial attempt to recover this lost literary knowledge. He is aware that his project is likely to be dismissed as the work of a crank, and so he goes to some lengths to demonstrate that numerical patterns were an essential part of ancient writing in general. It is a truism that “numbers had a symbolic value in antiquity. Therefore they had a metaphorical and allegorical capacity to refer to something beyond the surface meaning” (5). In particular, “classical scholars and medieval specialists have long been acquainted with the use of numbers as a device to give structure to literary compositions” (6).

It’s important for modern scholars “to distance ourselves from the traditional association of numbers with the hazy world of mysticism, magic and pseudo-science. This means that we have to concentrate on their two main functions: first, as a technique to count, calculate and structure—also with regard to the composition of texts—and second, as a means of adding depth to a text and to imbue it with symbolic significance” (5). Ancient Hebrews used similar techniques: “the Masoretes and other copiers who were responsible for the handing down of the text of the Old Testament carefully counted verses, words, and even letters of the biblical books. Moreover, they painstakingly sought, located, and marked the mathematical center of the books, or groups of books” (7). Further, “they recorded ‘statistical’ information regarding the occurrence of important or difficult words and phrases” (7).

For instance, at the end of Genesis a note indicates that there are 1534 verses in the book: “The total number of verses, 1534, happens to be a multiple of the extremely important and particularly holy number 26 (59×26), representing the numerical value of the Tetragrammaton, the four letters of the divine name” (8). At the end of Torah, there is a note indicating the number of verses, words, and letters in the five books: 5845 verses, 79,856 words, 400,945. Labuchagne notes, “What is significant about these numbers is that the first two are a multiple of 7 (5845 = 7×835; 79,856 = 7×11,408) and the last one a multiple of 17 (400,945 = 17×23,585). Next to 26, the number 17 is the other particularly important and holy number, which is also associated with the name YHWH” (8).

(Thanks to Thomas Seraphim Hamilton for the reference to Labuchagne’s book.)