Embedded Files
BIBLICAL GEMATRIA 101
A Brief Survey of Biblical Gematria
By John Elias
The following equation has no mathematical meaning in English, only a religious one:
Lord = Faith
The words Lord and Faith come from the Judeo-Christian tradition. The word Lord, is the common reference to the Divinity and Faith is the essence of Christianity. Both these words can be found in the Greek New Testament and in the Greek, these words, in that equation, are absolutely mathematical.
Lord = Faith
(Kurios) = (Pistis)
(KΥΡΙΟΣ) = (ΠΙΣΤΙΣ)
The reason this is so, is by a strange quirk of history called gematria, where letters are also numbers. Revealing the numbers, we can see that the ‘Lord’ truly is equal to ‘Faith.’
(Lord KΥΡΙΟΣ = 20+400+100+10+70+200) = 800
(Faith ΠΙΣΤΙΣ = 80+10+100+300+10+200) = 800
In Roger Bagnall’s book ‘Everyday Writing in the Graeco-Roman East’ we find what may be the very first archaeological Christian reference to Biblical Gematria, or what the Greeks would have called Isopsephy. In the agora of ancient Smyrna, archaeologists have discovered a graffito or graffiti of clearly Christian origin. What’s more it predates 125 AD making it within a generation of Christ and his followers.
The graffiti records one of the most outstanding correlations of Biblical gematria and reads as follows.
ισοψηφα
κυριος ω
πιστις ω
A modern translation would read: These words are equal: Lord = 800 & Faith = 800
One wonders if this ancient graffiti artist was aware of the second coordination between these words that have such a powerful theology. When we add the letters up of these two words, now using an entirely different number system, that of the ordinal, we find once again that they have equivalence.
κυριος = Lord = 89
πιστις = Faith = 89
The Bible is the bestselling book in history. The Guinness Book of World Records sets it at over 5 billion sold. It is the holy book of the world’s largest religion, making it a work of fundamental underlying importance to world history. The Bible is also the most well documented work of the ancient world, with manuscripts numbering in the thousands.
What is less known about the Bible, is that it is entirely written in number.
More than just one book, the Bible is a collection of many books. These books were collected over the centuries and slavishly copied and recopied to produce what was called Ta Biblia or The Books, which came to be the Bible or the Book. The original languages of the Bible are Hebrew and Greek. Both of these languages employed gematria, where the letters of the alphabets served as their number system.
Today, the gematria of Hebrew is well established in the many Jewish synagogues around the world.
Greek has an even more distinguished historical association with gematria.
The fact that the Bible can be reliably converted into pure number, means that it is the largest mathematical document of history. This in itself is highly improbable. The Bible could have been written in any number of languages. It was, however, written only in two of them, and out of all the languages of the world, Hebrew and Greek, have the strongest historical tradition of gematria.
The mathematics of the Bible uses two scientific theories to guide the work. Gematria is a branch of mathematics and as such must fall under the purview of Set Theory. Set Theory was created by Georg Cantor in the 1870s and is the foundation of modern mathematics. It studies the logic of collections of things or groups of varied objects. Using the logic of Set Theory, we can organize the data of the Bible into categories. These categories can then be ranked and statistically measured.
For instance, the Bible has many names and epithets for God, however, one stands out more than any other, both statistically and culturally. The name Yahweh, is held in the highest esteem by the Jewish religion and is the most common name for God in the Old Testament by far, at over 6,000 instances. The second after it, is Elohim, at over 2,000 references. These then are the first two entries for ‘The Set of Old Testament Hebrew Godnames.’ All aspects of Biblical Gematria, can be organized in this fashion and ranked accordingly.
The second principle of Biblical Gematria is ProbabilityTheory. Probability Theory is the mathematics that analyzes chance. Both Set Theory and Probability Theory are required to examine the mathematics of the Bible. The first is used to order the data into logically ranked groups. The second, then give us the probability of how these sets interact.
We can see how this works in the first example of this very paper. We know that to the Christian believer the word ‘Lord’ is of primary importance. Similarly, the word ‘Faith,’ is of similar importance. What then is the probability that these two words in the original languages would add up to the same number?
Words in Greek can number into the thousands. So the basic chance for this is easily 1 in 1,000. So once again, we find a very improbable event in a very primary way. What then are the chances that this would happen again?
The languages of the Bible can be historically numerated in another fashion called the Ordinal. Since neither Hebrew or Greek have ever changed the order of their alphabets, we can assign a number to the letters according to their order in the alphabet. This too was in common practice in the ancient world. The Greeks employed the ordinal for chapter headings in their writings. When we use the ordinal numeration with the words Lord and Faith, we find once again they are equivalent.
Lord = Faith
(Lord Ordinal KΥΡΙΟΣ = 10+20+17+9+15+18) = 89
(Faith Ordinal ΠΙΣΤΙΣ = 16+9+18+19+9+18) = 89
Words in the Greek Ordinal have a range in the low hundreds. To discover what the chances are that this improbable event could happen twice, we simply multiply together the odds of each one occurring.
1/ 100 = .01%
1/ 1000 = .001%
(.01%) x (.001%) = .00001%
So for this to happen twice, is about a 1 in a 100,000 chance. Statistically speaking, this is an extremely improbable event. The average human has about 100,000 hairs on their head. So this is like, if someone were to tell you that you had one gray hair somewhere on your head, but they wouldn’t tell you where, and without the use of a mirror, you had to pick which hair it was. Common sense tells us this is impossible. If this was the only such amazing mathematical fact of the Bible, it could be considered a statistical outlier or an anomaly and fairly ignored. However, these highly improbable events occur again and again and are common to the text.
The following is just one example out of hundreds, if not thousands of similar entries. The ‘Lord Jesus Christ’ is the full Divine title of the Christian Savior. When we enumerate this in the ordinal we find it comes to 294. The Apostle Paul wrote at great length about the connection between Jesus and the Order of Melchizedek in the book of Hebrews. Because of this, it is fair to make a strong theological association between Melchizedek, the Order of Melchizedek and the Divine title of Christ. We see here, not once, but three times a highly improbable correlation.
(Lord Jesus Christ/ Kυριος Ιησους Χριστος) = 294
Melchizedek/ מלכי־צדק = 294
(After the Order of Melchizedek/ Hebrew) + (After the Order of Melchizedek/ Greek)
(על דברתי מלכי צדק) + (κατα την ταξιν Μελχισεδεκ) = 400
The Ichthus (IXΘYΣ) The Fish of Christ
(Ιησους Χριστος Θεου Υιος Σωτηρ) = 400
(Ιησους) = 87
Melchizedek, Ordinal מלכי־צדק = 87
We find many appropriate correlations on the number 294 that are highly suggestive of Divine design.
Divine/of God (θειος) = 294
Exodus 3:15
The God of Abraham אלהי אברהם = 294
The Key of David (η κλεις Δαβιδ) = 294
Church (εκκλησια) = 294
The Tabernacle (η σκηνη) = 294
This is only one number, out of hundreds that are just like it. Even more, that is only the correlations that have been discovered so far. Every time there is another highly improbable correlation, it makes the probability of the whole text of the Bible ever so much more improbable. It can be stated confidently, that the probability that all these highly improbable facts would come together by chance in one volume, is absolutely impossible by any statistical metric.
The Most Famous Number
The most famous number in the world may not even be a whole number. The number 3.14159 is the ratio of the circumference of the circle to its diameter. This numerical constant is represented by the small case Greek letter (π) for which we get Pi, which in the Greek language has a value of 80. What are the chances that pi is the equivalent to the Greek word gematria, now using the lower register of the ordinal? Since words in the ordinal range are in the low hundreds, we can say that in the least it is a 1 in 100 chance.
(π) = 80
(Γραμματεια) = Gematria
(Γραμματεια) = (3+17+1+12+12+1+19+5+9+1) = 80
One out of a hundred is a very improbable act, but what are the chances that both gematria and mathematics, in the Greek ordinal, add up to the same value as pi? We would multiply the 1 out of a 100 chance by another 1 out of a 100 chance and make a 1 in a 10,000 chance.
Clearly, there is a meaningful connection between the words mathematics and gematria, as gematria is the mathematics of language. The only other word that might be just as strongly linked to gematria is the word for number itself. So what are the chances that gematria and mathematics and number itself, would all be equivalent to the symbol of perhaps the most famous number in the world?
(.01%) x (.01%) x (.01%) = .000001%
This percentage represents a 1 in a million chance. When we add up the numbers, we see that all these words have the same value.
Number (Αριθμος) = (1+17+9+8+12+15+18) = 80
Gematria (Γραμματεια) = (3+17+1+12+12+1+19+5+9+1) = 80
Mathematics (Mαθηματικα) = (12+1+8+7+12+1+19+9+10+1) = 80
An example of how unlikely this is if we imagine one million feet in length. One million feet is about 190 miles. The odds by chance that these three words would have the same numerical value, is like asking someone to blindly guess where you left your shoe on a 190 mile long road.
The Name of Jesus
The pattern of evidence found in gematria points to two fundamental truths. One, the extremely high improbabilities involved indicate the scriptures have to be Divinely Inspired. Random chance could never produce this many theologically meaningful patterns again and again and against all odds. Second, the math of the Bible all points to Jesus of Nazareth being the Son of God, God in the Flesh and the ultimate author of the Bible.
To prove this we just need to look at His name. In Hebrew the word for ‘The Name’ is Hashem. It is the word that modern Jews, out of reverence, use to refer to God.
The Old Testament also uses ‘The Name’ to refer to God (Lev. 24:11,16; Deut. 28:58). The name which God gave himself and expressly told Moses to tell the Israelites is Eheyeh-Asher-Eheyeh. This means ‘I am that I am.’ This is the full name that God explicitly gave to Moses in Exodus 3:14, to refer to Himself. Literally, it can be fairly said then, that this is ‘The Name.’
השם = 345 = The Name
אהיה אשר אהיה = 543 = I AM THAT I AM
345 + 543 = 888
888 = IHΣOYΣ = JESUS
Interpreted, God here is saying, ‘My Name on Earth will be Jesus.’
The chances that this simple equation could happen randomly are extremely remote, far more than it first appears. There are four conditions that must be fulfilled for this simple equation to exist.
First, is that the name Jesus would add up to a number that is a repeating digit. The second is that the two components of the equation must be reflective numbers. The third is theological, in that one component is literally ‘The Name’ while the second is a given name of God. The final condition is that these former conditions would ultimately add up to the name of Jesus, out of all the possible words in the New Testament.
Under a thousand, there are only 9 possible numbers that are a triple repunit or triple repetition of a single digit.
(111) (222) (333) (444) (555) (666) (777) (888) (999)
9/ 1000 = 0.009%
There are only four possible reflective number combinations that could fulfill the second requirement of this equation.
(147/ 741) (246/ 642) (345/ 543) (444/ 444)
4/ 888 = 0.0045%
Strong’s Concordance lists 8,674 unique words in the Old Testament.
1/ 8674 = 0.000115%
Strong’s Concordance lists 5,624 unique words in the New Testament. As there is only one word in the New Testament that could fulfill the final theological requirement, we have a 1 in 5,624 chance of hitting the name Jesus in the standard by random chance alone.
1/ 5624 = 0.000177%
To get the final percentage of this simple little equation coming together by random chance, we multiply all four percent chances together.
(0.009%) x (0.0045%) x (0.0045%) x (0.00115%) x (0.000177%) = 0.000000000003%
This is to say, that the chances for the equation to happen randomly is 3 out of a quadrillion. To put it another way, a quadrillion seconds of time is over 31 million years. Random chance would have to select the perfect 3 seconds out of those 31 million years. This, by all common experience with chance, proves that this equation’s occurrence is one of pure design and a design that is Divine, and by a Divinity whose name is Jesus.
Criticisms
There are several criticisms that are commonly heard in reference to Biblical mathematics. One is, sadly, that numbers and math don’t prove anything. To this we turn to science, which is the ultimate arbiter of truth. Our scientific understanding of the universe, the same understanding that allows us to fly to the moon or create powerful computers that can fit in your pocket are all based on science. Science itself is based upon number and how numbers relate to each other, which is what we call mathematics. Mathematics and number are quite simply the very foundations of truth itself.
Another common criticism, is that the verses of the Bible were instituted centuries after the creation of the text and therefore cannot be considered part of the ‘Holy’ Scriptures. Verses entered the Bible in the 15th Century by Robert Estienne and later William Whittingham in the English translations. Estienne’s versification became the standard printing practice and nearly all Christian Bible translations today have the same versification.
The answer to this criticism, in short, is that God is omniscient, that is, all-knowing. An all-knowing God, by definition, would have to know of the eventual standardized versification of the Bible, a versification that would become the world’s defacto division of the text. The probabilities involved in this defacto division of the text, prove this to be the case.
This is not to say, however, that God is bound His mathematical patterning to any versification of the text. Similarly, the citing of verses is often employed simply as a shorthand reference device. One could just as easily say the first seven words of the Bible or the first complete thought of the Bible instead of saying the first verse. It is more appropriate in the language of our times, however, to refer to this as the first verse.
The most common criticism is that of ‘Cherry-picking’ the numbers. This is to say, we pick only that which agrees with our thesis and ignore that which disagrees. Here we have to return to our two mathematical theories that guide Biblical mathematics. We use the tenets of Set Theory, not to pick, but to sort the data according to category. Only after the data is properly categorized, can a statistical measurement be made, at which point we use the principles of Probability Theory to determine its likelihood. This then means, that we must pick one thing over the other or a statistical measurement can never be made.
Gematria and Biblical mathematics in general are schools of mathematics however esoteric they may seem; as such, they must accord themselves with the universal rules of mathematics, or otherwise be judged irrelevant.
Conclusion
The mathematical evidence that the Bible was Divinely Inspired is absolutely overwhelming. In the very first verse we find an entire host of highly improbable mathematical facts that have been written about extensively and can be easily found on the internet.
Perhaps the most important mathematical fact of the Bible, is that the first verse adds up to the magical number 2,701. Since this is the very first verse, it sets the tone for the rest of the entire book. In this number, we find legions of highly improbable mathematical facts. The primary one being that its prime factors are 37 x 73.
Prime factorization is of fundamental importance to Number Theory, mathematics and science itself. The prime factors of any number are the unique ID of that number. So we can see that these prime factors appear to be very carefully selected.
Genesis 1:1 = 2,701
37 x 73 = 2701
When we apply gematria to those numbers, we see once again highly appropriate and improbable correlations.
מבוכה = 37 = Puzzle (Hebrew Ordinal)
מבוכה = 73 = Puzzle (Hebrew Standard)
חכמה = 37 = Wisdom (Hebrew Ordinal)
חכמה = 73 = Wisdom (Hebrew Standard)
אני הוא = 37 = I am He (God) Isaiah 41:4, (Hebrew Ordinal)
אני הוא = 73 = I am He (God) Isaiah 41:4, (Hebrew Standard)
ישו = 37 = Jesus (Modern Hebrew Ordinal)
הנוצרי = 73 = Christ (Modern Hebrew Ordinal)
God is real. The truth of it is in the numbers. He is real and when He walked the earth His name was Jesus the Christ.
The very first Christians shared everything. If you are a Christian please share this webpage. For we are the light of the world and what good is a light if it is hidden away.
Rob Slattery
Rob Slattery has an extensive website on all things related to Biblical Gematria. His videos are an excellent exploration of the subject matter. Recently his work has begun to focus on the mindboggling world of irrational numbers.
GOLDEN NUMBER
The absolute best site on the internet for accurate and scientific information on the Golden Ratio in its myriad manifestations.
The sites listed below detail other Divine codes and patterns found in the Bible, the physical sciences and the realms of sacred geometry. The Mathematical Standard does not endorse any religious perspectives found on these websites; it is only interested in the mathematics.
Vernon Jenkins
http://www.whatabeginning.com/
http://www.otherbiblecode.com/
Vernon Jenkins is one of the fathers of modern Biblical Numerics. His work on the mathematics of the first verse of the Bible is the foundation of the modern number movement. His mathematical analysis of Genesis 1:1 proves the Scriptures were inspired by an all knowing Deity.
Frank Colijn
Frank Colijn's has an excellent site on the incredible mathematical patterns found in the Bible. He has a particular brilliance for finding figurative patterns in the numbers that are visually breathtaking.
Mark Hines
This is a nice little site that sums up some of the standard findings of Biblical Gematria.
Hebrew 4 Christians
The Hebrew4Christians site is an invaluable aid to those interested in the Hebrew language. It's a great reference tool and well organized exploration of Hebrew, the first language of the Bible.
Books on the Subject
Caveat Emptor: In an age before the calculator, the values in these historic texts cannot always be trusted. Multiple errors in arithmetic have been discovered in both Panin's and Bullinger's works.
Read online here: The Writings of Ivan Panin
Ivan Panin is one of the early architects of Biblical Numerics. Raised in Communist Russia, he was an avowed atheist until he encountered the incredible mathematics of the Bible. He subsequently dedicated his every waking moment to showing the world the Divine truth of the Scriptures.
Read online here: Number in Scripture
E.W. Bullinger was an important figure in the Anglican Church and the Dispensational movement around the turn of the twentieth century. His work in numbers is similar in style to Ivan Panin's, with extensive studies on the factors of words and the number of words in a given text.
Read online here: Gematria
Read online here: The Apostolic Gnosis
Both books by Thomas Simcox Lea and Frederick Bligh Bond are fundamental works of Historic Gematria. These tomes lay a foundation for modern Biblical Gematria. Of particular note, is the central portion of the Apostolic Gnosis, which lists 500 meaningful matches in Greek gematria with the name Jesus Christ.
Purchase at Amazon: The Greek Qabalah
Keiren Barry's book is one of the few modern scholarly books on gematria. Written from a secular historical perspective, it firmly establishes a pervasive culture of gematria in the Greek world. The book is also important as it argues that the Greek gematria, not only preceded the Hebrew, but that Hebrew gematria was an imitation of the earlier Greek.
SHARE THIS
Want to get the latest discoveries in biblical mathematics? Then email johnelias@israelmail.com Subject Line: Updates!
© Copyright 2020, johnelias@israelmail.com
PASCAL'S WAGER
"Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is.
Let us estimate these two chances.
If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.
Wager, then, without hesitation that He is."
— Blaise Pascal
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse