4-2-7 Gematria And Hebrew Words
Many such claims have been for the Bible text too. " Below are the Hebrew words of the very first verse in the Bible.
In the beginning
Created
God
(An indefinite article which is not translatable)
The heavens
And (with indefinite article)
The earth
There are three important nouns in this first verse God. heaven, and earth. The numeric values of these three nouns are 86, 395, 296, respectively. When these three numeric values are added, the total value [777] is found to be a number which divides perfectly by 7 a number which is a multiple of 7, which is 111 7 s. Is it not strange that the numeric value of these words is a value which divides perfectly by seven a value which is an exact multiple of seven? Notice that the numeric value of the words is not 776 or 778, but exactly 777. If the numeric value / gematria were 776 or 778 it would not divide evenly by 7.
Feature One
The numeric value of the three important Hebrew nouns, God, heaven, earth, is exactly 777 or 111 7 s
Feature Two
It is strange to note that the numeric value / gematria of the verb in the first Bible verse of Genesis is also a number which divides perfectly by 7 a number which is an exact multiple of 7. The numeric value of the Hebrew verb created is exactly 203 or 29 7 s
Feature Three
Strange to say, the numeric value of the first, middle, and last Hebrew letters in this first verse is also a number which divides evenly by 7. The numeric value of these three letters is exactly 133 or 19 7 s
Feature Four
The numeric value of the first and last letters of all of the seven Hebrew words in this verse is also a number which divides perfectly by 7. Their numeric value is exactly 1393 or 199 7 s (Notice the numeric value is not 1392 or 1394 but 1393, always a number which is an exact multiple of 7)
Feature Five
The number 1393, which is the numeric value of the first and last Hebrew letters of all the seven words, divides in the following manner. The numeric value of the first and last letters of the first word and the last word is a number which divides evenly by 7. Their numeric value is exactly 497 or 71 7 s
The numeric value of the first and last letters of the words remaining between the first and last words also divides perfectly by 7. Their numeric value is 896 or 128 7 s
(497 plus 896 equals 1393)
Feature Six
The Hebrew participle ETH which is not translatable into English in the Bible, occurs twice in the sentence of seven words. The article the also occurs twice. The numeric value of these two words which occur twice also divides by 7. Their numeric value is exactly 406 or 58 7 s.
Feature Seven
The last letters of the first and last words have a numeric value of exactly 490 or 70 7 s
Feature Eight
the number of Hebrew words in this verse is exactly 7.
Feature Nine
The total number of Hebrew letters in these seven words also divides perfectly by seven is an exact multiple of 7. The number of letters is exactly 28 or 4 7 s
Feature Ten
The first three of these seven Hebrew words contain the subject and predicate of the sentence. These three words are translated “In the beginning God created”. The number of actual letters in these first three Hebrew words is exactly 14 or 2 7 s. The last four of these seven words contain the object of the sentence. These fours words are translated the heavens and the earth. The number of letters in these last four Hebrew words is 14 or 2 7 s
Feature Eleven
These last four Hebrew words consist of two objects. The first is the heavens, and the second is and the earth. The number of letters in the first object is exactly 7.
The number of letters in the second object in the Hebrew is 7
Feature Twelve
The three leading words in this verse of seven words are God the subject and heavens and earth the objects. The number of letters in these three Hebrew words is exactly 14 or 2 7 s
The number of letters in the other four words of the verse is 14 or 2 7 s
Feature Thirteen
The shortest word is in the middle. The number of letters in this word and the word to its left is exactly 7
Feature Fourteen
The number of letters in the middle word and the word to its right is exactly 7.
These sevens these numeric features or facts are strangely hidden beneath the surface. They are truly beyond the view of ordinary readers of the Hebrew words and are discovered only by special investigation and counting.
The above are only a few examples of the many amazing numeric facts which have been discovered in the structure of this first verse of only seven Hebrew words. Literally dozens of other phenomenal numeric features strangely underlie the structure of this verse& .." (" Mathematics Prove Holy Scriptures" , Karl Sabiers, reprinted 1969, pp.21-27).
From earliest times, many Christians, myself included, have been cynical of these claims. It doesn’t need computer techniques and clever counting to prove whether or not a document is from God. In the 1st and 2nd centuries after Christ, there arose many Gnostic writings. They claimed that their writings were from God because of the amazing patterns of gematria in them. Irenaeus responded, and on this occasion I would agree with him totally:
“No one should seek to prosecute inquiries respecting God by means of numbers, syllables and letters. For this is an uncertain mode of proceeding, on account of their varied and diverse systems, and because every sort of hypothesis may at the present day be, in like manner, devised by any one; so that they can derive arguments against the truth from these very theories, insomuch as they may be turned in many different directions” (Against Heresies, Book 2:25:1, published in The Ante-Nicene Fathers , Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1951, Vol. 1 p. 396).
The fact that the Jewish writings, the Bible, Babylonian epics, the Gnostic writings, the Qur’an etc. all display features of gematria means that it is a non-argument to say that gematria proves any one of those writings to be the only unaltered word of God. This is the logical fallacy which the Moslem argument seems to have fallen into. Gematria is largely psuedo-science- and the way that appeals have to be made to the supposed fact that all waves break at an angle of 19 degrees is a reflection of this. Islam must be intellectually desperate if it has to recourse to this kind of argument. Even if some amazing co-incidences can be discerned, this does not prove in any sense the claim that therefore the literature which exhibits such co-incidences must therefore be inspired. Many Moslems are in fact embarrassed by the claims made about the Qur’an from gematria. The fact literature can be produced which has such ‘amazing’ features shows clear enough that there is no reason to think that it must be inspired. If it all is, then God has inspired totally contradictory material.
