Joshua and Babylon
The son of Nun. In the Hebrew text, ‘and Joshua’ is written as a single word (ו י ה ו ש ע ). I stared at it completely surprised, not believing my eyes! I hadn’t expected it. Was the hunted for word ‘hidden’ in the plain text? Then I realized that it would be matching to the full extent the power of God. Indeed, some words of dubious significance may be constructed at low skips, especially short words consisting of frequently appearing letters. Then the matrix would probably extend further to the left. Such findings will be disputed because of their ambiguity, uncertainty and vagueness. But it requires God’s own skills to fix a name in this way in a code! Joshua is the Old Testament name for Jesus. And we know from the New Testament that the Kingdom will be given to Jesus. Notice that Darius the Mede received (‘took over’ in NIV) the kingdom as per Daniel 5:31. There is also an interesting link between ‘and Joshua’ (ע ש ו ה י ו ) and ‘upharsin’ (ן י ס ר פ ו ). Both words consist of the same number of letters: six!
Thus everything fits in its right place (see Figure 4). But such interpretation may raise suspicions of the ‘too good to be true’ or ‘too easy to be an achievement’ type. Frankly, to a certain extent, I would agree with such critics. At first glance, the latter term may seem fabricated. In my opinion, the fact that it is in the plain text rather points to the opposite. However, I felt some weakness in such ready-made assertion. Therefore, we must examine the authenticity applying unambiguous criteria. Having exhausted all linguistic arguments, let us turn to history and mathematics.
The basic education of the Western people includes knowledge in mathematics that has developed since the 6th century BC. This knowledge has been enriched during this period of 26 centuries. It is widely accepted that the ancient Greeks are those who have laid the foundations of geometry. This belief is long-established due to the works of Euclid – one of the best mathematicians ever born. He lived in the 3rd century BC and left a masterpiece that hasn’t lost its importance even in our modern times. He established the basic rules for reasoning and criteria of proof that bear his name: Euclidian geometry. But even though Euclid had his own achievements and a significant contribution, he had based his work primarily on earlier models.
Almost all researchers in the field of the history of mathematics agree that the roots of our concepts sprang from the ancient Babylon. Although it was the Greeks that created what is Western mathematics today, they borrowed fundamental notions from Babylon. And it was one man that did most of the job: Pythagoras.
Pythagoras lived about 250 years before Euclid, in the 6th century BC. He is famous with the founding of a school where the disciples believed that everything in the universe is expressed through numbers. The later Greek mathematics was linked closer to geometry. Geometry was not unfamiliar to Pythagoras, however. A well-known theorem in geometry bears his name. But it is not the Pythagoras’ theorem that has great importance for our study. Interestingly, there is evidence that the Babylonians knew and used it. But what is even more interesting is that there is a sound grounds to assume that Pythagoras himself has learned it from them!
Babylon: the Cradle of Mathematics
Professional historians are rarely believers. And Bible scholars rarely show interest in mathematics. The historians claim that the Bible is a compilation of fables and therefore cannot be a reliable source. The Bible scholars restrict themselves to basic calculations in their research because they regard higher mathematics as a pagan instrument and all devices created by man, including the computer, as satanic inventions. This funny ‘complementarity’ helped for the significance of a scarcely known detail of Pythagoras’ life to remain underestimated. It is even unknown to the lay public: Pythagoras has been taken captive to Babylon! This happened in 525 BC, when Cambyses, the king of Persia, conquered Egypt and most probably Pythagoras was taken to Babylon together with the Egyptian priesthood. Probably he had been treated as what is equivalent to a ‘brain’ of our modern times. Before that, Pythagoras had been for up to 22 years in Egypt, where he obtained a religious order and had the opportunity to study the Egyptian accomplishments in mathematics. Now he was able to compare the achievements of another school in the same field.
But what impressed me most in this account was the date. Both religious and secular historians agree that Babylon fell to the Mede-Persians in October 539 BC. The fatal night can be said with a good reliability to be 11th or 12th October. Cyrus, the king whose name God told Isaiah 200 years before (referred to also as ‘Anointed One’ in Isa. 45:1-5), entered the city on 30th October. We will return later to a special feature of the invasion that may have some relation to our times.
Daniel the prophet was there, in the palace that night. The Bible account continues with events from his life that happened years after that night. It is not stated in the Bible how many years Daniel has lived after the fatal event. Most scholars believe that he died shortly after the fall of Babylon. Their beliefs are based on the fact that he was very old and therefore shouldn’t have lived for more than another few years. Be that as it may, Pythagoras appeared in Babylon 15 years after these events at the most. He must have met live witnesses of the vain attempts of interpretation of the writing and the interpretation of Daniel. Surely he has been given full account of this important event. Antipho, mentioned by Diogenes Laertis, says that Pythagoras ‘has associated with Chaldeans and Magi’ [3].
The possibility that Pythagoras has met witnesses of where and when the writing on the wall appeared and maybe even the aged Daniel personally provoked my mind. Although very old, Daniel, if live, would have been in his nineties in 525 BC. The idea that Pythagoras has met Daniel face-to-face excited me to the highest degree. What did Daniel tell Pythagoras? Did he tell him about the writing on the wall? Did he tell him what method had been used and how he managed to solve the problem? Was it a mathematical method that had been used for the solution; if so, was this method an innovation and, finally, what impact eventually has this method exerted on the development of Western mathematics up to our own times.
To answer this question, we must examine what Pythagoras has brought from Babylon that had been unknown to the Egyptians.
