Updated thru 11/5/2015
I was presented with an alleged statistical ‘proof’ that Hebrew or the Bible has encoded information.
I would urge the reader to be extremely skeptical of claims of codes or coded information in the Bible /Hebrew. Confirmation bias, data mining, coincidence, improper use of statistics, wishful thinking, data manipulation (accidental or otherwise), retroactive fitting, backed into figures or information and other problems can lead to false conclusions. Before we can accept the encoded claims we must have a large group of statisticians, scientists, Bible and Hebrew experts review the presentation to determine if there are potential flaws.
I will present an actual example found in the ‘proof’ and raise a few significant questions. But there are many others questions to be resolved - just ask an objective statistician. I will then provide an English counter example and an amazing coincidence in English.
Here is a sample example in the ‘proof’:
Consider a day. It has 24 hours or 24*60*60 = 86,400 seconds. The frequency is defined by the “proof” as 1/(number of seconds) = 0.000011574. The logarithm( using base e) of the frequency is -11.3667
The same can be done for month or year or in fact any period of time. The ‘proof’ uses only day, month, year.
The Hebrew word for day is Yom and can be spelled yud, vav, mem. Each Hebrew letter has a numeric value per a chosen gematria table. Using one of the Hebrew gematria tables and adding of the numeric values of Yom gives 56.
Day - Yom has Gematria value = 56 , Frequency = 1.1574* 10^(-5) and log frequency = –11.3667
For the Hebrew word for month and year we have these respective values:
Yerach (month) 218 3.9194*10^ (-7) –14.7521
Shanah (year) 355 3.2661* 10^(-8) –17.2371
The ‘proof’ then uses log (base e) of the frequency as the independent variable and Hebrew word gematria value is the dependent variable. All this really means is find the best fit of line thru the 3 points. After doing the math it is found the(two tail) significance level is .0255 and R squared .998. A high R squared (or rather the square root of R square close to plus or minus 1) means there is a very strong linear correlation between the independent and dependent variable. This can mean, but does not always mean there is a relationship between the two variables. Often the used significance cut off is .05 and since .0255 is less we may ‘accept’ the fitted equation as providing some information as long as other statistical validations have been performed. In the example presented to me they were not. Nor do I think such validations would be meaningful with only 3 data points. Also, since the claim is being made for supernatural we would desire a significant cut off value not of .05, but something much much lower.
Because there are often different Hebrew words and spellings to represent a particular thing we are faced with a problem which Hebrew words and spellings to select. Chadush is the overwhelming word for month used in the Torah, yet for some reason the ‘proof’ uses Yerach. Why ? Why did not the proof also use the Hebrew word for week i.e week, month, year or perhaps day, week, month, or day week month year etc: ? Was it because only three Hebrew words for day month year and the odd choice of the Hebrew word for month gave the ‘amazing’ result ? Don’t let the facade of Statistics fool you, because it is possible to deceive yourself and others with Statistics.
For my example I will use Day Week Month, a logical sequence. Other than that I use exactly the same procedure as the alleged proof.
This website https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerology has a table having a correspondence of English
Letters and numbers as follows.
1 = A, I, J, Q, Y
2 = B, K, R
3 = C, G, L, S
4 = D, M, T
5 = E, H, N, X
6 = U, V, W
7 = O, Z
8 = F, P
After assigning the numbers to English letters, add up the numbers to give the English Gematria value.
If I did all the math correctly these are the figures:
Day, Week, Month would give 6,18,25 as the respective English Gematria values.
The respective log frequencies are calculated like the ‘proof’. Day and Month are given in the ‘proof’‘ For week - multiply the month frequency by four and takes it’s log. Gives -11.3667, -14.7521 , -17.2371 for Day, Week, Month log of the frequencies.
Performing the exact same calculation as in the example the R square is .998 and this compares very well with the ‘proof’ example’s value. The significance level is .0296, again very close to the ‘proof’ level.
{eta 11/5/2015 I redid my example using month frequency as one seventh of the day frequency and still calculated a high R square at .996 and a significance of .041, still under .05}
My example is superior because the English words are unique, leaving no choice to massage the spelling or letter choices nor the descriptive word.
I have presented only one example of statistical proof for English being Divine (tongue and cheek) and there are likely many others such examples. It would not at all be surprising if amazing English Gematrias , coincidences, word relations, ‘amazing statistical findings’ can be found using English or just about any other language. If one looks hard enough in Hebrew (or virtually any language) you will be able to ‘find’ them one way or another. All the examples that failed are discarded and only the successes are presented. This not only misleads regarding the probabilities but fools the ignorant.
P.S. The Homosapian has an English Gematria of 46 and they have 46 chromosomes !
Related posts Proof of God from Gematria Proof of God from Hebrew
Continued here Proof of God from Coincidences in Bible and Hebrew Part 2
Showing posts with label Gematria. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gematria. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
Friday, May 15, 2015
Proof of God from Hebrew
Updated thru April 30, 2016
This post will use some Hebrew, but anybody reading it should have no difficulty following the discussion.
The proof is based on ‘amazing’ Gematrias (Hebrew Numerology), ‘amazing’ relationships among Hebrew words, or even the shape of ‘Hebrew’ letters. It is then claimed divine intelligence is behind it all.
Explained below in the section Origins of Alphabet, other cultures also claimed divine origin for their own writing systems. We should not be surprised by a similar claim by some Jews.
For the most part the following names of script refer to the same type of Hebrew script and the terms are interchangeable: Ktav Ashuri, Assyrian Hebrew, Square Hebrew, Aramaic, Modern Hebrew. (FYI - Modern Hebrew script is over 2000 years old, but is used today in Israel.)
For the most part the following names of script refer to the same type of Hebrew script and the terms are interchangeable: Ktav Ivri, Paleo Hebrew , Old Hebrew. (FYI - This is even an older Hebrew script.)
So right away we see there are least two different scripts that were used to write the Hebrew Language. This should not be surprising since say Russian can be written using many letters from the English script.
My post on Gematria is very related and I suggest at least skimming that post before this one.
I will provide examples that the proof uses and demonstrate there are also‘amazing’ relations in English and I expect they would be found in many other languages. They are the result of chance, human design, and especially confirmation bias. By this bias I mean that when some ‘amazing’ relation is found religious people show this relation, all the while ignoring the numerous and much more prevalent situation were no relations are found.
1) Proof : A Kabbalah insight: The Hebrew letter alef {א} is formed by two letter yuds { י } , one to the upper right and the other to the lower left, joined by a diagonal vav { ו } . These represent the higher and lower waters and the firmament between them.
Refute : The is aleph written as above was derived from Aramaic scripts and is not the original written Hebrew aleph of the Torah which used a different script (See below - Origins of Alphabet).
There is no such thing as a firmament or upper waters. (See my post on Genesis and the Big Bang)
There are often calligraphic motivations for letter design. Perhaps that is the basis for the design of the aleph letter and not mystical relations.
2) Proof : Hebrew word for hand is spelled yud-daled ( daled = ד, yud= י) and adding up the numeric values of the letters gives 14. There are 14 joints in the hand !
Refute: There are 14 finger joints, but there are more than 14 joints in the hand which includes the wrist and metacarpal bones. Hence the proof fails. Also there are numerous Hebrew words for body parts wherein the addition of the letters is not related to the body part. Try for example the Hebrew for foot or head. So ignore the numerous number cases where nothing ‘amazing’ is found. But then if you find some word with a connection, say divine. This is called confirmation bias.
Besides Gematria relations and connections may be found in English and I strongly suspect in many other languages.
Taking A=1, B= 2 etc we have the following amazing relations:
HAND = 8+1+14+4 =27 and there are 27 Bones in the hand. This is superior to the Hebrew example used by the proof.
LOCK = 41 and KEY = 41
What does a CAT and DOG do ? FIGHT right ? Dog + Cat = Fight. Dog=26, Cat =24, Fight=50
DAY =D+A+Y = 30, and there are about 30 days in a month. SECOND=60 and there are 60 seconds in a minute
EARTH = E+A+R+T+H = 52 and what is amazing Earth has a 52 weeks in a year
{ETA 10/31/2015 BEAN = 22, and the number of chromosomes in the Bean is 22. }
If one searches long enough and seeks these kinds of relations many could be found.
3) Proof - Hebrew words that begin with the letters ches lamed (Lamed = ל, ches = ח) pronounced Chal , when found in Hebrew words almost always reference something infirm.
Refute: Similar things occur for example in the English language.
Consider these words: mistletoe, mist, milk, milch, micturate. All four of these words are related by starting with 'MI" and all the words are related conceptually ! (I will let the reader research why.)
Consider these words: circumcise, circuit, circumvent... Just like Chal may mean to weaken and hence be used in words that involve infirm/lacking, so too many English words having CIRC may involve the concept of 'around'. Evidence of the Divine ? Hardly.
The English words influence, flush, flue, flucuate and many other 'disparate' words are related to the root word 'flu', meaning flow/river. There is often logic behind scripts and languages. In this case, flue as in passage for air to flow, or as a river may wave as in fluctuate etc: etc:
In addition there are Hebrew words with Chal that don’t imply infirm. Some examples include:
I Samuel Chapter 17 Verse 40 The Hebrew word Chalookay ( י ק לח) smooth is used in conjunction with something firm - a pebble.
(Hebrew is spelled right to left. I spelled it here left to right so some can perhaps follow the sounds better.)
The Hebrew Choled for rodent/ mole - only by a stretch would the concept of infirm relate to it.
Same for the Hebrew word Cholev (= tallow ) which is a firm fat.
You may take most adjectives or descriptions and retrofit them to virtually any noun. Take Ice. You can say it lacks firmness because you may slip on it. Or take Rodent. Its infirm because it is short. Similar tactics are used by the proof to find ‘infirm’ in any word that has the Chal prefix.
4) Proof: The Hebrew letter vav when used in the beginning of Hebrew words means ‘and’. The letter is used to 'hook' words together similar to fashion the English word 'and' is used. Vav even looks like a hook ( picture a T with the right side of the top chopped off). Spelled out in Hebrew it means hook.
Refute: The Phoenician letter called vav meant hook in Phoenician and the design of the letter was most likely based the hook that was used. It looks like our English letter Y and in fact is the ancestor of our English letter Y. The original Hebrew script (Paleo-Hebrew) was derived from the Phoenician script and was very similar. The square Hebrew letter vav was derived from Aramaic and looks like the vav in the proof. Aramaic was also derived from Phoenician script. For more on the shape of letters and their meanings see Origin of Alphabet below.
I see nothing divine in using the symbol that depicts hook, that means hook to be used to hook words together. Is it not better to build some rhyme and reason into the design of scripts and languages ?
Origins of Alphabets and the Hebrew Script
The following information is from the book Alphabetical Order How the Alphabet Began by Tiphaine Samoyault 1996 unless stated otherwise. Although Tiphaine's book may not be an advanced text nor an academic text is very consistent with what I have read in Encyclopedia's and Academic texts regarding the topics discussed in this blog.
“Alphabets didn’t just suddenly appear”. The earliest writing started long before alphabets.” Forms of writing date back around 3400 BC in Mesopotamia and China.
“In almost every civilization, the earliest writing was connected to religion and magic....But writing was quickly put to use for financial life and daily activities as well.”
( The Origins of Writing - Wayne Senner Editor 1989. Page 10 Earliest Myths credit the divine for the gift of writing. And in Encyclopedia Americana 2005 edition - under Writing - Ancient Egyptian credit the God Thoth for inventing writing. The Babylonian claim God Nebo. The Chinese claim it is from the dragon faced Ts’ang Chieh, The Teutonic God Odin invented the runes, the Celtic God Ogma invented ogam. Aztecs claim the god Quetzalcoatl. The book explains writing had great value, exercised magical power over the unlearned and was thought to require special aid in its creation. - [So should we be surprised if some Jews claim the same for Hebrew script ? After all, all those other cultures thought their own writing systems were a divine gift.] )
Ideograms and pictograms are some of the earliest writing systems using symbols and pictures and combinations of them for more complex Ideas.
Earliest known system of writing is Cuneiform invented by Sumerians about 5000 years ago. They needed a way to record trade. It spread to Akkadia, Babylon, Assyria and eventually the writing system of the whole Middle East.
Example Ox
It is a short step from this or from the Egyptian pictogram of an Ox head to the Phoenician letter aleph which meant Ox. Phoenician letter aleph is represented by -
From 3300 to 700 BC the pictograms evolve into abstract signs.
For example an obvious pictogram (symbol or picture) of a Fish eventually becomes
Hieroglyphics the writing system of ancient Egypt appears 3200 BC or maybe earlier. “...a mixture of pictorial signs, which stood for individual things, and sound signs, which represent sounds.” These sound signs (phonetics signs) are the beginnings of alphabets.
Example - water depicted as a wavy horizontal line. It also represented the ‘n’ sound. (The New Encyclopedia Britannica 15th edition 2003 Volume 29 under Writing - that sound is the first sound for the Egyptian word for water. It was that principle that was utilized to create the Phoenician script. Phoenician script is discussed later in this post.)
Ugaritic Alphabet first appears in Syria about 1500 BC uses symbols to stand for sounds and is a true alphabet. Impressions are made on clay. Ugarit was a large international port where communication was essential and needed to be simple.
Example the “M” sound
Near the end of the 12th century BC The Phoenicians begin to use a 22 letter alphabet. Since they wrote on papyrus a more linear writing style could be used.
We can trace some Phoenician letters to Egyptian pictograms. Below is a Phoenician letter, its name (mem) and its source. The Phoenician word for water (maiyim) was pronounced beginning with the “M’ sound and so the wavy line very similar to the Egyptian symbol for water was used for the sound “M”. ((See Wiki Phoenician Alphabet), and see Page 2 The Worlds Writing Systems 1996 by Daniels and Bright Editors - Egyptian Hieroglyphics probably inspired the Canaanite Script. [Phoenicians are Canaanite])
(Side note: The Greek and English alphabet are direct descendants from Phoenician letters. [ For example with very little imagination you see how our English letter M and A is derived from the Phoenician letter mem and aleph respectively.])
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sources for the following information are noted in the text
Paleo Hebrew was a very early “Hebrew” alphabet and virtually the same as the Phoenician Alphabet from which is came from. It looks different than the Square Hebrew. Square Hebrew was adopted later and is still used today for the ‘Hebrew’ Torah.
A - The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Worlds Ancient Languages 2004
Page 321 The National Hebrew script of Iron Age Israel and Judah arose as a branch of the Phoenician.script. After the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem 586 BC Hebrew came to be written in the Aramaic script widely used in NeoBabylon and Assyrian empires. Aramaic script was an early branch of Phoenician. Page 319 - It is unlikely Hebrew emerged as a distinct language before the end of the late bronze age and the beginning of the Iron age.
B - The Origins of Writing - Wayne Senner Editor 1989. Beginning Page 80 -Linear Phoenician alphabet is ancestral to Old Hebrew and Aramaic scripts. Old Hebrew disappears from the Jews in the second century but survives amongst the Samaritans. Modern Hebrew [Square Hebrew] is derived from the chancellery hand of the late Persian Empire.
C- The New Encyclopedia Britannica 15th edition 2003 Volume 29 under Writing - It is unlikely writing was invented only once and then borrowed by different cultures. All Western writing systems can be traced back to the beginnings of symbol making in Sumer. It is believed the Oriental writing systems were not derived from Sumer.
D- The New Encyclopedia Britannica 15th edition 2003 Volume 29 under Writing states there is little doubt that Square Hebrew is Aramaic in origin. [Aramaic script itself is a descendant of the Phoenician alphabet as well.].
E- The Jews adapted Aramaic around the time of the Babylonian exile. Reasons given for this include: Aramaic was in widespread use thru out the middle east. It was the script of trade. [Some suggest Ezra and his entourage used Aramaic because the Samaritans, another and competing Jewish sect were using Paleo Hebrew for the Bible. Ezra and company used the script as a religious -political weapon. Ironically, the Samaritans were most likely using a script more like what prior ancient Hebrew writings were written in.]
F - The Hebrew Script by Solomon Birnbaum 1971 Volume I
Page 86 - Square Hebrew and Paleo Hebrew descend from the same alphabet. Page 70 Aramaic characters are introduced in the 5th century as the official script of the Torah. He also cites Talmudic narratives that describe a change of script from the original Torah in old Hebrew to Aramaic. Amongst the Talmudic tracts he reviews include Rav Yose and Mar Zudra of Sanhedrin 21b which attribute the change to Ezra. Birnbaum advocates Ezra changes scripts for the Samaritan reason given in E. Recall Ezra had the backing of a powerful empire behind him.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Paleo Hebrew letter mem is virtually the same as the Phoenician and has a similar name and represents a similar sound - ‘M’
The Square Hebrew letter with the sound of “M’ is מ and this letter was derived from the Aramaic script. It is also called the letter mem.
In the book A History of Writing Ann-Marie Christen (Editor) 2002 on Page 213 - Regarding Paleo Hebrew - “The Hasmonean renaissance of the second century BCE was marked by a certain revival of this archaic script, which was used to emphasize Jewish Statehood.” I find this very interesting because it suggests the Hasmoneans knew square Hebrew was a later introduction and suggests they were reverting back to their more ancient script - Paleo Hebrew.
Conclusion
{ETA April 30, 2016 From the 1965 book Introduction to Hebrew by Moshe Greenberg Prof. of Bibilical Studies Univ. of Penn.
Page 14 "The Hebrew alphabet, like the language is Canaanite. " The traces that remain of the alphabet development suggest that it was inspired by both Egyptian and Mesopotamian methods of writing. "The direct ancestor of the Hebrew Alphabet is Phoenician. As time went on the Phoenician script was gradually modified and by the 6th century it assumed the shape of present day Hebrew letters. Hebrew scribes in the 6th-4th century adopt Aramaic (square letters [hebrew]) abandoning the old Phoenician script." }
Archaeologists, Historians, Linguists are able to provide evidence and very plausible natural explanations for the evolution of scripts, including old Hebrew and square Hebrew. In addition, there are no convincing ‘amazing’ Gematrias or ‘amazing’ word relations or ‘amazing’ Hebrew letter shapes that requires invoking a God for any of it.
From How To Read The Bible by Kugel 2007
Page 86 - Most scholars hypothesize all semetic languages go back to protoc-semetic and Hebrew is quite a few developmental and chronological jumps away from it. Hebrew seems to have lost some phonemes that existed in Proto-Semitic. Also vowels, morphology, grammar syntax changed, By studying "...linguistic features of different biblical texts...scholars have been able to piece together a detailed picture of how biblical Hebrew evolved over a period of centuries. Hebrew words: Dropped out and new ones appeared, words slightly or even radically changed in meaning. The North Israelite dialects is".. markedly different from the Idiom of Jerusalem." The linguists say Moses could not have written the Pentateuch in the form we have - "...virtually all of it's Hebrew is later than that which putatively existed in the times of Moses."
This post will use some Hebrew, but anybody reading it should have no difficulty following the discussion.
The proof is based on ‘amazing’ Gematrias (Hebrew Numerology), ‘amazing’ relationships among Hebrew words, or even the shape of ‘Hebrew’ letters. It is then claimed divine intelligence is behind it all.
Explained below in the section Origins of Alphabet, other cultures also claimed divine origin for their own writing systems. We should not be surprised by a similar claim by some Jews.
For the most part the following names of script refer to the same type of Hebrew script and the terms are interchangeable: Ktav Ashuri, Assyrian Hebrew, Square Hebrew, Aramaic, Modern Hebrew. (FYI - Modern Hebrew script is over 2000 years old, but is used today in Israel.)
For the most part the following names of script refer to the same type of Hebrew script and the terms are interchangeable: Ktav Ivri, Paleo Hebrew , Old Hebrew. (FYI - This is even an older Hebrew script.)
So right away we see there are least two different scripts that were used to write the Hebrew Language. This should not be surprising since say Russian can be written using many letters from the English script.
My post on Gematria is very related and I suggest at least skimming that post before this one.
I will provide examples that the proof uses and demonstrate there are also‘amazing’ relations in English and I expect they would be found in many other languages. They are the result of chance, human design, and especially confirmation bias. By this bias I mean that when some ‘amazing’ relation is found religious people show this relation, all the while ignoring the numerous and much more prevalent situation were no relations are found.
1) Proof : A Kabbalah insight: The Hebrew letter alef {א} is formed by two letter yuds { י } , one to the upper right and the other to the lower left, joined by a diagonal vav { ו } . These represent the higher and lower waters and the firmament between them.
Refute : The is aleph written as above was derived from Aramaic scripts and is not the original written Hebrew aleph of the Torah which used a different script (See below - Origins of Alphabet).
There is no such thing as a firmament or upper waters. (See my post on Genesis and the Big Bang)
There are often calligraphic motivations for letter design. Perhaps that is the basis for the design of the aleph letter and not mystical relations.
2) Proof : Hebrew word for hand is spelled yud-daled ( daled = ד, yud= י) and adding up the numeric values of the letters gives 14. There are 14 joints in the hand !
Refute: There are 14 finger joints, but there are more than 14 joints in the hand which includes the wrist and metacarpal bones. Hence the proof fails. Also there are numerous Hebrew words for body parts wherein the addition of the letters is not related to the body part. Try for example the Hebrew for foot or head. So ignore the numerous number cases where nothing ‘amazing’ is found. But then if you find some word with a connection, say divine. This is called confirmation bias.
Besides Gematria relations and connections may be found in English and I strongly suspect in many other languages.
Taking A=1, B= 2 etc we have the following amazing relations:
HAND = 8+1+14+4 =27 and there are 27 Bones in the hand. This is superior to the Hebrew example used by the proof.
LOCK = 41 and KEY = 41
What does a CAT and DOG do ? FIGHT right ? Dog + Cat = Fight. Dog=26, Cat =24, Fight=50
DAY =D+A+Y = 30, and there are about 30 days in a month. SECOND=60 and there are 60 seconds in a minute
EARTH = E+A+R+T+H = 52 and what is amazing Earth has a 52 weeks in a year
{ETA 10/31/2015 BEAN = 22, and the number of chromosomes in the Bean is 22. }
If one searches long enough and seeks these kinds of relations many could be found.
3) Proof - Hebrew words that begin with the letters ches lamed (Lamed = ל, ches = ח) pronounced Chal , when found in Hebrew words almost always reference something infirm.
Refute: Similar things occur for example in the English language.
Consider these words: mistletoe, mist, milk, milch, micturate. All four of these words are related by starting with 'MI" and all the words are related conceptually ! (I will let the reader research why.)
Consider these words: circumcise, circuit, circumvent... Just like Chal may mean to weaken and hence be used in words that involve infirm/lacking, so too many English words having CIRC may involve the concept of 'around'. Evidence of the Divine ? Hardly.
The English words influence, flush, flue, flucuate and many other 'disparate' words are related to the root word 'flu', meaning flow/river. There is often logic behind scripts and languages. In this case, flue as in passage for air to flow, or as a river may wave as in fluctuate etc: etc:
In addition there are Hebrew words with Chal that don’t imply infirm. Some examples include:
I Samuel Chapter 17 Verse 40 The Hebrew word Chalookay ( י ק לח) smooth is used in conjunction with something firm - a pebble.
(Hebrew is spelled right to left. I spelled it here left to right so some can perhaps follow the sounds better.)
The Hebrew Choled for rodent/ mole - only by a stretch would the concept of infirm relate to it.
Same for the Hebrew word Cholev (= tallow ) which is a firm fat.
You may take most adjectives or descriptions and retrofit them to virtually any noun. Take Ice. You can say it lacks firmness because you may slip on it. Or take Rodent. Its infirm because it is short. Similar tactics are used by the proof to find ‘infirm’ in any word that has the Chal prefix.
4) Proof: The Hebrew letter vav when used in the beginning of Hebrew words means ‘and’. The letter is used to 'hook' words together similar to fashion the English word 'and' is used. Vav even looks like a hook ( picture a T with the right side of the top chopped off). Spelled out in Hebrew it means hook.
Refute: The Phoenician letter called vav meant hook in Phoenician and the design of the letter was most likely based the hook that was used. It looks like our English letter Y and in fact is the ancestor of our English letter Y. The original Hebrew script (Paleo-Hebrew) was derived from the Phoenician script and was very similar. The square Hebrew letter vav was derived from Aramaic and looks like the vav in the proof. Aramaic was also derived from Phoenician script. For more on the shape of letters and their meanings see Origin of Alphabet below.
I see nothing divine in using the symbol that depicts hook, that means hook to be used to hook words together. Is it not better to build some rhyme and reason into the design of scripts and languages ?
Origins of Alphabets and the Hebrew Script
The following information is from the book Alphabetical Order How the Alphabet Began by Tiphaine Samoyault 1996 unless stated otherwise. Although Tiphaine's book may not be an advanced text nor an academic text is very consistent with what I have read in Encyclopedia's and Academic texts regarding the topics discussed in this blog.
“Alphabets didn’t just suddenly appear”. The earliest writing started long before alphabets.” Forms of writing date back around 3400 BC in Mesopotamia and China.
“In almost every civilization, the earliest writing was connected to religion and magic....But writing was quickly put to use for financial life and daily activities as well.”
( The Origins of Writing - Wayne Senner Editor 1989. Page 10 Earliest Myths credit the divine for the gift of writing. And in Encyclopedia Americana 2005 edition - under Writing - Ancient Egyptian credit the God Thoth for inventing writing. The Babylonian claim God Nebo. The Chinese claim it is from the dragon faced Ts’ang Chieh, The Teutonic God Odin invented the runes, the Celtic God Ogma invented ogam. Aztecs claim the god Quetzalcoatl. The book explains writing had great value, exercised magical power over the unlearned and was thought to require special aid in its creation. - [So should we be surprised if some Jews claim the same for Hebrew script ? After all, all those other cultures thought their own writing systems were a divine gift.] )
Ideograms and pictograms are some of the earliest writing systems using symbols and pictures and combinations of them for more complex Ideas.
Earliest known system of writing is Cuneiform invented by Sumerians about 5000 years ago. They needed a way to record trade. It spread to Akkadia, Babylon, Assyria and eventually the writing system of the whole Middle East.
Example Ox
It is a short step from this or from the Egyptian pictogram of an Ox head to the Phoenician letter aleph which meant Ox. Phoenician letter aleph is represented by -
From 3300 to 700 BC the pictograms evolve into abstract signs.
For example an obvious pictogram (symbol or picture) of a Fish eventually becomes
Hieroglyphics the writing system of ancient Egypt appears 3200 BC or maybe earlier. “...a mixture of pictorial signs, which stood for individual things, and sound signs, which represent sounds.” These sound signs (phonetics signs) are the beginnings of alphabets.
Example - water depicted as a wavy horizontal line. It also represented the ‘n’ sound. (The New Encyclopedia Britannica 15th edition 2003 Volume 29 under Writing - that sound is the first sound for the Egyptian word for water. It was that principle that was utilized to create the Phoenician script. Phoenician script is discussed later in this post.)
Ugaritic Alphabet first appears in Syria about 1500 BC uses symbols to stand for sounds and is a true alphabet. Impressions are made on clay. Ugarit was a large international port where communication was essential and needed to be simple.
Example the “M” sound
Near the end of the 12th century BC The Phoenicians begin to use a 22 letter alphabet. Since they wrote on papyrus a more linear writing style could be used.
We can trace some Phoenician letters to Egyptian pictograms. Below is a Phoenician letter, its name (mem) and its source. The Phoenician word for water (maiyim) was pronounced beginning with the “M’ sound and so the wavy line very similar to the Egyptian symbol for water was used for the sound “M”. ((See Wiki Phoenician Alphabet), and see Page 2 The Worlds Writing Systems 1996 by Daniels and Bright Editors - Egyptian Hieroglyphics probably inspired the Canaanite Script. [Phoenicians are Canaanite])
(Side note: The Greek and English alphabet are direct descendants from Phoenician letters. [ For example with very little imagination you see how our English letter M and A is derived from the Phoenician letter mem and aleph respectively.])
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sources for the following information are noted in the text
Paleo Hebrew was a very early “Hebrew” alphabet and virtually the same as the Phoenician Alphabet from which is came from. It looks different than the Square Hebrew. Square Hebrew was adopted later and is still used today for the ‘Hebrew’ Torah.
A - The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Worlds Ancient Languages 2004
Page 321 The National Hebrew script of Iron Age Israel and Judah arose as a branch of the Phoenician.script. After the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem 586 BC Hebrew came to be written in the Aramaic script widely used in NeoBabylon and Assyrian empires. Aramaic script was an early branch of Phoenician. Page 319 - It is unlikely Hebrew emerged as a distinct language before the end of the late bronze age and the beginning of the Iron age.
B - The Origins of Writing - Wayne Senner Editor 1989. Beginning Page 80 -Linear Phoenician alphabet is ancestral to Old Hebrew and Aramaic scripts. Old Hebrew disappears from the Jews in the second century but survives amongst the Samaritans. Modern Hebrew [Square Hebrew] is derived from the chancellery hand of the late Persian Empire.
C- The New Encyclopedia Britannica 15th edition 2003 Volume 29 under Writing - It is unlikely writing was invented only once and then borrowed by different cultures. All Western writing systems can be traced back to the beginnings of symbol making in Sumer. It is believed the Oriental writing systems were not derived from Sumer.
D- The New Encyclopedia Britannica 15th edition 2003 Volume 29 under Writing states there is little doubt that Square Hebrew is Aramaic in origin. [Aramaic script itself is a descendant of the Phoenician alphabet as well.].
E- The Jews adapted Aramaic around the time of the Babylonian exile. Reasons given for this include: Aramaic was in widespread use thru out the middle east. It was the script of trade. [Some suggest Ezra and his entourage used Aramaic because the Samaritans, another and competing Jewish sect were using Paleo Hebrew for the Bible. Ezra and company used the script as a religious -political weapon. Ironically, the Samaritans were most likely using a script more like what prior ancient Hebrew writings were written in.]
F - The Hebrew Script by Solomon Birnbaum 1971 Volume I
Page 86 - Square Hebrew and Paleo Hebrew descend from the same alphabet. Page 70 Aramaic characters are introduced in the 5th century as the official script of the Torah. He also cites Talmudic narratives that describe a change of script from the original Torah in old Hebrew to Aramaic. Amongst the Talmudic tracts he reviews include Rav Yose and Mar Zudra of Sanhedrin 21b which attribute the change to Ezra. Birnbaum advocates Ezra changes scripts for the Samaritan reason given in E. Recall Ezra had the backing of a powerful empire behind him.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Paleo Hebrew letter mem is virtually the same as the Phoenician and has a similar name and represents a similar sound - ‘M’
The Square Hebrew letter with the sound of “M’ is מ and this letter was derived from the Aramaic script. It is also called the letter mem.
In the book A History of Writing Ann-Marie Christen (Editor) 2002 on Page 213 - Regarding Paleo Hebrew - “The Hasmonean renaissance of the second century BCE was marked by a certain revival of this archaic script, which was used to emphasize Jewish Statehood.” I find this very interesting because it suggests the Hasmoneans knew square Hebrew was a later introduction and suggests they were reverting back to their more ancient script - Paleo Hebrew.
Conclusion
{ETA April 30, 2016 From the 1965 book Introduction to Hebrew by Moshe Greenberg Prof. of Bibilical Studies Univ. of Penn.
Page 14 "The Hebrew alphabet, like the language is Canaanite. " The traces that remain of the alphabet development suggest that it was inspired by both Egyptian and Mesopotamian methods of writing. "The direct ancestor of the Hebrew Alphabet is Phoenician. As time went on the Phoenician script was gradually modified and by the 6th century it assumed the shape of present day Hebrew letters. Hebrew scribes in the 6th-4th century adopt Aramaic (square letters [hebrew]) abandoning the old Phoenician script." }
Archaeologists, Historians, Linguists are able to provide evidence and very plausible natural explanations for the evolution of scripts, including old Hebrew and square Hebrew. In addition, there are no convincing ‘amazing’ Gematrias or ‘amazing’ word relations or ‘amazing’ Hebrew letter shapes that requires invoking a God for any of it.
From How To Read The Bible by Kugel 2007
Page 86 - Most scholars hypothesize all semetic languages go back to protoc-semetic and Hebrew is quite a few developmental and chronological jumps away from it. Hebrew seems to have lost some phonemes that existed in Proto-Semitic. Also vowels, morphology, grammar syntax changed, By studying "...linguistic features of different biblical texts...scholars have been able to piece together a detailed picture of how biblical Hebrew evolved over a period of centuries. Hebrew words: Dropped out and new ones appeared, words slightly or even radically changed in meaning. The North Israelite dialects is".. markedly different from the Idiom of Jerusalem." The linguists say Moses could not have written the Pentateuch in the form we have - "...virtually all of it's Hebrew is later than that which putatively existed in the times of Moses."
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Gematria
UPDATED THRU 6/17/2015
Some Orthodox Jews argue gematria (numerology applied to the torah or other Jewish texts) or similar phenomena like the bible codes are so unusual or so improbable that it proves the torah is divine, and therefore god exists.
On 4/20/2015 I discovered an amazing Gematria 'proving' English is divine. Setting A=1, B=2 etc: Hand = 8+1+14+4
= 27
Now Wiki wrist - “In the hand proper a total of 13 bones form part of the wrist: eight carpal bones—scaphoid, lunate, triquetral, pisiform, trapezium, trapezoid, capitate, and hamate— and five metacarpal bones—the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth metacarpal bones”.
Also from the Skeletal hand LindBerg Models 1991 "The hand is composed of a wrist, a palm and five fingers."
The Hand has 8 carpal bones, 5 metacarpals, 5 proximal phalanges, 4 middle phalanges, 5 distal phalanges, giving a total of 27. Is not this amazing ?
For more of my "amazing" English language Gematrias see Proof of God from Hebrew}
Even if the bible codes or gematria is an apparent real anomaly, a genuine unfathomable phenomena, it does not follow the torah is divine. It only means we do not have an adequate explanation at this point. Maybe as we gain more knowledge, do more research, use more imagination reasonable explanations will be discovered. (Furthermore, even the author of the book the Bible Codes believed it was extraterrestrials not a god that wrote the bible.) But it is unnecessary to posit ET and in addition gematria is not an unfathomable mystery. The bible codes have been debunked, see for example the numerous articles at www.talkreason.org so this article will not discuss the bible codes.
A good discussion, and I would an argue a refute of Bible Codes is also found here http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jtigay/codetext.html THE BIBLE "CODES": A TEXTUAL PERSPECTIVE by
Jeffrey H. Tigay
Also see http://math.caltech.edu/code/petition.htm "There is a common belief in the general community to the effect that many mathematicians, statisticians, and other scientists consider the claims [of Bible Codes] to be credible. This belief is incorrect. On the contrary, the almost unanimous opinion of those in the scientific world who have studied the question is that the theory is without foundation. The signatories to this letter have themselves examined the evidence and found it entirely unconvincing."
http://web.archive.org/web/20131121111800/http://www.khunwoody.com/biblecodes/ Barry Simon is the IBM Professor of Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Caltech an Orthodox Jew also debunks Bible Codes.
[Suppose Bible Codes find your name Yakov Ben Moshe and birthday in Torah letter skips - is not that amazing ? But if they are not found, you may say well I am not important enough.
If you look hard enough in Moby Dick you will find amazing letter skips. When they are found you say wow it must be divine. Yet you do not find others. I wonder why.
Bible codes consist of confirmation bias or retroactive fitting or coincidence. Coincidence and chance will find amazing letter skips in any thick book. Even if the event is specified before you run the letter skip program. Increasing the chances of finding something 'amazing' is making numerous predictions based on the Bible Codes. Those that fail are ignored and the successes are touted. The same technique used by other frauds.
Since Bible Codes do not provide complete sentences of events, it leaves open the possibility massaging the message of the found letter skipped words to fit a known past event or an event that can be predicted based on other information. For example in 2015 a Bible Code links the words 'Hillary', 'Clinton', 'President'. Suppose she is elected President in the future. Is not that amazing ? No, because first the Hebrew spelling was massaged to match her name. Same for President. It also ignore the Bible Codes that link up 'John', 'Doe', 'President' and thousands just like that.
Also, Hebrew may be written with no vowels, unlike English. Thus the nature of the language will influence the chances of finding something. This is crucial. Comparing Torah Codes to Moby Dick is not the best text to use. You need to use a language 'similar' to Hebrew and use a large book written in that language. Another important issue is the distribution of the lengths of words in the language. Shorter words will give higher success rates.
Example:: Compare the word 'intoxicate' to the hebrew word for intoxicate spelled shin-kuph-resh. The English version is longer and has vowels and would be harder to find.
Moreover, Hebrew can have different spellings of the same word increasing the chance of finding something.
Bible Codes also suffer from a statistical flaw known as the Look-Elsewhere-Effect see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look-elsewhere_effect As applied to Bible codes - "Thus, setting aside related questions like confirmation bias, even if no groupings of interest or significance were found in the first grid, the next iteration can be tried by computer and so on en masse until "miraculous" or "improbable" groupings are finally arrived at. This is tantamount in effect to, upon dealing oneself an uninteresting poker hand, continuing to do so in whatever great quantities necessary until one obtains a straight flush, royal flush, or even many such events in sequence, and calling the deck inspired for enabling such a result.
This article will provide an example of gematria and explain how they arise naturally and therefore do not imply divine involvement. One example involves Pi, another one the ear. The principles discussed apply to gematria in general. {The second example is not gematria, but an "amazing" word relation allegedly proving the divinity of Hebrew}
Gematria findings are not amazing from a human psychological (for example confirmation bias) viewpoint and from a statistical probabilistic viewpoint. In addition, you may simply invent mathematical ad hoc ways to back into your target. Then there are thousands of words in the torah, hence almost an infinity number of possible gematrias. The gematria may involve Pi, or it may involve a name of an animal or an infinite number of other things. For those reasons there is a high chance of discovering an "amazing" gematria in any large book, especially if millions of man hours are spent trying to find gematria in that text.
Many of the items of my laundry list below work synergistically in combination with each other to create apparently amazing things.
Our first gematria example is at this link
http://www.ouisrael.org/tidbits/detail/A-pasuk-in-Melachim-Alef79111111111111111111111111/#. UV81bpOUQaY
and provides an example of Gematria and Pi as follows:
The verse states: And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from one brim to the other; it was round all around, and its height was five cubits; and a line of thirty cubits measured the circle around it (Melachim Alef 7:23).
The article explains it was a bathing vessel for kohanim. It was round with a 10 amot across and a circumference of 30 amot. Rabbinical commentators derive an estimate 30/10 or 3 and the article calls this their rough estimate of pi. The article then states: "Notice that the word KAV referring to the circumference of the vessel, has a K’TIV-K’RI, it is written one way and pronounced a different way. Take the gimatriya of the written word, KUF-VAV-HEI = 111 and divide it by the numeric value of the pronounced word, KUF-VAV = 106. You get 1.0471698 (using the first 7 decimal places). Multiply this number by 3, using it as a "correction factor" for the rough approximation. The result is 3.1415 (first 4 places). This gives a value of pi which deviates from the actual value by 26 millionths - a vastly more accurate value of pi." However there is a discrepancy between the rough estimate and the actual value PI. The article resolves this by appealing to various Rabbinical commentators. One saying the vessel may not have been perfectly round. Others say the 30 amot measurements is an inside vessel diameter and the 10 amot diameter the vessel outside diameter. There is also the issue of the vessel wall thickness.
Here is the refute of the above "proof", not in any particular order.
The above calculation gives PI is 3.141509... while PI = 3.14159265358979... So the 'Divine' approximation is already wrong in the fifth decimal place !. A better approximation is 355/113 = 3.141592920... which is accurate to eight decimal places. And there even better approximations. Surely, a divine approximation could have done better than only four decimal accuracy.
1) First some Jewish commentators are saying the object was not circular, so even calculating Pi based on the object is not relevant. The whole gematria falls apart right there. The pasuk does not state the correct value of Pi or even a crude value of Pi. Rather, a relatively recent Individual knowing the correct value of Pi found a way to derive it using gematria tricks. (Chazal did try to deduce Pi based on the pasuk and therefore got it wrong. A more intelligent approach would be to derive Pi from a study of geometry and reality.)
2) The commentators cannot decide if the dimensions are internal or external. This creates the opportunity for mixing and matching to get to the correct combination of the gematria correction factor and the so called crude pi approximation.
3) Is there only one way to spell the pronouncing of the Hebrew word ? If so you can pick and choose to get to the correct combination of the correction factor and the crude approximation of Pi. For example, The gematria as stated left out the begining vav (a Hebrew letter) from both words, yet that letter was part of the actual words in text of the pasuk (sentence). So the backed in value of Pi is not as accurate as the link says it is. You can pick and choose which letters to include or exclude to make your calculation.
3)
4) Pick up any large text at all - if you try hard enough you can find all kinds of ways to make up gemmatria gimmicks based on different spellings of words, meanings of words, roots of words , addition of letters, sounds of words, various ways of applying the arithmetic, various ways to assign numeric values to letters: etc:
5) Here is another explanation - its all a miracle. Although normally the ratio of the circumference to diameter is 3.14...., by a miracle of god this circular vase has the ratio only 3. You see how all problems go away if you invent miracles.
6)
7) Why is the ratio taken as 111/106 and not the reverse ? Because we know the correct value of Pi. That is what is called circular reasoning.
8) Why is the correction factor multiplicative ? Because in this
convoluted example it works out the way you want. In other words, the correction factor could have been additive, subtractive, divisive but thru circular reasoning we pick multiplicative.
9) There are so many ways to back into the appropriate arithmetic type of and value of correction factor and also the spelling and also the crude value of Pi, no wonder somebody finds one sequence that works to find Pi.
10) Who decides that aleph is one, bet is 2 etc: ? Why should there be any association of order or quantity with a specific letter. ? Why should the base 10 be used for letters and numbers ? Do you understand that the arithmetic base is chosen by people and there are different bases used. Also, some letters I think can have two different values. This greatly increases the chances of finding gematria tricks. How vowels are used is added to the arsenal.
11) Some Muslim said something like this:The Quran uses the Arabic word for "sea" x times, and the Arabic word for land y times. And the ratio of sea to land on planet earth is exactly the same as the ratio of x to y. And Mohammed didn't even realize the earth was round, really, and certainly didn't know about the Americas and Antarctica and the Pacific Ocean, so that
proves the Quran was written by Almighty Allah, who DID have those facts at his holy fingertips in Allah's Almanac. You see how easy it is to find gematria in other places.
The Christians have found gematria in the New Testament. If you spend millions of man hours looking for gematria tricks you will find them in any large text. It all a case of backed into figures or information, coincidences, cognitive errors, the laws probability and combinations of the various reasons provided in this article.
12)
13) When words and language evolved people used human reasoning. In other words, there could be some built in gematria and other fascinating findings. It has nothing to do with god.
14) When people write books (including the Torah) they may at times imposed some gematria for various reasons including poetic form, metaphor, superstition etc: It has nothing to do with gods.
15) Contrary to what the gematria and Pi link suggest and therefore misleads, 3 was not accepted as a crude approximation to Pi by Chazal, rather 3 was believed an accurate value of Pi by chazal. See this link http://www.talkreason.org/articles/letter1.cfma Letter To my Rabbi by Naftali Zeligman who explains:
[....Even in plain geometry we find Chazal determining laws based on homiletics, and only afterwards trying to make the facts fit these laws. In Tractate Eiruvin 14a the Talmud says:
"Anything which has, in its circumference, 3 tefachs, has one tefach in diameter. How do we know this? Rabbi Jochanan said, it is written in the Scripture: 'And he [Solomon] made a molten sea, ten amahs from one brim to the other. It was round all about, and its height was five amahs. And a line of thirty amahs circled it' (I Kings 7:23)."
The Talmud rules that the ratio between a circle's circumference and its radius, known as pi, is 3. In fact, this number is irrational (impossible to represent as a finite common or decimal fraction), and taken to 10 decimal places, pi=3.1415926536.
One might say that Chazal also knew that true pi is more than 3 and only tried to find a Halachically valid approximation of this number -- but this is impossible because of the Gemara in Bava Batra 14b:
"And if you think about the Torah Scroll [of the Temple] which had 6 tefachs in circumference, provided that everything that has 3 tefachs in circumference has one tefach in diameter and provided that the Torah scroll was rolled to its middle [i.e. it was rolled on two wooden shafts like our Torah scrolls are], we have more than 2 tefachs between one handle and another -- so how could it enter the 2 tefachs of free space [in the Holy Ark]? Rav Acha the son of Jacob said: the Torah scroll of the Temple was rolled to its beginning [i. e. it was rolled on one wooden shaft only]. And yet, since it was 2 tefachs in diameter, how could it enter 2 tefachs of free space [in the Ark]? Rav Ashei said: they did not wind all the Torah scroll on the pivot, but left a part of it unwound, put the scroll into the Ark, and then folded the remaining part of the scroll onto it."
They thought a Torah scroll 6 tefachs in circumference to be exactly 2 tefachs in diameter, so they considered it to be practically impossible to put such a scroll into a space of exactly 2 tefachs, unless one does not wind all the parchment of the scroll on its wooden shaft, thus leaving some free space to adjust the scroll in the Ark. Only after he puts the scroll into the Ark does he folds the remaining parchment and put it above the scroll.
Of course, were the Sages aware of the real value of pi -- or at least of the approximation 22/7 known to ancient Greeks centuries before the Talmudic era, they would have understood that the real diameter of a scroll 6 tefachs in circumference is about 1.9 tefachs and that nobody would need any special tricks to put it into 2 tefachs of free space. It is not difficult to determine that pi is significantly more than 3. All one needs is a ruler and a measuring rope. Nonetheless Chazal preferred to determine reality from verses and law instead of basing law on reality....]
---------------------------------------------------------------
An "amazing" word relation, that proves the divinity of Hebrew - or does it ?
Modern science is aware that human balance and the inner ear are related. In Hebrew the word "ear" (Ozen), and balance-" (Izun) have the same root. The implication is there is hidden secret knowledge in Hebrew. And that this knowledge must be of divine origin. This conclusion is completely unwarranted.
1) When words and language evolved people used human reasoning. In other words, there could be some built in gematria and other fascinating findings. It has nothing to do with god. Ancient people may have discovered that balance is related to the ear. For example, it was noticed that people experiencing physical trauma to the ear would develop imbalance. This knowledge was incorporated into the language. It would not be surprising if there were numerous other such instances as well.
2) Hebrew consists of 22 letters and typically words have 3 letter roots. (These roots are modified by suffixes and prefixes). There are thousands and thousands of words in the Hebrew language, Statistically it is very likely many pairs of words will end up sharing the same root. Some of these word pairs may later be found to be related in some fashion, for example the ear and balance. (It would not be surprising that many word pairs sharing the same root that have something in common while many other word pairs sharing the same root would have nothing in common.)
Here is a good summary that confirms and elaborates on what is previously written.
Beginning page 8 of Hidden Religion by Issitt and Main 2014
There are at least four ways of assigning values to letters. Mispar hechrachi,Mispar Siduri, Mispar Katan, Mispar Katan Mispari. [Is it any wonder somebody may find something amazing if you can pick and choose a value scheme ?]
From page 11 - "Critics of gematria have argued the relationships between number and words may largely be the result of coincidence, creative interpretation, and in some cases, design. Skeptics have noted that seemingly relevant numerical linguistic relationships can be constructed by choosing alternate or unconventional phrases, altering the spelling or value of certain characters, or utilizing combinations of different methods of calculating value. In addition,it has been demonstrated that the historical formation of words, phrases, and translations can input numerical messages into texts that may not have originally had the same values. Some have argued that nearly any text could be shown to have symbolic meaning using a similar numerical system and creative interpretations of relationships between words and numbers"}
Please read Proof of God from Hebrew for more on this kind of Proof.
Some Orthodox Jews argue gematria (numerology applied to the torah or other Jewish texts) or similar phenomena like the bible codes are so unusual or so improbable that it proves the torah is divine, and therefore god exists.
On 4/20/2015 I discovered an amazing Gematria 'proving' English is divine. Setting A=1, B=2 etc: Hand = 8+1+14+4
= 27
Now Wiki wrist - “In the hand proper a total of 13 bones form part of the wrist: eight carpal bones—scaphoid, lunate, triquetral, pisiform, trapezium, trapezoid, capitate, and hamate— and five metacarpal bones—the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth metacarpal bones”.
Also from the Skeletal hand LindBerg Models 1991 "The hand is composed of a wrist, a palm and five fingers."
The Hand has 8 carpal bones, 5 metacarpals, 5 proximal phalanges, 4 middle phalanges, 5 distal phalanges, giving a total of 27. Is not this amazing ?
For more of my "amazing" English language Gematrias see Proof of God from Hebrew}
Even if the bible codes or gematria is an apparent real anomaly, a genuine unfathomable phenomena, it does not follow the torah is divine. It only means we do not have an adequate explanation at this point. Maybe as we gain more knowledge, do more research, use more imagination reasonable explanations will be discovered. (Furthermore, even the author of the book the Bible Codes believed it was extraterrestrials not a god that wrote the bible.) But it is unnecessary to posit ET and in addition gematria is not an unfathomable mystery. The bible codes have been debunked, see for example the numerous articles at www.talkreason.org so this article will not discuss the bible codes.
A good discussion, and I would an argue a refute of Bible Codes is also found here http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jtigay/codetext.html THE BIBLE "CODES": A TEXTUAL PERSPECTIVE by
Jeffrey H. Tigay
Also see http://math.caltech.edu/code/petition.htm "There is a common belief in the general community to the effect that many mathematicians, statisticians, and other scientists consider the claims [of Bible Codes] to be credible. This belief is incorrect. On the contrary, the almost unanimous opinion of those in the scientific world who have studied the question is that the theory is without foundation. The signatories to this letter have themselves examined the evidence and found it entirely unconvincing."
http://web.archive.org/web/20131121111800/http://www.khunwoody.com/biblecodes/ Barry Simon is the IBM Professor of Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Caltech an Orthodox Jew also debunks Bible Codes.
[Suppose Bible Codes find your name Yakov Ben Moshe and birthday in Torah letter skips - is not that amazing ? But if they are not found, you may say well I am not important enough.
If you look hard enough in Moby Dick you will find amazing letter skips. When they are found you say wow it must be divine. Yet you do not find others. I wonder why.
Bible codes consist of confirmation bias or retroactive fitting or coincidence. Coincidence and chance will find amazing letter skips in any thick book. Even if the event is specified before you run the letter skip program. Increasing the chances of finding something 'amazing' is making numerous predictions based on the Bible Codes. Those that fail are ignored and the successes are touted. The same technique used by other frauds.
Since Bible Codes do not provide complete sentences of events, it leaves open the possibility massaging the message of the found letter skipped words to fit a known past event or an event that can be predicted based on other information. For example in 2015 a Bible Code links the words 'Hillary', 'Clinton', 'President'. Suppose she is elected President in the future. Is not that amazing ? No, because first the Hebrew spelling was massaged to match her name. Same for President. It also ignore the Bible Codes that link up 'John', 'Doe', 'President' and thousands just like that.
Also, Hebrew may be written with no vowels, unlike English. Thus the nature of the language will influence the chances of finding something. This is crucial. Comparing Torah Codes to Moby Dick is not the best text to use. You need to use a language 'similar' to Hebrew and use a large book written in that language. Another important issue is the distribution of the lengths of words in the language. Shorter words will give higher success rates.
Example:: Compare the word 'intoxicate' to the hebrew word for intoxicate spelled shin-kuph-resh. The English version is longer and has vowels and would be harder to find.
Moreover, Hebrew can have different spellings of the same word increasing the chance of finding something.
Bible Codes also suffer from a statistical flaw known as the Look-Elsewhere-Effect see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look-elsewhere_effect As applied to Bible codes - "Thus, setting aside related questions like confirmation bias, even if no groupings of interest or significance were found in the first grid, the next iteration can be tried by computer and so on en masse until "miraculous" or "improbable" groupings are finally arrived at. This is tantamount in effect to, upon dealing oneself an uninteresting poker hand, continuing to do so in whatever great quantities necessary until one obtains a straight flush, royal flush, or even many such events in sequence, and calling the deck inspired for enabling such a result.
This article will provide an example of gematria and explain how they arise naturally and therefore do not imply divine involvement. One example involves Pi, another one the ear. The principles discussed apply to gematria in general. {The second example is not gematria, but an "amazing" word relation allegedly proving the divinity of Hebrew}
Gematria findings are not amazing from a human psychological (for example confirmation bias) viewpoint and from a statistical probabilistic viewpoint. In addition, you may simply invent mathematical ad hoc ways to back into your target. Then there are thousands of words in the torah, hence almost an infinity number of possible gematrias. The gematria may involve Pi, or it may involve a name of an animal or an infinite number of other things. For those reasons there is a high chance of discovering an "amazing" gematria in any large book, especially if millions of man hours are spent trying to find gematria in that text.
Many of the items of my laundry list below work synergistically in combination with each other to create apparently amazing things.
Our first gematria example is at this link
http://www.ouisrael.org/tidbits/detail/A-pasuk-in-Melachim-Alef79111111111111111111111111/#. UV81bpOUQaY
and provides an example of Gematria and Pi as follows:
The verse states: And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from one brim to the other; it was round all around, and its height was five cubits; and a line of thirty cubits measured the circle around it (Melachim Alef 7:23).
The article explains it was a bathing vessel for kohanim. It was round with a 10 amot across and a circumference of 30 amot. Rabbinical commentators derive an estimate 30/10 or 3 and the article calls this their rough estimate of pi. The article then states: "Notice that the word KAV referring to the circumference of the vessel, has a K’TIV-K’RI, it is written one way and pronounced a different way. Take the gimatriya of the written word, KUF-VAV-HEI = 111 and divide it by the numeric value of the pronounced word, KUF-VAV = 106. You get 1.0471698 (using the first 7 decimal places). Multiply this number by 3, using it as a "correction factor" for the rough approximation. The result is 3.1415 (first 4 places). This gives a value of pi which deviates from the actual value by 26 millionths - a vastly more accurate value of pi." However there is a discrepancy between the rough estimate and the actual value PI. The article resolves this by appealing to various Rabbinical commentators. One saying the vessel may not have been perfectly round. Others say the 30 amot measurements is an inside vessel diameter and the 10 amot diameter the vessel outside diameter. There is also the issue of the vessel wall thickness.
Here is the refute of the above "proof", not in any particular order.
The above calculation gives PI is 3.141509... while PI = 3.14159265358979... So the 'Divine' approximation is already wrong in the fifth decimal place !. A better approximation is 355/113 = 3.141592920... which is accurate to eight decimal places. And there even better approximations. Surely, a divine approximation could have done better than only four decimal accuracy.
1) First some Jewish commentators are saying the object was not circular, so even calculating Pi based on the object is not relevant. The whole gematria falls apart right there. The pasuk does not state the correct value of Pi or even a crude value of Pi. Rather, a relatively recent Individual knowing the correct value of Pi found a way to derive it using gematria tricks. (Chazal did try to deduce Pi based on the pasuk and therefore got it wrong. A more intelligent approach would be to derive Pi from a study of geometry and reality.)
2) The commentators cannot decide if the dimensions are internal or external. This creates the opportunity for mixing and matching to get to the correct combination of the gematria correction factor and the so called crude pi approximation.
3) Is there only one way to spell the pronouncing of the Hebrew word ? If so you can pick and choose to get to the correct combination of the correction factor and the crude approximation of Pi. For example, The gematria as stated left out the begining vav (a Hebrew letter) from both words, yet that letter was part of the actual words in text of the pasuk (sentence). So the backed in value of Pi is not as accurate as the link says it is. You can pick and choose which letters to include or exclude to make your calculation.
3)
4) Pick up any large text at all - if you try hard enough you can find all kinds of ways to make up gemmatria gimmicks based on different spellings of words, meanings of words, roots of words , addition of letters, sounds of words, various ways of applying the arithmetic, various ways to assign numeric values to letters: etc:
5) Here is another explanation - its all a miracle. Although normally the ratio of the circumference to diameter is 3.14...., by a miracle of god this circular vase has the ratio only 3. You see how all problems go away if you invent miracles.
6)
7) Why is the ratio taken as 111/106 and not the reverse ? Because we know the correct value of Pi. That is what is called circular reasoning.
8) Why is the correction factor multiplicative ? Because in this
convoluted example it works out the way you want. In other words, the correction factor could have been additive, subtractive, divisive but thru circular reasoning we pick multiplicative.
9) There are so many ways to back into the appropriate arithmetic type of and value of correction factor and also the spelling and also the crude value of Pi, no wonder somebody finds one sequence that works to find Pi.
10) Who decides that aleph is one, bet is 2 etc: ? Why should there be any association of order or quantity with a specific letter. ? Why should the base 10 be used for letters and numbers ? Do you understand that the arithmetic base is chosen by people and there are different bases used. Also, some letters I think can have two different values. This greatly increases the chances of finding gematria tricks. How vowels are used is added to the arsenal.
11) Some Muslim said something like this:The Quran uses the Arabic word for "sea" x times, and the Arabic word for land y times. And the ratio of sea to land on planet earth is exactly the same as the ratio of x to y. And Mohammed didn't even realize the earth was round, really, and certainly didn't know about the Americas and Antarctica and the Pacific Ocean, so that
proves the Quran was written by Almighty Allah, who DID have those facts at his holy fingertips in Allah's Almanac. You see how easy it is to find gematria in other places.
The Christians have found gematria in the New Testament. If you spend millions of man hours looking for gematria tricks you will find them in any large text. It all a case of backed into figures or information, coincidences, cognitive errors, the laws probability and combinations of the various reasons provided in this article.
12)
13) When words and language evolved people used human reasoning. In other words, there could be some built in gematria and other fascinating findings. It has nothing to do with god.
14) When people write books (including the Torah) they may at times imposed some gematria for various reasons including poetic form, metaphor, superstition etc: It has nothing to do with gods.
15) Contrary to what the gematria and Pi link suggest and therefore misleads, 3 was not accepted as a crude approximation to Pi by Chazal, rather 3 was believed an accurate value of Pi by chazal. See this link http://www.talkreason.org/articles/letter1.cfma Letter To my Rabbi by Naftali Zeligman who explains:
[....Even in plain geometry we find Chazal determining laws based on homiletics, and only afterwards trying to make the facts fit these laws. In Tractate Eiruvin 14a the Talmud says:
"Anything which has, in its circumference, 3 tefachs, has one tefach in diameter. How do we know this? Rabbi Jochanan said, it is written in the Scripture: 'And he [Solomon] made a molten sea, ten amahs from one brim to the other. It was round all about, and its height was five amahs. And a line of thirty amahs circled it' (I Kings 7:23)."
The Talmud rules that the ratio between a circle's circumference and its radius, known as pi, is 3. In fact, this number is irrational (impossible to represent as a finite common or decimal fraction), and taken to 10 decimal places, pi=3.1415926536.
One might say that Chazal also knew that true pi is more than 3 and only tried to find a Halachically valid approximation of this number -- but this is impossible because of the Gemara in Bava Batra 14b:
"And if you think about the Torah Scroll [of the Temple] which had 6 tefachs in circumference, provided that everything that has 3 tefachs in circumference has one tefach in diameter and provided that the Torah scroll was rolled to its middle [i.e. it was rolled on two wooden shafts like our Torah scrolls are], we have more than 2 tefachs between one handle and another -- so how could it enter the 2 tefachs of free space [in the Holy Ark]? Rav Acha the son of Jacob said: the Torah scroll of the Temple was rolled to its beginning [i. e. it was rolled on one wooden shaft only]. And yet, since it was 2 tefachs in diameter, how could it enter 2 tefachs of free space [in the Ark]? Rav Ashei said: they did not wind all the Torah scroll on the pivot, but left a part of it unwound, put the scroll into the Ark, and then folded the remaining part of the scroll onto it."
They thought a Torah scroll 6 tefachs in circumference to be exactly 2 tefachs in diameter, so they considered it to be practically impossible to put such a scroll into a space of exactly 2 tefachs, unless one does not wind all the parchment of the scroll on its wooden shaft, thus leaving some free space to adjust the scroll in the Ark. Only after he puts the scroll into the Ark does he folds the remaining parchment and put it above the scroll.
Of course, were the Sages aware of the real value of pi -- or at least of the approximation 22/7 known to ancient Greeks centuries before the Talmudic era, they would have understood that the real diameter of a scroll 6 tefachs in circumference is about 1.9 tefachs and that nobody would need any special tricks to put it into 2 tefachs of free space. It is not difficult to determine that pi is significantly more than 3. All one needs is a ruler and a measuring rope. Nonetheless Chazal preferred to determine reality from verses and law instead of basing law on reality....]
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An "amazing" word relation, that proves the divinity of Hebrew - or does it ?
Modern science is aware that human balance and the inner ear are related. In Hebrew the word "ear" (Ozen), and balance-" (Izun) have the same root. The implication is there is hidden secret knowledge in Hebrew. And that this knowledge must be of divine origin. This conclusion is completely unwarranted.
1) When words and language evolved people used human reasoning. In other words, there could be some built in gematria and other fascinating findings. It has nothing to do with god. Ancient people may have discovered that balance is related to the ear. For example, it was noticed that people experiencing physical trauma to the ear would develop imbalance. This knowledge was incorporated into the language. It would not be surprising if there were numerous other such instances as well.
2) Hebrew consists of 22 letters and typically words have 3 letter roots. (These roots are modified by suffixes and prefixes). There are thousands and thousands of words in the Hebrew language, Statistically it is very likely many pairs of words will end up sharing the same root. Some of these word pairs may later be found to be related in some fashion, for example the ear and balance. (It would not be surprising that many word pairs sharing the same root that have something in common while many other word pairs sharing the same root would have nothing in common.)
Here is a good summary that confirms and elaborates on what is previously written.
Beginning page 8 of Hidden Religion by Issitt and Main 2014
There are at least four ways of assigning values to letters. Mispar hechrachi,Mispar Siduri, Mispar Katan, Mispar Katan Mispari. [Is it any wonder somebody may find something amazing if you can pick and choose a value scheme ?]
From page 11 - "Critics of gematria have argued the relationships between number and words may largely be the result of coincidence, creative interpretation, and in some cases, design. Skeptics have noted that seemingly relevant numerical linguistic relationships can be constructed by choosing alternate or unconventional phrases, altering the spelling or value of certain characters, or utilizing combinations of different methods of calculating value. In addition,it has been demonstrated that the historical formation of words, phrases, and translations can input numerical messages into texts that may not have originally had the same values. Some have argued that nearly any text could be shown to have symbolic meaning using a similar numerical system and creative interpretations of relationships between words and numbers"}
Please read Proof of God from Hebrew for more on this kind of Proof.
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