Mathematical Codes Found in The Bible

The following is a brief look at Chuck Misslers book "The Creation Beyond Space and Time". The numerical structure of the Bible has been studied closely, being the subject of numerous volumes in the past. But none are more provocative than the works of Ivan Panin.

Ivan Panin was born in Russia on December 12, 1855. Having participated in plots against the Czar at an early age, he was exiled and, after spending some years studying in Germany, he came to the United States and entered Harvard University. After graduation in 1882, he converted from agnosticism to Christianity.

In 1890 he discovered some phenomenal mathematical designs underlying both the Greek text of the New Testament and the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. He was to devote 50 years of his life painstakingly exploring the numerical structure of the scriptures, generating over 43,000 detailed, hand-penned pages of analysis.

The Heptadic Structure

The recurrence of the number seven, or an exact multiple of seven, is found throughout the Bible and is widely recognized. The Sabbath on the seventh day, the seven years of plenty, and the seven years of famine in Egypt, the seven priests and seven trumpets marching around Jericho, and the Sabbath year of the Land are well-known examples.

Also, Solomon's building the Temple for seven years, Naaman's washing in the river seven times, and the seven churches, seven seals, seven trumpets, seven bowls, seven stars, and so on in the Book of Revelation, all show the consistent use of the number seven.

But it turns out to be much more below the surface. Ivan Panin noted the amazing numerical properties of the Biblical text - both the Greek of the New Testament and the Hebrew of the Old Testament. These are not only intriguing to discover, they also demonstrate an intricacy of design which testifies to a supernatural origin!

If we look at the first 17 verses of the New Testament (The Gospel of Matthew) which deals with a single principal subject: the genealogy of Jesus Christ, It contains 72 Greek vocabulary words in these initial 17 versus(*note; The verse divisions are man's allocation for convenience, added in the thirteenth-century A.D.). We find the following Heptadic (7) structure throughout these original Greek versus. 

1  The number of words which are nouns is exactly 56, or 7 x 8.
2  The Greek word "the" occurs most frequently in the passage: exactly 56 times, or 7 x 8.
3  Also, the number of different forms in which the article "the" occurs is exactly 7. 
4  There are two main sections in the passage: verse 1-11 and 12-17. In the first main section, the number of Greek vocabulary words used is 49, or 7 x 7.
5  Of these 49 words, The number of those beginning with a vowel is 28, or 7 x 4.
6  The number of words beginning with a consonant is 21, or 7 x 3.
7  The total number of letters in these 49 words is exactly 266, or 7 x 38-exactly.
8  The numbers of vowels among these 266 letters is 140, or 7 x 20. 
9  The number of consonants is 126, or 7 x 18-exactly. 
10 Of these 49 words, the number of words which occur more than once is 35, or 7 x 5. 
11 The number of words occurring only once is 14, or 7 x 2.
12 The number of words which occur in only one form is exactly 42, or 7 x 6.
13 The number of words appearing in more than one form is also 7.
14 The number of 49 Greek vocabulary words which are nouns is 42, or 7 x 6.
15 The number of words which are not nouns is 7.
16 Of the nouns, 35 are proper names, or 7 x 5.
17 These 35 nouns are used 63 times, or 7 x 9.
18 The number of male names is 28, or 7 x 4.
19 These male names occur 56 times or 7 x 8.
20 The number of which are not male names is 7. 
21 Three women are mentioned-Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth. The number of Greek letters in these three names is 14, or 7 x 2.
22 The number of compound nouns is 7. 
23 The number of Greek letters in these 7 nouns is 49, or 7 x 7.
24 Only one city is named in this passage, Babylon, which in Greek contains exactly 7 letters. 

And on and on it goes.

Just to understand how unique these properties are try to design a genealogy-even from fiction that meets the following criteria: 
1  The Number of words must be divisible by 7 evenly. (In each of these constraints, it is assumed that the divisions are without remainders.)
2  The number of letters must also be divisible by 7.
3  The number of vowels and the number of consonants must be divisible by 7.
4  The number of words that begin with a vowel must be divisible by 7.
5  The number of words that begin with a consonant must be divisible by 7.
6  The number of words that occur more than once must be divisible by 7. 
7  The number of words that occur in more than one form must be divisible by 7.
8  The number of words that occur in only one form shall be divisible by 7.
9  The number of nouns shall be divisible by 7.
10 Only 7 words shall not be nouns.
11 The number of names in the genealogy shall be divisible by 7. 
12 Only 7 other kinds of nouns are permitted. 
13 The number of male names shall be divisible by 7. 
14 The number of generations shall be 21, also divisible by 7.

There are even more features in the numerical structure of the words themselves. As you may know, both the Hebrew and Greek use the letters of the alphabet for numerical values. Therefore, any specific word in either Hebrew or Greek has a numerical value of its own by adding up the values of the letters in that particular word. The study of the numerical values of words is called gematria.

The 72 vocabulary words add up to a gematrial value of 42,364, or 7 x 6,052.
The 72 words appear in 90 forms-some appear in more than one form. The numeric value of the 90 forms is 54,075, or 7 x 7,725. Exactly.

It becomes immediately obvious that hidden below the surface are aspects of design that cannot be accidental or just coincidence.

Other Implications

There are words in the passage just described that occur nowhere else in the New Testament. They occur 42 times (7 x 6) and have 126 letters (7 x 18). How was this organized?

Even if Matthew contrived this characteristic into his Gospel, how could he have known that these specific words-whose sole characteristic is that they are found nowhere else in the New Testament-were not going to be used by the other writers? Unless we assume the absurd hypothesis that he had an agreement with them, he must have had the rest of the New Testament before him when he wrote his book. The Gospel of Matthew, then, must have been written last.

It so happens the Gospel of Mark exhibits the same phenomenon. It can be demonstrated that it would have had to be written "last." The same phenomenon is found in Luke, John, Peter, Jude, and Paul. Each would have had to write after the other in order to contrive the vocabulary frequencies! You can demonstrate that each of the New Testament books had to have been "written last."

There is no human explanation for this incredible and precise structure. It has all been supernaturally designed. We simply gasp, sit back, and behold the skilful handiwork of the God who keeps his promises.

By the way, the crucifixion of Jesus took place at Golgotha, elevation = 777 meters above sea level. What a coincidence.