From: Dawsonzhu@aol.com
Date: Sun Mar 02 2003 - 04:58:45 EST
Iain Strachan wrote
>(2) Concerning the "fruits". Interestingly, we had a sermon in church where
>we heard an example of an Orthodox Jew who was converted to Christianity
>just upon reading Matthew Chapter 1. This had much to do with the layout
>(the three "14's" of generations), and the fact that 14 is the numerical
>value of "David". He was convicted on the basis of seeing this that his
>whole nation's history was fulfilled in Jesus Christ & became a Christian as
>a result. While I do not advocate basing ones faith on this phenomenon,
>here at least seems to be one example of someone who got saved as a result
>of it.
Matthew was written to a Jewish
readership just as Luke was written to the gentiles.
Maybe it has an affect on people who know that
genre.
Actually, by "fruits" I was looking at the the
overall product of the religion, not just the
numbers or the activity itself specifically. Those
would be my own value judgment on the religion itself
and usually have more to do with whether it changes
the world for the better or not (i.e., not so related
to scientific issues).
[snip discussion on variation of text. discussed
by others on different posts]
>> It does seem that Pathagoras is documented as being a
>> number fiddler, but math has that character of being
>> eternal, immutable, true beyond comprehension, simple,
>> yet deeply profound. Who wouldn't find something
>> satisfying in putting a little grasp of that eternity
>> into a piece of writing devoted to God in a world
>> without much certainty. Whereas there is no clear
>> documentation, I wouldn't think it is really invented
>> by Pathagoras, only that he did it more consistently.
>>
>
>I'm not sure you quite got my point here. In fact it's not certain that
>Pythagoras invented the numbering system; and also the system was not
>invented in order to do gematria on words. It was invented as a method of
>representing numbers, in order to do proper maths. There is a certain
>similarity to Roman numerals here, though the Greek (and later Hebrew)
>system is more logical. In general, it would be a base-ten representation,
>so 369 might be 300+60+9. Only one exception to this way of doing it is
>found in the Hebrew. The numbers 15 and 16 would normally be 10+5, and 10+6
>but this gives the letters YH and YW, the sacred names of God, so 9+6 and
>9+7 are used instead. A Hebrew bible I once saw had every fifth verse
>number written in the Hebrew numerals, and adopted the above convention for
>15.
My point is that when we have documented evidence of
something in history, we can also be fairly sure that
it was happen long before that time. It is just that
it became sufficiently common, so that some evidence
survives.
Look at it this way. It is something that we even
take interest in today when we have computers and
all the numbers we could ask for. I think numbers
(at least for some human beings), have been something
of fascination probably ever since we first became
truly human.
There are at least the Babylonians who
came up with 360 degrees (probably originating from
365 days), and at least by the time of Kings, it was
well known that Pi was about 3, since there is the
passage from 1 Kings 7:23 where the bronze tank is
given a measurement. Even if the Gn:1.1 is statistically
significant, I don't see how we can show that it
could not have been the work of human intelligence.
The best you could show is that it was purposefully
put there by an intelligent agent. And even as a
believer, I don't know that I can be sure that
the intelligent agent was not "man". Indeed, the
more accurate it is, the more I would be persuaded
that it was "man" and not God. Man seems to need
to have his "Intel inside" written all over the
place, but whereas intelligence seems to impress
us humans, no one is promised a free ticket to
heaven for their intelligence quotent.
by Grace alone we proceed,
Wayne
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