RE: numerology

Pim van Meurs (entheta@eskimo.com)
Mon, 3 Aug 1998 03:27:02 -0700

I have been looking into the numerology and Genesis issue a bit more carefully. What I am trying to establish is when was the copy Vernon uses written and what makes this version of Genesis the correct one ?

I quote from http://www.religioustolerance.org/biblcode.htm and although it talks about ELS, some of the comments appear to be important:

"Other skeptics might concentrate on the precise version of the book of Genesis or of the Hebrew Pentateuch that is being used in the ELS studies. There appear to be "at least 10,000 versions" that have existed (6). If there was once a "true" original copy of the Pentateuch dictated letter-by-letter by God to Moses, then it is very probable that none of the versions available today are perfect replicas of that original." >>

[Comments: Here we notice that the copies we have of Genesis are likely not to be the 'original' text and for obvious reason 'errors' could have entered the texts]

"There are a number of reasons for this:
Copying Errors: The Dead Sea Scrolls contain segments of all 5 books of the Pentateuch. Comparing the scrolls with versions dated many centuries later shows that a few errors had crept in over the few hundred year period. By extrapolation, the total number of errors from the "original" text to modern versions would be much greater

Spelling Formats: Hebrew spelling practices are not totally rigid. Although most ancient Hebrew is spelled with consonants only, vowels are occasionally used. Some manuscripts might have a vowel inserted in a word in one sentence, and show the same word without the vowel in the next sentence.

Ronald S. Hendel states: (13) "Every known ancient Hebrew manuscript of the Bible...has a different number of letters." These differences do not change the meaning of the books significantly; but such errors are devastating to an ELS analysis. If one were to assume that:
There were only 100 copying and format differences between the original text and the modern version of the Pentateuch which resulted in the dropping of a letter, adding of a letter, changing a word to another word of another length, dropping a word, adding a word, etc.
These differences were more or less evenly distributed throughout the Pentateuch."

[.....[

[Comment: Or the following]

" Other skeptics might concentrate on the origins of the Book of Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch. Many accept the JEDP theory: that most of the Pentateuch was written by four authors or groups of authors: "J" (who used Jehovah as the name for God). "E" (who used Elohim); "D", the author of the book of Deuteronomy and "P" who wrote the "priestly" sections which deal with ritual, liturgy and the dates and genealogical passages. To this was added additional material obtained from other Mid-Eastern sources. The two creation stories in the Book of Genesis is one example. The interleaving of two flood stories into the Noahic flood account is another. The 5 books were assembled circa 950 BCE by "J", 750 BCE for "E" and 539 BCE for the P source. However, these were the dates that final "editing" occurred; the authors sometimes used much older material, from both Hebrew and Pagan sources. A large number of individuals each contributed their part to various portions of the Pentateuch
. It seems unlikely that some sort of overall coordination occurred during this process to insert ELS codes."