Thanks for the thoughtful reply:
Wayne wrote:
> >>
>
> This is partly why I rarely take the claims of numbers
> seriously. What Vernon points out is observant. I can
> appreciate that he has spent a good deal of time reading
> the Bible which I consider a worthy enterprise. However, I
> would surely not use his obervations for apologetics.
>
I personally am inclined to agree here. While it seems evident to me that
on examining the data, the numerical pattern is consistently there, until we
have a better idea of how they got to be there, I agree they should not be
used for apologetics. Whatever peoples' position is on Young Earth/Old
Earth, there is no doubt (I understand) that all of us on the list agree
that the first verse in the bible is one of the most important, setting the
agenda right away of God as Creator of the Universe.
> Consider the Psalms (our human expression to God), should we be
> surprised that humans would think deeply about how to express
> their feelings to God?
>
> I think it is cynical to see the incorporation of numbers in a
> text as irrational human grasping for anything eternal. That is
> a typical rationalist' view of the religion.
I, too, obviously don't hold to this interpretation either. The person who
made the observation was indeed a typical rationalist.
Rather, I see it
> from the poetic view that it express a deep love and admiration
> for the creator.
Of course, again I agree, but the kind of numerical constraint implied by
the relationships in Genesis 1:1 (and elsewhere) are far more severe than
the formal constraints imposed in writing a poem. There are a number of
examples of acrostic poems in the Old Testament; the best known being Psalm
119, where the 22 sections of the poem are divided each into 8 verses, and
each verse in the section begins with the same letter of the Hebrew
alphabet. I also understand (source NIV Study Bible), that the five
chapters of Lamentations are also all arranged as acrostic poems.
Now in writing poetry, it is often the case that constraints are applied
(such as metre and rhyme), and often, even in the best poetry, those
constraints lead to unnatural ordering of words, in order to make it scan or
rhyme. It is known as "poetic diction". Here's a simple example from
Yeats's poem "The Lake Isle of Innisfree":
"While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray" ...
It is non-standard grammar to place the adjective "Gray" after the verb, but
Yeats has done this because it rhymes with "day" two lines earlier.
(Incidentally, having been to poetry workshops, I would add that this sort
of thing is very much frowned on these days. "Poetic diction" is right out
of fashion).
But rhyme and metre are comparatively mild constraints compared to what has
been achieved in the first sentence of the bible (which I understand is not
poetry in any case; it bears no resemblance to Hebrew poetry). Here, the
numerical value not only of the total, but of just about every word seems to
have been carefully chosen, to reinforce the mathematical patterns. I won't
go into all the details here; they are explained in ample detail on Vernon's
web-site.
But what I would say is that I have come across examples where human beings
have deliberately tried to do this sort of thing. Many examples are given
in Ruth Tatlow's book "Bach and the riddle of the number alphabet". The
practice of doing this sort of poem was widespread in around the 17th and
18th centuries. They were known as "poetic paragrams" .There were umpteen
different coding schemes, and the general idea was to make each line of the
poem come to the same total, using the chosen coding schemes, which might
have been the ordinal position of the letter, or a derivation from it;
triangular numbers being particular popular (known as the "Trigonal"
alphabet). One example is given of a poem (written in German) called simply
"2300". It is derived from the use of the number 2300 in the Book of
Daniel. The author starts with some bland statement such as "This is the
number of Daniel/ This is the number of numbers/ This is Daniel's number"
etc, making variations on the theme. There are three prominent features of
all such poems:
(1) Frequently the numbers don't even add up properly because the poet
miscalculated. (No spreadsheets in those days ;-)
(2) Frequently the words are misspelt, or the grammar stretched to make the
numbers add up.
(3) All the examples I saw in the Tatlow book, as literature, are
worthless. The only interest in them is the ingenuity of the author in
being able to make something grammatical out of such a preposterous
constraint.
For another amazing example of constrained writing, you can try out
http://users.aol.com/s6sj7gt/cadenza.htm
where the world's longest "pi-mnemonic" poem has been constructed; the
number of letters in each word is the corresponding digit in the decimal
expansion of pi. He has stretched it to around 3800 digits; a remarkable
feat, but again, if you read the text, you realise it would not really pass
as great literature; the intrinsic interest is in the self-imposed
constraint; and I really take my hat off to the author for being able to do
this.
Now, contrast that with the first verse in the Bible. As far as I'm aware,
there are no grammatical or spelling peculiarities in it; it is a perfectly
natural Hebrew sentence. It is also an exceptionally profound and relevant
statement, as I'm sure we all agree. The meaning and relevance stands out
independently of the numbers. I therefore do not believe that this was a
self-imposed constraint by the author (presumably Moses). So it's either
coincidence, or it's a miracle from God. I'm inclined to the latter.
I would only add that obviously as scientists, we are all enthralled by the
mathematical elegance of the universe that God created. As Christians, we
also believe the Bible is divinely inspired. So perhaps it is not
surprising that the sentence that describes the very act of creation also
shows elegant symmetries and mathematical patterns?
Iain.
>
> by Grace alone do we proceed,
And thank you for your gracious response. It is nice to be part of a list
where people don't spend all the time bickering and trying to score points
off each other.
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