Numerology

I continue to be very impressed with Victor Wilson's Divine Symmetries. Here are a few excerpts from his brief discussion of numerology:

1. Abraham is 140 when Isaac and Rebekah marry. Isaac and Rebekah's marriage lasts precisely that long, and this number is the sum of 1 squared through 7 squared.

2. The ages of the patriarchs all have numerological value, and these values form a sequence.

Abraham is 175, the product of 7 X 5 squared. When you add the factors (7 + 5 + 5), the sum is 17.

Isaac lives to be 180, the product of 5 X 6 squared (note that the first number has been reduced by two, and the second increased by one). When you add the factors (5 + 6 + 6), the sum is 17.

Jacob lives 147 years, the product of 3 X 7 squared (note again that the first number comes down by two from Isaac - from 5 to 3 - and the second number increases by one). When you add the factors (3 + 7 + 7), the sum is 17.

Joseph doesn't quite fit into that sequence, but his age of 110 is still numerologically significant, the sum of the squares of 5, 6, and 7.

3. There are 276 persons saved after the shipwreck in Acts 27:37. That number is the sum of all numbers between 1 and 24, but not including those numbers. Old and New Israel? Some allusion to the 24 courses of priests under the Davidic system?

On p 73, Wilson has this to say about the Scriptures' layering of structures and literary allusions: "It seems especially remarkable to us that a writer could have as many as three or four mutually compatible patterns, even conventions, overlaid in a single text, each with its own subtle lines of definition. BUt this is a quite common characteristic of Scripture, and indeed one familiar in our own times in the layered plot developments of the modern novel. In John 4 we shall look at a remarkable passage of the densest construction which yet possesses a captivating literary airiness. It houses a creation schema, a historical allusion to the Jacob story, a betrothal convention, an episodic parallel, an allusive dialogue, and perhaps other literary figures �Ealmost all coexisting on the same narrative ground �Eeven as the passage merges into the larger structure of the surrounding narrative. Yet in the limited space of forty-two verses no one pattern dominates to the detriment of the others."

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, August 13, 2004 at 07:32 AM

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