Dear Edmund, There is a well established system of numerical values assigned to Hebrew letters. It's referred to as Gematria, so aleph=1, bet=2, etc. There are expansions of it relating to higher numbers. THere is no question about its existence. There are questions, however, about its origin and date of origin, the majority of scholars agreeing to its origins in the Hellenistic period. There are, however, some indications that it may have existed earlier, although its nature and extant would be highly controversial. THere are parallels to gematria in Akkadian, but there too the extant of its use is far from clear. You can find brief descriptions of gematria in standard reference works on Judaism.
The term "Bible Code" as applied to some recently "discovered" and sensationalized form of bibliomancy is quite another matter, and I refer you to the web site of Prof. Jeffrey Tigay of University of Pennsylvania for a serious discussion and debunking of this fad. See http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jtigay/codetext.html Victor On Tue, 25 Jun 2002, Edmund Esterbauer wrote: > > > Is there an objective number system in Hebrew letters i.e. a biblical code? > > For private reply, e-mail to avigdor horovitz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from Orion, e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: "unsubscribe Orion." Archives are on the Orion Web site, http://orion.mscc.huji.ac.il. (PLEASE REMOVE THIS TRAILOR BEFORE REPLYING TO THE MESSAGE)
