-Caveat Lector-
Copyright (c) 1997 Biblio TECH Communications
Chapter 6
INTRODUCTION TO
THE SECRETS OF THE CANON CODE
IN THE GREEK NEW TESTAMENT
"the NUMBER of his NAME"
In Revelations, the actual identity of the symbolic Great
Beast --while apparently known to its author-- was withheld from
us. Afraid to speak openly, John could only give a clue, through
which his readers --1st Century Christians-- could discover it
for themselves:
"Let him that hath understanding count the number of the
Beast, for it is the number of a man -- and his number is 666."
Reading that "mysterious" verse today, we are perplexed indeed.
We have been left with a riddle which we cannot solve, although
its solution is implied. Obviously, modern "Christians" have
lost the particular kind of "understanding" John refers to,
because today we are no longer able to do as the verse suggests.
How does one go about counting the "number" of a man's name?
In the original Greek, the word translated into English as
"count" is psephisato, from the root psephizo, meaning "to
calculate a total."
What it describes, however, is a specific method of
calculation, still surviving in the abacus. In it, pebbles were
used as place-holders, with the position of each pebble (called a
psephos) determining its value as a particular number, in roughly
"decimal" fashion.
Thus, simply by drawing a grid on the ground, three columns
high by nine rows across --3 x 9, a total of 27 squares-- and
placing pebbles in certain squares, any number under 1000 could
be represented. Three pebbles might be read as 976, for example,
if one were in the 9th row of the first (hundreds) column,
another were in the 7th row of the second (tens) column, and the
last in the 6th row of the third (units) column. When adding
--just as we do today, in columns-- any number of pebbles would
be reduced to only three, giving the total.
On the page to the left, you will note that there are 27
letters in both the Hebrew and Greek alphabets* and that the
numbers given alongside those letters are, like the grid just
described, divided into three groups of nine each -- 1 to 9, 10
to 90, and 100 to 900. A coincidence? Far from it. Such an
arrangement originated in attempts to bring the alphabet into
harmony with the decimal system by pairing every letter of the
alphabet with a corresponding number -- in effect, making each
letter interchangeable with a number.
As a result, not only individual words but even entire
phrases could be converted into an equivalent numerical value --
a total arrived at simply by adding the numbers of all the
letters of which they were composed. Once these words and phrases
were converted into numbers, arithmetic operations could be
performed on them --reducing them to their least common
denominator, for example-- in order to discover relationships
between them on the basis of purely mathematical principles.
According to these principles, when two words had the same number
value --even if otherwise unconnected in their literal meaning--
they were seen as "synonyms" -- words sharing the same "secret"
mathematical meaning.
Among the Greeks, this system for determining the "secret
identity" of words based on their numerical value was known as
isopsephos, a product of psephizo -- the specific method of
calculation earlier described, which the KJV has translated
simply as "counting."
Hence, when John in Revelations invited his readers to
"count," he was actually asking them to apply this
"numerological" system, with which Greek-speaking Christians were
familiar.
Using it, they might discover, for instance, that the name
of Emperor Nero --in Greek, Neron Kaesar-- added up to 1332, or
(reduced) twice 666 ...
************TEXTBOX********************************************
*Prior to that arrangement, the Hebrew alphabet had only 22
letters and the Greek only 24.
In order to bring the total to the more "mathematical" 27,
new letters were added to both languages sometime between 800 and
450 BC. But exactly how that happened --in two different
cultures, yet at approximately the same time-- remains unclear,
due to a lack of histor-ical records from that period.
However, since both Hebrew and Greek alphabets were adopted
from the original Phoenician alphabet, and since both Hebrews and
Greeks were in direct contact with the Phoenicians between 800
and 450 BC --when they were masters of international commerce--
the answer may be simpler than expected.
We owe the change to the Phoenicians, the inventors and
refiners of the alphabet itself. When they devised a convenient
"short-hand" for numbers, it simply became popular with scribes
in other countries doing business with them.
In Phoenician as a written language, the same symbol could
be read either as a letter of the alphabet or as a number,
depending on the context. In an ambiguous or changing context,
however, a sum might be mistaken for a word or vice versa. Yet,
taking advantage of that fact, the Phoenicians learned that they
could hide messages within messages. They had invented not only
the first alphabet but the first CODE.
*****************************************************************
The GREEK Canon Code
The origins of isopsephos, as the Greek "numerological"
system is known, are obscure, dating back thousands of years.
Although Hesiod, the father of epic poetry, is credited
with being one of the first authors to write in classical Greek,
examples of isopsephos are already present in his works, written
ca. 750 BC. Some claim to have found similar examples in Homer's
Iliad and Odyssey, composed two generations later.
In the 6th Century BC, it was part of the "secret teachings"
of Pythagoras, the first Western philosopher to find spiritual
meaning in the newly-developing science of mathematics. In the
5th Century BC, Plato --sometimes referred to as the first modern
philosopher-- subtly employed isopsephos all throughout his works.
In the 4th Cenury BC, it was studied by scholars in the
Library of Alexandria, the Western world's first true institution
of higher learning.
Since it was in Alexandria, only a few decades later, that
the Old Testament was first translated into Greek, it is more
than likely that the bilingual Jews responsible for that
translation --who would have been aware of the equivalent "code"
in Hebrew-- found isopsephos useful toward the same ends when
writing in Greek. As learned only recently, examples of it
appear in the Septuagint itself.
In the 1st Century of the Christian era, those who edited
the original texts of the New Testament --written in Greek-- were
undoubtedly skilled in using isopsephos, because those texts now
contain so many instances of its use that some wish to believe
that the entire canon was systematically written in "code." The
odds against these instances being accidental are astronomical,
in the opinion of one statistician who subjected this phenomenon
to analysis.
While a few may interpret that fact as "proof" that the
entire New Testament was truly "the word of God" --"divinely
inspired," at least-- it would be wiser to recognize it as a
product of deliberate editing by unknown parties, since that was
the means by which other writers achieved the same result in
their own works, using the very same "code." (Were Plato's
Dialogues also written by the hand of God?)
In order to make a particular word or phrase yield the
intended numerical value, an editor familiar with the "code"
needed only to make certain minor changes in the original text --
for example, replacing one word with another of similar meaning,
or inserting or deleting a particle, or rearranging the syntax.
Sometimes a word could be given a more meaningful numerical
value simply by "misspelling" it, usually by substituting a different
vowel -- an "error" easily overlooked at the time because, most
readers being only semi-literate, wide variations in spelling were
commonplace -- just as in our own culture, prior to the standards
set by Webster's dictionary.
Unfortunately, almost all these "errors" found in the
earliest manuscripts have since been "corrected" by modern
Biblical scholars who, having no familiarity with ancient
"codes," regarded them merely as mistakes.
It is due to the same ignorance that, despite John's warning
against adding or subtracting anything in Revelations 22:18-19,
most modern versions of the book's Greek text spell out the
number of the Beast, as exakosioi exhkonta ex, instead of
printing what John actually wrote in the original manuscript, the
three letters chi, xi, omega -- letters of the alphabet representing
600, 60 and 6. However, while the former may mean "six hundred
sixty-six," it is only by using the latter that we can obtain John's
intended meaning numerically, according to the "code."
While most remain ignorant of the code today, that was NOT
the case in the 1st Century AD, when the the New Testament was
first given written form --in Greek, of course-- nor even later, in the
2nd and 3rd Centuries. It was not really "forgotten" until the
4th Century when --thanks again to the Church of Rome-- Latin
superseded Greek as the official language of Christendom.
The earliest Greek Church Fathers were so aware of
isopsephos in the Gospels that they themselves consciously
employed it in their own commentaries. Ironically, we know that
only because Clement [see footnote on p. 15], Origen, Tertullian,
and Irenaeus all wrote criticizing the use of the SAME code by
pagans, outside of Christianity -- as if embarrassed to admit
that the code had been invented by "pagans" and only much
later adopted by Christians.
<TEXT CONTINUES [but snipped]>
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Here's a suggested Bibliography:
"The Apostolic Gnosis,"
T. Simcox Lea and F. Bligh Bond, 1979, Thorsons, UK
"City of Revelation,"
John Michell, 1972, [US paperback]
"Gematria,"
F. Bligh Bond and T. Simox Lea, 1977, Thorsons, UK
"The Canon,"
William Stirling, 1897, reprint 1981, Thorsons, UK
"Jesus Christ, Sun of God:
Ancient Cosmology and Early Christian Symbolism,"
David Fideler, 1993, Quest Books
"The Pythagorean Plato,"
Ernest G. McClain, 1978, Nicholas Hays Ltd, NY
"Number-Words and Number Symbols,"
Karl Menninger, 1970, MIT Press, NY
"The Key of It All: An Encyclopedic Guide to the
Sacred Languages and Magickal Systems of the World,"
Vol. II: The Western Mysteries
David Allen Hulse, 1994, Llewellyn Publications
Best personal reference book to keep on hand:
"Theomatics: God's Best-Kept Secret Revealed,"
Jerry Lucas and Del Washburn, 1977, Stein & Day, NY
Of course, to study the use of isospsephos IN GREEK in the New
Testament, one needs an INTERLINEAR GREEK-ENGLISH NT
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