Page 325 - Coincidences in the Bible and in Biblical Hebrew

304 COINCIDENCES IN THE BIBLE AND IN BIBLICAL HEBREW

unique (and significant) feature of this example is that two sets of biblical Hebrew
words that are analyzed share a common word. The two sets are represented by
two lines that indeed intersect at the shared word (Figure 23.2). This example
appears as separate Examples 8 and 9 in Table 21.1. Section 23.4 addresses the
main theme of this chapter, namely, the planets and their physical properties.
This analysis is a continuation and extension of earlier analyses (chapter 8). It is
especially important due to the large number of observations (large sample size)
involved in the analyses. Section 23.5 delivers some further numerical examples,
received from a reader of the Jerusalem Post interview. The last section 23.6 relates
to a new finding regarding species names in the Bible.

23.1 Introduction

An ancient Jewish tradition assumes the existence of hidden linkages between
physical traits of “entities” of the real world and respective biblical verses or biblical
Hebrew words. This conviction is expressed not merely by general assertions, like
“Bezaleel knew how to assemble letters with which heaven and Earth had been
created” (Talmud, Berachot, 55a), but also in various detailed examples, often
reflecting efforts to extract real (often useful) information about the physical
world from analysis of the structure and the numerical values of related words, or
verses, that appear in the Hebrew old-testament Bible. For example, the numerical
value of Heraion (pregnancy; Hoshea 9:11) represents the expected duration of
human pregnancy (271 days; Midrash Rabbah, Bereshit, 20). Also therein, Rabbi
Shmuel relates to a verse from the Bible: “Harbeh arbeh itzvonech ve-heronech”
(“I will greatly multiply the pain of thy child bearing”, Gen. 2:16). Since harbeh
(“greatly”) is numerically equivalent to 212, an embryo surviving 212 days, thus
Rabbi Shmuel, will probably survive the whole pregnancy.
Further examples, relating to “counts” data, are given in Table 23.1 (some
repeat examples given earlier in the book).