Gematria and Theomatics

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Gematria (גימטריה) is numerology of the Hebrew language and Hebrew alphabet. Several forms can be identified: the "revealed" form and the "mystical form". The word itself comes from the Greek word 'geometry' and the concept or system is the same as the Greek isopsephy.

Contents 1 Revealed Gematria 2 Mystical Gematria 3 Code 4 See also 5 External link

Revealed Gematria

The most common form of gematria is used occasionally in the Talmud and Midrash and elaborately by many post-Talmudic commentators. It involves converting words and sentences into numbers, usually by assigning numbers to each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. When converted to a number, they can be compared to other words and similarities drawn. A commentary almost completely dedicated to gematria is Baal ha-Turim by Rabbi Jacob ben Asher.

Gematria is often used by the Maharal of Prague and hasidic Torah commentators (such as the "Sefath Emmeth" from Gur).

Mystical Gematria

Gematria is a system of recognizing a correspondence between the ten sefirot, or fires of God, and the twenty two letters in the Hebrew alphabet. This system is elaborated in many mystical Jewish writings such as the Zohar.

One example of gematria is that there are twenty-two solid figures that are composed of regular polygons. There are five Platonic solids, four Kepler-Poinsot solids, and thirteen Archimedean solids. Since there are twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet (aleph-beth), a correspondence is possible between these two facts. The art of gematria is knowing which solid is associated with which letter.

Another example is that of Hebrew numerals. Although there are twenty-two letters, there are twenty-seven numerals necessary to express each number up to 999 (one through nine, ten through ninety, one hundred through nine hundred). The mystical Hebrew numeric system notes that the missing final five letters of the numeral system match exactly with the five 'sofeet' forms of the Hebrew letters, which are alternate forms of particular letters only used when that letter is the last letter in a Hebrew word. These extra letter-forms are not used in non-mystical numeration.

Another use is that words which have the same numerical value, share the same qualities, and reveal still other aspects of the Divine.

Code

The basic translation code is as follows:

Decimal	Hebrew	Glyph
1	Aleph	א
2	Bet	ב
3	Gimmel	ג
4	Daled	ד
5	He	ה
6	Vav	ו
7	Zayin	ז
8	Het	ח
9	Tet	ט
10	Yod	י
20	Kaf	כ, ך
30	Lamed	ל
40	Mem	מ, ם
50	Nun	נ, ן
60	Samekh	ס
70	Ayin	ע
80	Pe	פ, ף
90	Tsadik	צ, ץ
100	Kof	ק
200	Resh	ר
300	Shin	ש
400	Tav	ת

Some Kabbalistic uses of gematria recognize differing values for the final forms and assign multiples of 1000 for letters that are drawn larger than those adjacent to them.

Decimal	Hebrew	Glyph
500	Kaf	ך
600	Mem	ם
700	Nun	ן
800	Pe	ף
900	Tsadik	ץ

See also

• Jewish mysticism
• Kabbalah
• Mysticism
• Metaphysics
• Hebrew language
• Hebrew numerals
• Hebrew alphabet
• Numerology
• The Bible Code is another method for extracting hidden meaning from the Hebrew Bible.
• theomatics

External link

• Hebrew Gematria Calculator
• WebGim - An interactive Gematria calculator, which includes results from Torah verses. (Hebrew)
• Introduction to Hebrew Gematria Methods.
• Hebrew Bible Gematria Calculator

This article is based on the article "Gematria" from Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia created and edited by online user community. This article is distributed under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License. Here you find the list of authors of this article. The article can only edited within Wikipedia. Edit this article in Wikipedia.

Theomatics is a numerological study of the Greek and Hebrew text of the Christian Bible, based upon gematria and isopsephy, that its proponents assert demonstrates the direct intervention of God in the writing of Christian scripture.

It was invented by Del Washburn in 1975, who coined the name "theomatics" as a combination of "Θεός" ("God") and "mathematics", and wrote several books and web sites espousing the hypothesis.

An extensive analysis and criticism of theomatics from a Christian perspective has been published anonymously by "A Believer"¹. The anonymous critic asserts that Washburn's statistical metholodogy is flawed, and demonstrates that when it is applied the claims made by Washburn cannot be independently verified. In exhorting Christians not to espouse theomatics, the critic states that its analyses "would, in our opinion, bring much needless discredit upon our Lord Jesus Christ if they were seriously explored by unbelievers. We know that we in Christ are of the truth, and that no lie is of the truth. No lie or misrepresentation has any place at all in our defense or promotion of the truth."

Russell Glasser has also published a criticism of theomatics² from an atheist perspective, taking Washburn to task over two of his statements on the scientific proof of theomatics³.

• Glasser first takes Washburn to task over his statement that "The phenomenon only works in the Bible and nowhere else. No other work of literature ever written, never has, and probably never will, be able to consistently demonstrate anything like theomatics.", by performing an analysis of the text of a Dave Rhodes chain letter and demonstrating that the phenomenon occurs in that text as well. Further demonstration of Glasser's assertion is, ironically, provided by Mormons who have also demonstrated the phenomenon in The Book of Mormon.⁴
• Glasser then takes Washburn to task over his statement that "It is absolutely, completely, and totally impossible to mathematically disprove theomatics.", asserting that that is tantamount to a declaration that theomatics is not falsifiable, and is therefore not a science and has no predictive power.

References

1. A Believer. Theomatics. Apologetics. URL accessed on October 10, 2005.
2. Russell Glasser. Theomatics Debunked. URL accessed on October 10, 2005.
3. Del Washburn. Scientific Proof of the Discovery. Theomatics. URL accessed on October 10, 2005.
4. 531 and the Book of Mormon. Greater Things. URL accessed on October 10, 2005. — in particular the discussion of 515 and theomatics

Further reading

• Del Washburn and Jerry Lucas (1986). Theomatics: God's Best Kept Secret Revealed, Stein & Day Pub. ISBN 0812860179.
• Del Washburn (1994). Theomatics II : God's Best-Kept Secret Revealed, Scarborough House. ISBN 0812840232.
• Del Washburn (1994). The Original CODE in the BIBLE, Madison Books. ISBN 1-56833-115-0.
• Oliver Rahman (2004). Theomatic, PublishAmerica. ISBN 1413727123.
• What is Theomatics? at Del Washburn's web site

See also

• Bible code

This article is based on the article "Theomatics" from Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia created and edited by online user community. This article is distributed under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License. Here you find the list of authors of this article. The article can only edited within Wikipedia. Edit this article in Wikipedia.