by minstrel 14 Replies latest watchtower bible
Interesting thought, cruzan...and the same goes for Shakespeare, Milton and many others whose genius just seems too much for one man. But I particularly like the comment of Nathaniel Hawthorne regarding his friend Herman Melville, the author of Moby-Dick :
He can neither believe nor be comfortable in his disbelief and is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the other.
Earnest
imo, the result would have as much validity as reading it the regular way ....
I think a great many of us were watching the History Channel last night, because Chris & I saw a program about numerical patterns in the Bible. I was kind of interested but
yes, sure did. I do remember one point , vaguely though,the word God and nature have the same numerical value. (or was it Lord and nature?) whatever, it was interesting.
The best book on the subject of Gemetria in antiquity and Christianty is, Jesus Christ Sun of God" by David Fideler. He points out in painful detail how the story of hauling in the 153 fish in John 21 is a classic piece of gemetria. This late addition to John (it formerly ended with chapter 20) demonstrates that 2nd century Christians were familiar with the "art" and felt it divine. His book is the first to recognise the Mark 6:30 feeding of the 5000 as another example of Gemetria. This story appears to be an earlier piece, tho some today feel the book of Mark was composed 100-130 from an UrMark (protoMark)and elements from Luke and Matt. So this MAY suggest that the earliest Christian writers were Gemetria students. This is however not certain as I said the book of Mark appears itself to be influenced by the other Synoptics. Anyone interested in this stuff MUST read this book. No hocus pocus no wild speculation, just the facts.
Of course there are patterns in things. I just have a problem when people assign random meaning to things...
One of my college professors did the same thing with Miltons Paradise lost, but as he said it just became overwheleming and realized how stupid it was. Still he made some interesting insights into that text, but what are they worth?
