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BIBLICAL SYMBOLIC NUMBERS Part I
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7 The most important Biblical number is undoubtedly the seven. It was God himself that choose to express the initial perfection of his six-day creation through a seventh day. This seventh day on which God rested from his work has become a symbol for his existence and his entire creation. Unfortunately, the initial perfection of God’s creation only lasted until the original sin of Adam’s wife Eve. As such, the important symbolism of the number seven remained a bit attached to the sixth day on which he created mankind. Perhaps it would have been better if God had rested on the sixth day and finish his work creating mankind on the seventh day. 8 The number seven with his legacy towards the six day creation of earth, is also connected to the so called covenant that God made with the Israelites in which he promised them a return to the original perfection of his creation. This covenant is sealed by the typical Jewish ritual of the circumcision of all newborn boys. This important ritual takes place on the eights day after birth, expressing through this number eight that one day the old existence (seven) will come to an end and a new period will start. The first new day of this new world order will of course be the “eights” day of existence, and this is the reason why this number became symbolic for the coming Messiah. It is obvious that Christianity continued on this tradition choosing the same “eights” day of the week” as celebration of the fulfillment of Gods promise to mankind through the death and resurrection of Christ his son. The symbolic importance of this eights-, or first day of the new week/period, is expressed through the choice of the Sunday (the first day of the week) as the new resting day, instead of the old Saturday, the seventh day or Sabbath of the Hebrew religion. The choice to stop respecting the Sabbath can impossibly be explained as a simple protest to a typical Jewish peculiarity. It is a very deliberate choice for the day that expresses the essence of the entire Christian doctrine; the renewed covenant that God made through the death and resurrection of his son Jesus. As such, the importance of this eights day should be explained as the celebration of an entirely new period of seven days. 888 Another important value of the number eight as symbolic expression of the Messianic tradition can be found in the Greek name Jesus (Ιησους). Both the Jewish as the Greek alphabet didn’t know special digits to express numbers. The same characters that were used to write words, were also used to write the numbers. As such each word had an obvious numeric value. The numeric value of the name Ιησους is 888.
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iota = 10 This triple eight must have been a popular symbol in early (Greek speaking) Christianity. Besides the eight, it also emphasizes on the important number three (like in the resurrection on the third day, ecc.) During the difficult years of persecution of early Christianity, symbols that were only known by insiders were widely used. A well known example is the fish (Ichtus), a symbol that was used as anagram for the words Jesus Christ. During this period, adding up the numeric value of letters from both the Hebrew as the Greek alphabet was a normal thing to do. Without the existence of specific digits to write down numbers it must have been completely natural for Jews and other inhabitants of Hellenistic cultures to read a word as a series of numbers or a number as a series of letters. The writer of the revelations of John mentions in 13:18 “This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man's number. His number is 666”. The writer clearly indicates that this number needs to be calculated. This number has been interpreted often according to the above mentioned numeric/alphabetic way. Considering the obvious link between the 888 symbolism of the name Jesus and the 666 symbolism of the original sin of mankind (created on the sixth day), it is highly likely that the writer of the Revelations made deliberate use of this symbolism, especially because the whole book is filled with mystical number speculations. He could have used references to the 888 value of the name Jesus through the number 24 (3x8) or even 512 (8x8x8). |
In early medieval Christian art, the above mentioned “number eight symbolism” is often used. Especially baptismal fonts and baptisteries are usually octagonal. Also the eight pointed stars and the eight leaves of Romanesque and Gothic rose windows are reference to this symbolism. An even better known early Christian symbol based on the number eight is the so called Malta cross and its many varieties. An early Christian ring from the forth century shows three of these Maltese crosses and a fish (ichtus anagram). The three eight-pointed crosses on the ring are a clear reference to the triple-eight value of the name Jesus. In chapter three of this article, another antique symbolic value of these types of so called “Greek crosses” will be explained.
An interesting other possible reference to the particular value that was attributed to the name Jesus can be found in the so called “Magdalen Papyrus”, a big word for three fragments of papyrus in possession of Oxford University, containing fragments of the 26th chapter of the gospel of Mathew in Greek language. Apart from the fact that these fragments are exceptionally old, they also contain information that proves that early Christians considered the name Jesus to be a holey name or “nomen sacrum” because instead of the name Jesus, they used the abbreviation Ks, which stands for Kyrios, the Greek word for Lord. A comparable custom can be found in the Jewish tradition where the name God (IHVH) can not be directly mentioned because it is considered a holey name. The number eight does return in the Jewish tradition in other circumstances, for instance through the Chanukah celebration. The Talmud (the core of the Jewish verbal teachings) mentions how the Jewish heroes under guidance of Jehudah the Maccabean prepared themselves to re-consecrate the Temple but couldn’t find enough purified oil to light all the lamps. In one of the rooms of the Temple they did however find a very tiny jar that under normal circumstances would have been sufficient for no more than one day, but miraculously managed to last for eight days, until new oil could be found that was suitable for use in the Temple. Several interpretations of specific Christian number symbolism will be given in this article, but for the moment we will return to some commonly known symbolic numbers mentioned in the Old Testament. The Old Testament often mentions the number seven. A well known example is the seven armed chandelier (Menora). Another example is the siege of Jericho, where seven priests with seven rams horns encircled the town for seven days. On the seventh day the priests encircled the town seven times (total encirclements = 6+7=13) after which the walls collapsed (Joshua 6:6-20). Furthermore the Jewish tradition knew a special jubilee year that took place during the first year after a period of seven times seven years. Besides the many direct references to the number seven, the Old Testament or Jewish Torah, also has a specific Gematrical tradition in which the number seven plays an important role. A popular example has to do with the very first verse of the Bible "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Genesis 1:1). This verse has seven Hebrew words with a total of 28 letters (4x7). The numeric value of the three nouns "God", "heaven" and "earth" totals 777. Another symbolic use of the threefold seven is found in the 21 writers of the Old Testament that are mentioned in the Bible. In the New Testament it is most specifically the book of Revelations in which the number seven plays an important role. The book mentions seven communities, seven spirits, seven stars, seven torches, seven angels with seven plates with in them seven plagues etc etc. The origin of the symbolic importance of the number seven can be traced back to the calendar division of the month in four weeks, based on the phases of the moon. Besides this there also exists an astrological explanation. In classical times people already knew the five planets, which, together with the moon and earth, formed the seven moving celestial bodies. A similar origin can also be attributed to the numbers twelve and four. An entire year can roughly be divided in twelve/thirteen moon periods and four seasons. As such it is reasonable to assume that many old symbolic Biblical numbers must have had a calandarian origin. |
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