![]() ![]() Faith-based comments, discussion of modern religion, and apologetics are prohibited. ![]() This subreddit is not for contemporary theological application. Repeating 7s is also one of the angel numbers that promotes being more spiritual.This is a forum for discussion of academic biblical studies including historical criticism, textual criticism, and the history of ancient Judaism, early Christianity and the ancient Near East. Here, the idea is that Jesus uses these large multiples of 7 to show that forgiveness should be as "complete" and "perfect" as the number itself and that there was no limit on how many times someone should be forgiven. Peter asks, "As many as seven times?" And Jesus responds, "Not seven times, but seventy-seven times" or "seventy times seven" in some translations. The apocalyptic book of Revelation is loaded with sevens, including: seven churches, seven seals, seven angels, seven trumpets, seven golden bowls, seven stars, seven hills, etc.Īs a sign of the spiritual significance of 7, many people cite the poignant exchange in Matthew 18:22, when Peter asks Jesus how many times he should forgive his brother.Naaman, suffering from leprosy, was told to dip in the Jordan River seven times.God commanded the Israelites to eat unleavened bread for seven days in memory of the exodus from Egypt.In Joseph's time, Egypt suffered seven years of plenty and seven years of famine. ![]() ![]() Jacob labored seven years to win the hand of Rachel.God rested from Creation on the seventh day.So let's see what we can figure out about the symbolism and significance of the most famous biblical numbers. That said, certain biblical numbers are hard to ignore, especially those that recur with frequency (7, 12, 40) and numbers invested with centuries of symbolism ( 666!). Davis, a believing Christian who wrote the aforementioned book on biblical numerology, concluded that "the whole system must be rejected as a valid form of exegesis " and that "such interpretations are purely artificial and arbitrary and have no place in Christian theology." Serious scholars of the Bible are quick to dismiss numerology as a playful lark, but not as a legitimate way of interpreting scripture or grasping spiritual truths. There are countless websites and books devoted to decoding divine mysteries by deploying creative math on Bible verses. Today, these practices survive as "biblical numerology," the popular belief that God reveals hidden meanings through the numbers written in the Bible. In Greek, it's called isopsephy and was a favorite technique employed by Christian gnostics searching for deeper meaning in the New Testament. In Hebrew, the practice of assigning symbolic meaning to the numerical values of words is called gematria and was popular with kabbalists and Jewish mystics. Or take any number and turn it into a word. What this means is that you can take any word from the original Greek New Testament and turn it into a number. In Greek, alpha is 1, beta is 2 and so on. Since there were no Arabic numerals back then (1, 2, 3, etc.), numbers were written out with letters. Both Jewish and later Christian readers of the Bible took inspiration from Pythagoras and attempted to derive mystical meanings from numbers using all manner of creative methods, writes John Davis, author of " Biblical Numerology: A Basic Study of the Use of Numbers in the Bible."įor example, in both the Hebrew and Greek languages, letters and words also have numerical values. Numbers were esoteric symbols with divine significance. The Greek philosopher Pythagoras, who lived in the sixth century B.C.E., was the first to teach that numbers themselves had meaning beyond counting and calculating. ![]()
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