How The Bible Came to Us - Part 1 & 2

 HOW THE BIBLE CAME TO US – PART 1 & 2

Blog Post Date:  2-22-2021              

Many have wondered if the Bible is truly the inspired word of God, and some wonder if men have omitted inspired books to suit their own opinions. In my view, we are indebted to Ivan Panin and his Numeric English New Testament (also in Greek) to establish the inspiration of Scripture through his study of gematria. He believed that the numeric patterns inherent in the text itself were the fingerprints of God and were the measure of inspired text.

Panin was a professor at Harvard and died in 1942, never having had a computer during his lifetime. He did all of his calculations of the numerical values of words and sentences by hand. This took a great deal of time, and he only had time to work on the New Testament. Even so, he studied the gematria of the Hebrew Old Testament books enough to know that they too showed the same numerical patterns seen in the Greek New Testament. No one to this day has worked with the Old Testament books the way Panin did with the New.

Ivan Panin had been an atheist in his early days. He became a believer when he discovered the numeric patterns in the New Testament and realized that no man could have included those patterns by his own design. It was then that he began to work on his Numeric New Testament. The problem he wanted to solve was the occasional difference in various old Greek manuscripts of the New Testament.

Most of the discrepancies were minor, yet he wanted to know which was the inspired reading and which was a human alteration or error. Any extra word or letter, or any omission in the text, would change the numeric value of the sentence and the paragraph. By checking the gematria of each reading, Panin found that only one supported the numeric patterns, and the other destroyed those patterns. Hence, he was able to determine the inspired text.

Gematria

Today we take for granted the numbers we use in arithmetic, as if these always existed. But these came into use in the West only in the seventh century. We got them from the Arabs, who in turn borrowed them from India. In the Greek-speaking world, they used their Greek letters as their numbers. In Hebrew society, they used their Hebrew letters as numbers.

Whereas the Romans used only six of their letters as numbers (called Roman Numerals), the Hebrews used all 22 of their letters, and the Greeks used all 24 of their letters as numbers. Hence, gematria is not the invention of some modern prophet or mathematician. It was used in ancient times.

The Hebrew aleph was their number one, beth was two, gamma was three, etc. The first ten letters were their numbers from one to ten. The eleventh letter, kaf, was twenty, lamed was thirty, etc. The letter koof was 100, resh was 200, shin was 300, and the tav was 400. To write the number 120, they wrote koof (100), followed by a kaf (20).

The same basic system was used in the Greek language, except that the Greeks originally had 26 letters. Two of these, representing the numbers six and ninety, later became extinct. The numeric value of their final letter, omega, was 800. There is a list of these Hebrew and Greek letters on page 31 of the book, Theomatics, by Jerry Lucas and Del Washburn and also on pages 15 and 16 of Karl Sabiers’ book, New Discoveries in Bible Text.

The Sevens in Genesis 1:1

Genesis 1:1 is a short example of these numeric patterns hidden beneath the surface of the text.

913 In the beginning

203 Created

  86 God

401 Alef-Tav (“untranslatable,” but signifying that God is the Beginning and the End)

395 The heavens

407 And (with indefinite article)

296 The earth

There are precisely 7 Hebrew words in Genesis 1:1.

There are 28 Hebrew letters in Genesis 1:1. This is 4 x 7.

The first three words in Genesis 1:1 contain the subject and predicate: “In the beginning God created.” The number of Hebrew letters is 14, which is 2 x 7.

The last four words in the verse contain the object of the sentence: “the heavens and the earth.” This has 14 Hebrew letters, or 2 x 7. In fact, “the heavens has 7 letters, while “and the earth” also has 7 letters.

There are three important nouns in this verse: God, heaven, and earth. The numeric values of these are 86, 395, and 296, which total 777. The number of Hebrew letters used in these three nouns are 14, or 2 x 7.

The numeric value of the first verb in this verse is 203, which is 29 x 7.

If you count the Hebrew letters in Genesis 1:1, the first, middle, and last letters used in the verse have a total numeric value of 1,393, which is 199 x 7.

If you look at the first and last words in Genesis 1:1 and add the numeric values of their first and last letters, they total 497, which is 71 x 7.

If you add up the numeric value of just the last letters of the first and last words, they total 490, which is 70 x 7.

Other Passages

The odds of having just 24 features by accident is one in 191,581,231,380,566,414,401. That’s more than 191 Septillion. But Matthew 1:1-17 contains more than 200 features of sevens. The account of Jesus’ childhood in Matthew 2 continues these patterns of sevens.

Could anyone today write a single coherent paragraph, giving an account of one’s genealogy or childhood, having just five features of sevens?

Other passages, which deal with different topics, are structured around other numbers such as 11 or 12. These numbers have distinct meanings and undergird the topic in the text itself. For instance, when the book of Revelation speaks of the 12,000 from each tribe and the description of them in Revelation 7:13, 14, the numeric values are in multiples of 144.

When speaking of Jesus Christ, the numeric patterns shift to multiples of 888, because the numeric value of Jesus in Greek is 888 (and also 111).

The entire Bible is written in this way without the awareness of the writer. I personally conclude that the Bible—as it has come down to us today—is the inspired Word of God. Panin worked with other books, such as the Apocrypha, but he could find no numeric evidence that these were inspired or that they should be thought of as Scripture.

Just as God anonymously wrote Scripture in the language of mathematics, so also has He been able to give us His Word without portions of it being “lost.” We do not have a mangled Bible, as some have asserted. We do not have a Bible that was changed or altered by the scribes to suit their views, as others have said. Just because other ancient books have been discovered does not mean they should be added to the Bible. Such old books have historical value and some have good teachings and philosophy, but they lack the fingerprint of God.

HOW THE BIBLE CAME TO US - PART 2

The Bible is a collection of books which record each author’s inspired revelation in the form of history, prophecy, songs and poetry, instructions, and wise sayings. Through its pages the divine plan is revealed progressively, first through prophecy of things to come, and then—where possible—the historical account of prophecy fulfilled.

Because there are things yet to be fulfilled, it is possible that more will need to be written to complete the record of God’s plan. Yet I would not expect such to be written until the second coming of Christ has occurred, for this is when such authors would be qualified to do such work. Not only will the actual events at that time prove which eschatological views are correct, but the manifestation of the sons of God will create immortal and incorruptible saints who are capable of setting forth a complete revelation.

Will, then, our present 66 books of the (Protestant) Bible be increased to 100? No one knows for sure at this point. We only know that clarity must yet be given to us in order to bring unity to the church, for at the present time, virtually every biblical doctrine is interpreted in different ways in different denominations and even within those denominations.

Moses laid the foundations of truth in the Torah, but the people themselves either rejected it, misunderstood it, or misapplied it by their carnal minds. The prophets gave greater clarity, but only a minority of the people took heed to what they said. The prophets applied the law to the nation as necessary, often giving clarity through what I call Supreme Court decisions.

The New Testament was written by those who were inspired through the Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit. This was a greater level of spiritual inspiration than had been given to Israel previously in the time of Moses. Moses lived in a Passover Age (from the Exodus to the Cross). The apostles were sent out with a Pentecostal anointing and wrote the gospels and epistles with that greater anointing.

Hence, when the final outpouring of the Holy Spirit is sent out under the power of the feast of Tabernacles, will we not receive an even greater anointing to clarify the word and bring real unity to the church?

Ezra the Priest and Scribe

Ezra lived at the time of Judah’s restoration after the decree of Cyrus, the Persian. Having diligently studied the law, he compiled the sacred writings from the past into the body now commonly known as the Old Testament. The Jewish Encyclopedia tells us that he lived to be 120 years old and was buried “near the point where the Tigris flowed into the Euphrates.” However, in the first century A.D., Josephus contradicted this, telling us that he died in Jerusalem and was buried there (Antiquities of the Jews, 11, V, v).

Ezra was also said to have written the books of the Chronicles, along with his memoirs known to us as the book of Ezra. Nehemiah 8:2 refers to him as “Ezra the priest,” but he was also called “Ezra the scribe” (Nehemiah 8:4). Nehemiah 8:9 speaks of “Ezra the priest and scribe.” In the first migration to Jerusalem, Ezra remained behind, probably so as not to compete with Joshua, the high priest during the building of the second temple. But decades later, as an old man, he went to Jerusalem with Nehemiah, who was commissioned to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem.

The canon of the Old Testament was completed and settled by the time of Ezra’s death. It is clear that he also added comments here and there, most notably in the last few verses of the book of Deuteronomy. Moses’ death probably was recorded by Eliezar, who succeeded his father Aaron as high priest. Then Ezra wrote Deuteronomy 34:10-12 as a final notation. Verse 10 says,

¹⁰ Since that time no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.

“Since that time” would be meaningless, if some time had not passed already. No doubt Ezra was referring to Deuteronomy 18:15, where Moses gave a messianic prophecy,

¹⁵ The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to him.

Ezra informs us in Deuteronomy 34:10 that this prophecy had not yet been fulfilled in his day. It is only in Acts 3:22 that Peter boldly says that the prophecy had been fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

The Bible often uses the phrase “unto this day,” each time referring to the day of the author’s writing. Moses used the phrase often in the book of Genesis to refer to his own day. So also Ezra says that no prophet like Moses had risen “since that time.”

The Apocrypha

Books continued to be written in the four centuries after Ezra’s death. They were important from a historical standpoint, but there was no authoritative reason to add them to the canon that Ezra had compiled. There are seven that are classed as The Apocrypha, “doubtful writings.” They are Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, and First and Second Maccabees. In addition, there are portions of books in Esther and Daniel, which apparently were written at a later time and rejected by the Jewish priests.

Ivan Panin reported that he tried without success to find numeric patterns in the books of the Apocrypha. Without those numeric patterns, we find no fingerprints of God that would suggest divine inspiration. Just because a book is old (or even historically valuable) does not mean it ought to be included in the canon of Scripture.

Enoch, Jubilees, and Jasher

In addition to these, there was the book of Enoch, which scholars say was written by a Jew during the Babylonian captivity. It was common in those days, for marketing purposes, to write under the name of a more famous person from the past, who, being safely dead, could not verify or repudiate the book being written in his name. Yet scholars who have studied Babylonian religious literature saw that most of the book of Enoch was strikingly similar in its angelology.

In my view, only the first part of Enoch, quoted in Jude 14 can be relied upon as being true. The quotation is from the first chapter of Enoch. Even so, there is no evidence that Ezra knew of its existence in his day, but if he did, he saw fit to exclude it from the canon.

Another is the book of Jubilees, which scholars date around 150-160 B.C. This book was known to many in the first century, but there is no evidence that the apostles relied upon it or that they considered it canonical in any way. Its chronology and Jubilee system differs somewhat from that given in the book of Jasher.

I have more confidence in Jasher than in the book of Jubilees. The 1840 edition of Jasher, translated into English from the 1613 manuscript found in Venice, remarkably supports the concepts of Cursed Time (414-year cycles) that I wrote about in my own book, Secrets of Time. Nonetheless, in spite of its historical value, I do not think that Jasher ought to be included in the canon. There are two passages in Jasher that are incompatible with Scripture: the age of Serug when he became the father of Nahor (Genesis 11:22), and the age of Moses (Exodus 7:7) when he led Israel out of Egypt.

Jasher is remarkably helpful in clarifying some of the obscure biblical statements, as I explained in Secrets of Time.

Whether or not Ezra knew of the book of Jasher, we know that he excluded it from the canon of Scripture, even though it was mentioned twice (Joshua 10:13; 2 Samuel 1:18).