Weaving words by patterns of numbers

Tapestry is a form of textile art, traditionally woven on a vertical loom. It is weft-faced weaving, in which all the warp threads are hidden in the completed work, unlike cloth weaving where both the warp and the weft threads may be visible. In tapestry weaving, weft yarns are typically discontinuous; the artisan interlaces each colored weft back and forth in its own small pattern area to form the design.

Serendipity is the development of events by chance in a beneficial way. More than twenty years ago, I had the vision of a tapestry impressed into my mind as a method of describing what scripture seems to me to be: numerical patterns.

Anyone who has done the exercise in the previous post will understand the analogy of writing scripture to weaving a tapestry. Words are written horizontally (row) and numbers vertically (column). It is obvious that biblical "artisans" constructed their books on such a "loom" as anyone can discover using Excel.

By the simple device of transforming horizontal into vertical and pasting the Greek text in a spreadsheet column, we begin to see how simple is its complexity. The first warp thread anchors a "book" word. "Talk" words shift to a new warp thread to generate another unique value and subject changes in dialogue each shift to the next warp thread. (The "sermon" of Matthew is 1940 words and spreads across seven layers of dialogue.)

Matthew is the master craftsman. As we unravel the relatively simple complexity of weaving/writing, we will discover answers to riddles such as the relationship between Rabbi Jesus and Mary Magdalene (we will explore this in August).

Forty is a mystical biblical number (days and nights "raining" or "fasting"; years "wandering") and the words of Matthew 2:13 might mirror Revelation 11:8 by suggesting a metaphorical "Egypt."

Six is the most mystical number in a book of 66 books! In the first book, Genesis describes the sixth day in the last six verses, thereby establishing six as the number of mankind. "LORD" is the sixth word of Matthew 2:13 ("Joseph" is the tenth). Revelation 13:18 is 23 words (seventh prime number) and concludes the chapter with three words: "sixhundreds," "sixdecades" and "six" at the positions of twenty-first, twenty-second and twenty-third word (21 + 22 + 23 = 66).

Obviously, the Numeric Greek preserves this continuity from the first Hebrew book, to the first Greek book and the last of sixty-six books.

Joshua (means "he who saves") is the sixth Hebrew book; its Greek translation "Jesus" is six letters with a numeric value of 888. The next investigation will be the correlation of 666 and 888.