I'm going to wander a bit, but will return to the subject.
Some time ago, the conclusion was made that one reason old age is called a second childhood is that one sleeps like a baby. That is, often awake in the night and needing naps in the daytime. My wife may nickname me bookworm, but I can't spend THAT much time reading. (Don't tell her, she might be
ed.)
Now, for decades, it has been a hobby of mine to look at ways to test things.
Earlier in this thread is a mention of findin Ivan Panin's work. He stated there were numeric patterns in the original languages of the New Testament (Greek) and Old Testament (Hebrew and a bit of Chaldean) but not in the Apocrypha or anywhere else he examined. This pattern was complicated enough and consistent enough to allow determining the exact original text by finding which variations fit said numeric patterns.
Five decades ago, it seemed that such a claim should certainly be tested. With an available free day, I got a Westcott and Hort Koine Greek New Testament and ran a cursory check, getting results that boiled down to: The probability of chance in this is low enough to be worth further work. But this would take a lot of time.
While looking for something to do at night, it seemed that devising and using a non-cursory set of tests would fill much time. And retirement produces a lot of time. It makes a hobby like a combination of stamp collecting and jigsaw puzzles work.
On line resources make such checking easier.
The Book Society of Canada Limited (Agincourt, Ontario) has an on - line reprint of Panin's Numeric Greek New Testament.
http://www.ubm1.org/?page=sciencehas a short discussion of some of the postulated numeric patterns.
So far, there has only been time to check out ten of these, from the Matthew 1:1-11 passage, each of which has the "multiple of seven" (Heptadic, if you want the technical term) pattern.
The rest of this discusses method, anyone not interested can skip it.
Some resources were borrowed from the pastor.
A passage is printed out from the on line numeric Greek New Testament. This is divided into subsections to make double checking and counting easier. Scissors and paste provide a list of words. When a word has multiple forms, all forms in that subsection are cut and pasted at the first appearance. Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (with dictionary and reference numbers) is used to check each word to prevent incorrect multiples. Below each word or form, a count of occurrences for each subsection is penciled in as X,Y,Z.
Columns on the right are inked in: the first is the Strong's reference #, the second the penciled incremental count of different Greek words, the rest are columns to provide a incremental count for each other checked pattern.
Double and triple check: not only is a miscount easy, but a consistent pattern is not always the same as an obvious one. This is why incremental counts are done in pencil.
For example, the first passage, Matthew 1:1-11 was divided into three subsections.
Covering several obvious things:
Total word count is 7*7.
Those beginning with consonants are 3*7, vowels 4*7. Multiple forms either begin with consonants or vowels, not both.
A check thought up on my own:
Those ending with consonants are 5*7, vowels 2*7. For this check, some form variants have one form end in a consonant, the other in a vowel. Using the first form that appears provides this result.
I'm not going bore you with the other five checked. My night waking hours now have something to fill them
And it isn't even too boring, (when worked at in short stretches
).
Panin challenged anyone to either find a text or make up a fictional text which: 1)had a meaningful narrative; and 2)also had a like numeric pattern. To encourage tries, he publicly posted a reward for anyone who succeeded. NO ONE did such.
Anyone looking on line at this should be aware that there are at least two groups talking numerics which are not using Panin's patterns for their work. One of them has a method which is
known to produce false positives.
My probability math is rusty enough that I can not calculate odds for something this complicated. The scholar produced Greek New Testament I'm comparing to Panin's is letter for letter identical in verses 1-11, which the earlier Westcott and Hort is not. A quick check of verses 12-17 shows one variant form (3 times), and two variant spellings (2 times each). W & H also has more variances here. There is no change in meaning that I can recognize.
There is no numeric established Old Testament - Panin worked for forty years just to get the NT done.
BTW, I expect some to reject the whole idea out of hand. What I wonder is how many of these will even try a cursory test
