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THE K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S 3. The second chapter of Matthew tells of th e childhood of th e Chri#t. Its vocabulary has 161 words, or 23 sevens, w ith 896 letters, or 128 sevens, and 238 forms, or 34 sevens; th e num eric value of th e vocabulary is 123,529, or 17,647 sevens; of the forms, 166,985, or 23,855 sevens; and so on th rough pages of enum eration. This chapter has a t least four logical divisions ,and each division shows alone the same phenomena found in the chapter as a whole. Thus the first six verses have a vocabulary of 56 words, or 8 sevens, etc. There are some speeches h ere: Herod speaks, th e Magi speak, th e angel speaks. But so pro nounced are th e num eric phenomena here, th a t though th e re are as it were num erous ring s w ithin rings, and wheels w ithin wheels, each is perfect in itself, though form ing all th e while only p a rt of th e rest. 4. There is no t a single paragraph of th e hundreds in Matthew th a t is not constructed on exactly th e same plan. Only w ith each additional parag raph th e difficulty of constructing it increases no t in arithm etical b u t in geometrical progression. F o r he contrives to w rite his p arag raph s so as. to develop con stan tly fixed num eric relation s to w hat goes before and after. Thus in his la st chapter he contrives to use ju s t. 7 words no t used by him before. How long it took Matthew the w riter does no t know. But how he contrived to do it between th e Crucifixion, A. D. 30 (and his Gospel could no t have been w ritten ea rlie r), and th e destruction of Jerusalem , A. D. 70 (and th e Gospel could not have been w ritten la te r), let th e critics explain. Anyhow Matthew; did it, and we th u s have a m irace,— an unheard of literary , m athem atical a rtist, unequalled, hardly even conceivable-. A second fact is yet more im po rtan t: In his very first section, th e genealogy discussed above, th e words found no w here else in th e New Testam ent, occur 42 times, 7X6 ; and have .126 letters,
408 Let us now tu rn to th e genealogy as a whole. I will point out only one fea tu re : The New T estam ent is w ritten in Greek. The Greeks had no separate symbols for expressing numbers, cor responding to our Arabic figures, bu t used instead th e le tte rs of th e ir alpha bet: ju st as th e Hebrews, in- whose tongue th e Old T estam ent is w ritten, made use for th e same purpose of theirs. Accordingly, th e 24 Greek le tte rs stand for th e following num bers: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 10.0 200 300 400 500 600 700 800. Every Greek word is thu s a sum in arithm etic ob tained by adding th e numbers for which its le tte rs stand, or th e ir numeric values. Now th e vocabulary to the en tire genealogy has 72 words. If we w rite its numeric value over each of these 72 words and add them , we get for th e ir sum 42,364, or 6,052 sevens. B u t the numeric value of th e 10 letters used for making these groups is 931, or 7X 7X 19, a m ultiple no t only of seven bu t of seven sevens. And th e same is tru e of th e 90 form s in which these 72 words occur: th e ir 90 numeric values sum up 54,075, or 7,725 sevens, and th is num ber is d istribu ted into ju st seven alphabetical groups of sevens. 2. The second p art of th is chapter, verses 18-25, relates th e b irth of th e Christ. It consists of 161 words, or 23 sevens; occurring in 105 forms, or 15 sevens, w ith a vocabulary of 77 words, or 11 sevens. Joseph is spoken to h ere by th e angel. Accordingly, of th e 77 words th e angel uses 28, or 4 sevens; of th e 105 form s he uses 35, or 5 sevens; th e num eric value of th e vocabulary is 52,605, or 7,515 sevens; of th e forms, 65,429, or 9,347 sevens. This enum eration only begins as it were to barely scratch th e surface of th e num erics of th is passage. B u t what is specially noteworthy here is: the fact th a t the- angel’s speech h as also a scheme of sevens makes it a kind of ring w ithin a ring, a wheel' w ithin a wheel.
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