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There's a secret code that exists to connect all things. God created the universe through the power of these letters and numbers. The one who understands its teachings could potentially create life just as God.
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Jesus and Lucifer may represent cosmic balance between light and dark. The practitioners of Gematria will say that 73 and 37 are important because they're reflections of each other. Lucifer was maybe misunderstood in that he's the Lightbringer, comparing him to Prometheus, who took fire from the gods and gave it to humans. The number six represents imperfection, while seven is divine perfection. Satan's numerical value of 364 implies that he only has power over the Earth for 364 days, leaving one day powerless. The snake in the garden was actually the good guy, trying to give Adam and Eve divine knowledge and trying to help them. Jewish scholars often interpret the snake not as a literal creature, but as a metaphor for the internal battle that human beings face. What exactly is Gematria? Where does it come from? What's up, people? And welcome back to Religion Camp. That's right, welcome to my tent. My name is Mark Agnon, and this is the show where I explore the most interesting, fascinating and most mystical stories from all religions from around the world. That's right, and today we're going to Jewtown. That's right. What's up to all my Jewish friends listening to this program? Like I said, I'm not Jewish, all right? Nothing about me is even particularly Jewish, right? Christos the curls. No, that is a good point. I do have Very curly hair. I live in Williamsburg, and, yeah, my wife is a midwife for Hasidic Jews. So I actually might be more. I think I'm like, an honorary Jew. But I was not raised Jewish. I'm just a Catholic kid. So today we're gonna be talking about an interesting aspect of Jewish number theory, Jewish mysticism. It's called gematri. All right? This is something that's kind of, like, vaguely been on my radar a little bit. Gematria is like. It's sort of this. People are familiar with numerology, right? It's trying to connect the world and different theories of reality using numbers. There's a sort of underlying belief that mathematics is sort of the language or the code that is created. The world that we live in, the fractals that occur on a pine cone, the way that the stars are aligned, the speed of light, is all connected deeply to mathematics. It is a universal language that all people speak. Whether you're English, Chinese, or. Or from the Middle east or South America, everyone understands what the number one is, what the number two is, all the way up to infinity. And if you can understand these mathematical terms, maybe there's a secret code that exists to connect all things, the meaning of life, where we came from, where we're going. And some people believe that it's rooted in this idea of gematria. Now, this comes specifically from sort of a subset of Jewish mysticism, particularly in the Kabbalah tradition. Now, again, I'm not a kabbalist. I'm not familiar with this idea. I have not studied it deeply. So if there's any Jewish mystics or rabbis or Kabbalists that are listening, I would love to know your thoughts and tell me where I get this wrong. Basically, gematria is a tool for uncovering hidden meaning in secret texts. Now, it's specifically looking at the Talmud, the Hebrew Bible, and the Torah to understand what the actual numbers that are making up the text that God gave us. Basically, if the text is from Yahweh himself, if it's from Hashem, then certainly it has some type of divine reality imbued in the words themselves. And if we can break them down into their numerical values, then we can understand the secrets that the texts are trying to tell us. Now, for the record, I don't really believe this. I've never really been, like, a big numerology guy. Like, I like my fair share of conspiracy theories and get into the bottom of things, but I've never been big on, like, oh, the numbers. If you add up the 7s and the 12s then actually DA, da, da, da. But many people do believe this. Obviously it is a part of the religious tradition of, you know, some kabbalist Jews. And also I just know people that are like, no, dude, the numbers, like my buddy Christos that's sitting right across from me, he was telling me that a friend of his was like, dude, bet big on the Eagles super bowl weekend, go heavy on the Eagles. Because I'm telling you, if you look at the numbers, the E, the A, if you break down the word, it adds up to this number. And so they're going to actually beat the Chiefs because if you look at the numbers of their players, da da, da. He had this whole equation figured out and he was right. Christos, you were like, dude, there's no way Chiefs are going to just crush him. There's a fifteen hundred dollar hole in my pocket. Now, your friend won fifteen hundred dollars by using basically a version of gematria to understand who was going to win the Super Bowl. So let's go all the way back. All right, what exactly is gematria? Where does it come from? The word gematria is believed to derive from obviously the Greek word geometry, geometria. And some scholars suggest it also might have roots in grammata, which means writing. The dual origin reflects this, you know, the system of the wisdom that's of itself. Right? It's part mathematics, part linguistics. So you kind of merge them together. And while gematria is closely associated with Jewish traditions, its conceptual roots can be traced back even to Babylonian cultures, to ancient Greeks. Just like Christos, buddy, over here, where the numbers are often used symbolically in religious and philosophical texts, that there's some type of secret meaning. The earliest documents that use a gematria like system come from Assyrian inscriptions dating back to the 8th century BC. Yeah, so 8th century BC we're going even before Jesus. In this inscription, King Sargon II boasts that he built the wall, of course, 16,283 cubits long. Sounds random, right? But the number actually corresponds with the numerical value of his name. This Assyrian prince was known as Aru. It works essentially like Gematria, except this form added numerical values to whole words rather than to individual letters. We'll break down how that works in Hebrew in a second. While it differs from the alphabetic systems that we see in later Greek and Hebrew gematria, it demonstrates an early understanding of the potential symbolic power in connecting numbers and language. So this form of writing is spreading, right? And it makes it all the way To Greece, to Miletus, where the system was now known as the Milesian system. The first known examples of this system show up in graffiti on vases from the 6th century BC. Even Aristotle mentioned that the followers of Pythagoras, you know, the number letter system guy, he made the whole hypotenuse thing, he used a system called Esopsophe, which is a Greek predecessor of Gematria. So we can clearly see that most cultures had some form of numerical significance in their writings. Matter of fact, there's actually graffiti from a wall in Pompeii. You know Pompeii, the one that got destroyed by Vesuvius, the big eruption volcano. And it had the words, I love the woman whose number is 5, 4, 5. While we don't know who this woman was or who wrote it, it's a lasting reminder that this system was used all over the place, specifically in antiquity. Now we go across the desert, we can see that in Judaism, Gematria emerged as a favored method of biblical interpretation during the medieval period, specifically amongst kabbalists. These mystics believe that every letter of the Hebrew Alphabet carried divine significance. And by assigning a numerical value to letters, they could uncover the deeper layers of meaning within the Torah and other sacred writings, as well as preserving the word of God. Because any word that would be changed would have a different numerical value, changing its true meaning. Oddly enough, the Dead Sea Scrolls appear to not have any concrete evidence of Gematria within them, causing some scholars to question the significance of Gematria and its origins. If it doesn't exist there, then, you know, was it really that prevalent amongst, you know, Jewish mystics at the time? Obviously the, the Dead Sea Scrolls were preserved by a group of Jewish mystics. If the same ancient texts we use to validate our canonical Bible doesn't include the backbone of Judaic writing, that was around the time. How can we use these scrolls as an example to legitimize our claims? If you're like me, you probably read a news story and you're like, this is crazy. What is the truth about this? Is this a partisan spin? Is this funded by some media company or some country, by their state sponsored media? To try to warp my brain, I genuinely read news articles now with so much skepticism because I have no idea if this is from the right or the left and what the agenda is and why it's being presented in front of me. And that is why I follow and support ground news. That's right. So even before I started working with this company on the podcast. I've been following them on Instagram because I just thought they gave a very, very great unbiased, nonpartisan approach to media. It's awesome. Basically, you're going to get a headline and they will show you sort of the different media splits as it comes to understanding the story. They will compare the reporting from different outlets across the political spectrum in one place to show you how the framing and word choice can affect our understanding of a story. I mean, here's a story that my mom sent me from a couple months ago. Robberies, assaults, surge in Central park, leaving New Yorkers and NYC tourists terrified. What is the purpose of this story? Who is writing it? Where is it coming from? Now I can go to Ground News, read this headline, and be able to make an assessment as to whether or not this is predominantly being reported by the right wing or by the left wing and make some type of deduction like, oh, this is actually being used, you know, as some sort of political apparatus. So if you're like me, if you're a truth seeker, if you're trying to find unbiased news, I would absolutely recommend Ground News. It is completely independent, nonpartisan, subscriber funded. It allows readers to think critically about the world around them and it doesn't tell them what to think, but instead lets them think for themselves. And ultimately it avoids misinformation and tries to heal polarization within our country, which I think is absolutely amazing. So don't let misinformation and sensationalism influence how you think. 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G N O N or scan my QR code right here or go to the description and click on the link. This unlocks access to all of their news analysis features. Something that I think is, I don't know, super important to have. Yeah, make decisions based on facts, not spin. This November. Check them out. Here is a bullet. Imagine this. You're 30ft underground, digging through frozen earth with spoons and mess hall plates. Nazi guards patrol overhead. One wrong move, one loose pebble and it's over. But on this night in 1944, 76 Allied prisoners would attempt the impossible, tunneling their way to freedom in the largest prisoner of war escape of World War II and centuries earlier. In a cold stone chamber, a teenage girl in armor stood before her accusers. Her crime leading armies, speaking to angels, and daring to challenge the most powerful men in Europe. Joan of Arc's trial would become one of history's most infamous moments. These are just two stories from Today in History, the newsletter that brings you the most fascinating events from the past, delivered fresh to your inbox. From epic wars to religious rebellions, ancient mysteries to modern marvels, don't miss another piece of history. Scan the QR code now or click the link in the description to sign up for Today in History. So the Essene people emphasize in their writings more the dualistic themes such as light versus darkness. And that is what is typically preserved in the Dead Sea Scrolls amongst, you know, obviously many other ancient versions of the Old Testament as well as the the Torah, you know, all that included. So even though the Dead Sea Scrolls don't contain this numerical writing, the work of scribes and other scholars from this time very much do. So just to give us a glimpse into the mystical world of numerology. Let's let's begin with the first explicit mention of Gematria in rabbinic literature. And this appears in the bereta of the 32 rules attributed to Rabbi Eliezer Ben Josaha Geleli around 200 AD. This text, which doesn't exist in its entirety today, unfortunately laid out 32 hermetical rules for interpreting the Bible. Gematria was the 29th rule, demonstrating that by this time it had become an accepted method of biblical interpretation. Obviously you can think of other interpretations you can think, you know, literal or metaphorical, and Gematria was the 29th. Just to say, looking at the mathematics or the numbers of the text is really what's most important. So although Gematria was now acknowledged as an interpretive tool, its true mystical potential wasn't unleashed until the release of Sefer Yetzara, or in the Book of Creation. This text is believed to have been written in the 2nd century AD and it's considered to have been the earliest Kabbalistic work. In this, Sefer Yetzira presents a cosmology based on the 22 letters of the Hebrew Alphabet and the 10 Sephirot, also known as the divine emanations. It basically posits that God created the universe through the power of these letters and numbers. Again, it's accepted by, you know, most Abrahamic religions that God spoke the world into existence, right? That he said, let there be light, and the universe was created. So it was through the actual words that he said and potentially through the numbers that are imbued in those words. Again, this goes all the way back into that mystical tradition. According to Sefer, each Hebrew letter represents not just a sound and a number, but also an element of creation. For example, the letter Aleph, which you can see here, corresponds to air, mem to water, and shin to fire. By manipulating these letters through Gematria and other techniques, the text suggests that one can tap into the very forces of creation. This brings us to one of the most fascinating aspects of Gematria in early text. The belief that it held the secrets of creation. The Sephiroth goes on to claim that the one who understands its teachings could potentially create life just as God did. While our focus today is on the Jewish tradition of Gematria, it's worth noting that similar practices developed in many other cultures. Even in Islamic mysticism, a practice called abjad is used to derive meaning from the numerical values of Arabic letters. And in Christianity, especially more esoteric versions of Christianity, Gematria is used instead. So how does all this work? Okay, how do you actually get numbers from the letters themselves? So, at its core, Gematri operates on a simple premise. Each letter of the Hebrew Alphabet corresponds to a numerical value. So Aleph is one, bet is two, Gimel is three, and so on. The numerical sequence continues all the way up to 400 for the final letters of the Alphabet. Now, just to be clear, there's not 400 letters in the Alphabet. There's still only 22. But when reaching the number 10, the numbers begin to move up exponentially, eventually getting to 100, where it goes 100, 200, 300, 400. By adding together the values of the Individual letters in a word or phrase, practitioners calculate the total numerical value. This number can be compared to other words or phrases with the same value to potentially uncover some type of mystical connection or a shared meaning. You can see here on this chart the 22 letters and the numerical values that they correspond to. So gematria is just, you know, not only about crunching numbers and doing math, it's about finding the meaning of those numbers. For example, Jacob in Genesis 28 dreams of a ladder in which angels ascend and descend from heaven to earth. The word ladder in Hebrew is sulam, which has the numerical value of 130, samech 60, lamed 30, men, 40, which is, you know, strangely equivalent to the numerical value of Sinai. Samech, sitch 60, yud 10, nun 50, yud 10. Again, this means, according to Gematria, that the ladder of Jacob's dream was in fact Sinai, or that this revelation was a precursor to God's revelation to Moses at Sinai. You can see how all of a sudden there's all these connections. Jacob's ladder, angels going up and down, Moses goes to Mount Sinai to speak with God. These are both ways of divinely communicating with God through the, the number connections through Gematria. It can also be interpreted as displaying that following the Torah and the Ten Commandments is the way to heaven and that that's how we ascend with God. Considering that Sinai is obviously, you know, where Moses got the gifts, pretty interesting, right? That's just one connection. Again, this is not something I necessarily believe. I'm just, you know, explaining what is taught within this specific subset of Jewish mysticism. And there's many forms of gematria, all having their own connections and mystical interpretations of ancient texts. The og and the most commonly used is the mispar ha kre ki. This is the absolute value. This is the basic system where each letter just has a fixed numerical value, just like what we discussed. But there's also the mispar gadol. This is the great number. This version accounts for the final forms of five specific Hebrew letters, extending the numerical range beyond 400. So you have kaf, which instead of 20 is 500, mem, instead of 40 is 600. You can see here on the chart how the rest of these correspond. Then there's the misbar katan, which is the small number. This form reduces the numbers to their single digit essence by taking the sum of the individual digits repeatedly. So, for example, 18 becomes 1 plus 8, giving the sum of 9. Again, the way that these rabbis all got to this is their own Business. That's a topic for a different video. And finally, there's the Atbash cipher. This is a substitution cipher where the letters are replaced with their opposite counterparts in the Alphabet. So this means Aleph, which is the first letter of the Alphabet, becomes Tav, the last letter in the Alphabet. Now that we have a rough idea of what Gematria is at its core, let's take a look at some of the connections inside the text. Now, there's many connections that go beyond this, and people will talk about this with, like, conspiracy theories and elections and sometimes even super bowl games. But for now, we're just going to look specifically at the text as it exists within, you know, early rabbinical literature. So we'll start off Genesis 1:1. This is. This will be another example to appreciate Gematria. So in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. This verse consists of seven Hebrew words. Again, I read it in English, obviously, but you can see the Hebrew version here. And the verse consists of these words which contain a total of 28 letters. An odd numerical detail right from the start. If you notice, the 7 and the 28 are themselves special numbers. In the Bible, 7 is often seen as the number of perfection or completion. You know, the Sabbath on the seventh day. Seven qualities of Messiah, seven spirits of the Revelation. There's many different sevens that show up throughout the Bible. The number seven is packed with meaning. Meanwhile, 28 is four seven, which is an extension of the same symbolism. And you may be wondering, where does the four come from? Well, when you take the Gematria of the name Jesus, it comes out to be 4, 4, 4. This displays the divine connection between the two numbers. And there's more to be said for 444. Again, if you're not following, I agree. Sometimes you hear these numbers and you're like, I just don't. Maybe there's something I'm missing. I don't know. I'm curious what you guys think, but you just get into these numbers and you're like, I feel like we're just throwing numbers here and there. But I guess this is the job of the students of Gematria to figure out. You have to be the guy from A Beautiful Mind to. Yeah, yeah, you gotta be just triple vax to even understand what's going on, I think. So this is where it gets a little bit weird. All right, Genesis 1:1. Like we said, when you add up the numbers of that verse, the letters as they correspond to the numbers, you get 2,701. Now, that's not a random number because that is the product of two prime numbers, 37 times 73. This means that they cannot be broken down into smaller factors. Now the practitioners of Gematria will say that 73 and 37 are important because they're reflections of each other. So for those interested in studying numerical symmetry, this mirror reflects an interesting find. Many see it as a reflection of the text itself, which is about creation, right? God created Adam in His image. He created mankind as himself. This concept is often seen as God's mirror in the world. This interplay between 37 and 73 parallels key elements in the verse. For example, the verse's central word et, has a crucial role in Hebrew grammar, often marking what we would call the direct object. But it also possesses symbolic meaning because it's composed of Aleph and Tav, the first and last letters of that get.
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Word ET is placed directly in the middle, so in the beginning, God from the heavens and the earth. This displays the symbolism between the creation and reinforces the idea of God as the Alpha and the Omega, something that we'll see brought up throughout literature, both Jewish and Christian, ultimately bridging heaven and earth and showing God is the ultimate creator and all of creation is held together by His Word. But these numbers have other meanings as well. 37 is often associated with wisdom and heart in certain Kabbalistic writings, but it somehow finds its way back to 73. Again looking at the mirror and the symmetry of these numbers, because the Hebrew word for wisdom, chokmah, that totals 73 so itself is the 21st prime number 73 and 37 is the 12th prime number. So just to point it out, if you haven't noticed, 21 reversed is 12, adding yet another layer of mystery that leads rabbis and many mystics to consider what these mean. These details may or may not be convincing as proof of some type of grand design, but they certainly add a layer of wonder. Now, let's go a few chapters over Genesis 14:14, where Abraham is said to have taken 318 men into battle to retrieve a member of his tribe. Interestingly, Abraham had a servant named Eliezer and his name in Gematria 318. This led many people to suggest that Abraham only took Eliezer with him, not an entire army. But that's not all for Old Abe. A Hasidic text called the Kodeshat Levi uses Gematria to draw additional conclusions. From this verse, this text observes the numerical value of the word seich, which is Hebrew for speaking or conversing. That also adds up to 318. Therefore, some have argued that the text is saying that through the power of speaking God's holy name, that just Abraham defeated his enemies. I know, it's pretty out there. There's a lot of interpretations, but all of them seem to have some sort of mystical meaning behind them. And you might be asking yourself, what is the holy name he spoke? Well, there's a few possibilities. There's three that are mentioned in Genesis. Elohim, Yahweh, and Yahweh Elohim. Specifically, the name Elohim adds up to the number 8 6, which is the same value of the word hateva, which means nature. This connection leads to the idea that Elohim refers to the divine presence as it manifests in the physical world, as opposed to the name Yahweh, which connects to the heavenly universe. But each name has its own value. Elohim, as we said, is 86, Yahweh 26, and Yahweh Elohim 112. Added up, they equal 5854, which of course may sound random. But when looking at other sections of the Bible, the true meaning is said to be revealed. The book of Daniel says, quote, as it's written in the law of Moses, all of this evil comes upon us, yet we made not our prayer before the Lord our God, that we may turn from our inequities and understand the truth. Now, this may sound just like another old verse, but when we take the gematria of each letter and add it up, what does it come out to? 5,854. That's right. The numerical value of Daniel acknowledged that humans have fallen short of God's glory, and that is the same value as the sum of God's holy name. Now, it could just be a complete coincidence. But the mystics and the rabbis and practitioners of this subset of the Kabbalistic interpretation would say otherwise. Because if we look at Luke 13:18, there's another connection to God. In this verse, we see Jesus asking questions about heaven. As he is about to compare it to earth. He says, then said he, unto what is the kingdom of God like? And whereunto shall I resemble it? Now, if we take this whole verse, put it into its geometric value, it ends up also being 5854. So we can clearly see this number has some type of mystical nature connected to heaven or to God himself. Most people may look at these numbers and assume it means nothing, which I completely agree. But when you see other comparisons, they'll point out that it is hard to deny that potentially something mystical is happening. So in Judaism, the most sacred name of God is tetragrammaton, also known as Yahweh. As we saw when we applied geometria to the name, it equals 26. But there's also another word that's connected to this, and that's love. God is love. If you take the geometry of love, you get 13, which is exactly half of 26. So essentially, it means that the two forms of love equal the numerical value of God. This somewhat resembles marriage, right? Two people that are loving each other, that two become one flesh, and that is a holy union under God. 13, meaning, you know, 13 times 2 is 26. Now, that's not the only way that you can interpret this. The Hebrew word for one also has a gematria value of 13. So we have this beautiful trinity of concepts. God's name 26. Love is 13. Unity is 13. What does this all mean? Well, Jewish mystics have a few conclusions. God's essence is love. Numerical relationships suggest that love isn't just an attribute of God, but his very nature. Love leads to unity. When two people love each other, their love reflects, you know, God in some mystical way, and creation through love. Some interpret this as indicating that love is the fundamental force of creation itself, and the connections don't end there. As you can imagine, in Jewish tradition, charity is often given the multiple of 18, because the Hebrew word for life has a numerical value of 18. Now, the value of love is 13. And when combined with the number 5, which represents the letter hey, which symbolizes divine breath or life, it equals 18. This tradition reflects the idea that the act of love and generosity brings yet more life into the world. Now, if you're tired, I get it. This stuff is a lot. You're listening to this, you're like, dude, all these numbers are adding up. Let's go through a couple more, shall we? In a secret CIA facility, doctors administered mysterious substances to unwitting Americans. Their goal? Mind control. The year was 1973, and as agents frantically burned thousands of documents, Project MK Ultra's darkest secrets nearly vanished into smoke. Now step back to Friday the 13th, 1314. The Grand Master of history's most powerful military order kneels before the flames. As the fire rises, Jacques de Molay, last leader of the Knights Templar, utters a curse so chilling that when both the French king and Pope die within the year, whispers of dark prophecy spread across Europe. Now, these aren't crazy conspiracy theories or something you read in, you know, some fan fiction. These are real historical events you'll discover. Discover in Today in History, the newsletter that uncovers the strange, shocking and sublime moments that shape our world. Get your daily dose of mind bending history. Scan the QR code or click the link below. To join today in history, let's look at the significance of 153. This is a captivating example of potential Gematria in the New Testament. It happens in John, chapter 21. After Jesus resurrection, he appears to his disciples at the Sea of Galilee. Basically, Jesus is talking to his disciples and asks them to go out and go fishing. And he assures them they will catch fish. And they catch 153 fish. And it said in the Bible that even with so many a. That the net was not torn, that, you know, this amount of fish would have absolutely torn the net. A catch of 153. Some scholars suggest this number is a callback to Ezekiel. There's this place called En Eglam, where basically in the book of Ezekiel, they discuss that there will be fishermen that will go out and they will cast nets and they will. They will collect many people and they will spread this great word. Basically, it says their fish shall be according to their kinds, as the fish of the great sea, exceeding in many, so that there will be a long lineage. And the Gematri value of N and gleam in Hebrew is 153. Again, potentially linking John's account to Ezekiel's vision. This connection suggests that 153 symbolizes the children of God who will be gathered in the new creation. But the numbers don't just have a place in the Bible. Ancient Naturalists believed that 153 species of fish in the sea. This is what they believed back in the day. They said there's only 153 fish in the sea. So the exact number of fish might represent disciples future mission to fish for mankind, to go out and collect humanity and to bring them into communion with God. 153 is also a triangular number. It's said in numerology, meaning that the sum of all integers from 1 to 17 = 153. Interestingly, 17 is also the number of times that the word sign appears in John's gospel, potentially hinting back at Ezekiel's vision and signs of the future. All right, now let's, let's go through another one, shall we? The old flood. Yeah. This is a famous story from the Bible. Obviously Noah and his boys had to gather up all the animals. This story has, as you can imagine, a very significant geometrical detail that's been analyzed through, you know, by, you know, kabbalists and other, other rabbis. To start off, Noah's name in Hebrew has a gematria value of 58. Interestingly, the Hebrew word for grace also means 58. Obviously God, you know, spared Noah and his family. This connection can be seen in Genesis 6:8 where it says Noah found grace in the eyes of the lord. Again, grace, grace. 58. Look at God. The phrase days of Noah has a gematria value of 650 in Hebrew. This number has been subject to various interpretations, with some saying that it represents the prolonged era of moral decay and violence that basically caused the great flood. Since Noah and his family were preserved in the ark while the rest of humanity perish. 650 may also symbolize the bridge between two eras, the sinful world before the flood and the renewed world after the flood is not only a judgment, but a purification and a reset of mankind. And again, other scholars and, you know, rabbis have suggested that the phrase sons of God in Genesis 6:2 has a gematria of 1, 5, 3. Remember 1, 5, 3. This is the same value that shows up when John's talking about catching 153 fish or Ezekiel's vision. This link potentially suggests a connection between Noah's flood and the fishing of humanity by the disciples. This is also the verse that essentially sets the stage and introduces us to the Nephilim, which show up in two verses later in Genesis 6:4. Interestingly, there's another verse in the flood story with a gematri of 2701 matching the first verse of the Bible that we talked about before. This verse, Genesis 8:14, describes the earth becoming dry after the flood. The shared numerical value suggests a parallel between the creation and the post flood world, emphasizing this idea of a Purification or a new beginning. Now, as we can see, Gematria is kind of all over the place, right? Just drawing different connections, trying to understand, trying to decode what's in the text. But the New Testament also has some interesting geometric patterns that show up. So one of the most intriguing numerical patterns centers on the name of Jesus. In the original Greek, the name Jesus is written as ESUs. And as we know, the letters also serve as numbers, meaning every name has a numerical value. Now, if we use Greek, gematria, which again is a different subset where you basically take out the Greek Alphabet and apply numbers to that Alphabet, the letters of Jesus added together come out to 888. The number 888 has deep symbolic meaning. It's often associated with new beginnings, resurrection, and divine completion. There's even something more interesting when we analyze the deeper structure of Jesus names. Some sources suggest that the total value could be 8888. But to understand why this number matters, we have to look at the significance of eight alone. In Jewish tradition, seven represents completeness and as we saw in the creation story in the first verse of Genesis, but 8 goes beyond that. It signifies something new, something beyond the natural order. The eighth day is significant in Jewish tradition. Circumcision, obviously the bris. This is a sign of the covenant between God and Abraham and his descendants. And this occurs on the eighth day. The concept of the eighth day is also in the resurrection of Christ. Jesus was raised from the dead on the first day of the week. Sunday, typically, is what this presumed to be. But when counting from the previous Sunday, Palm Sunday, it comes out to be the eighth day, symbolizing a new creation. But of course, that is not all for the number eight. If we go back to the flood, we can see eight people were saved in Noah's ark, again representing the rebirth of humanity after the flood. So if 8 represents a new beginning, 888 can be seen as a triple affirmation of this theme. It reinforces the idea that Jesus is not just a bringer of renewal, but the very essence of rebirth in and of itself. It's also the case that 8888 magnifies this idea even more. Just, even just a quadruple of this feeling of rebirth and renewal. Jesus is not just a representation of change. He is the ultimate new beginning. Now, as we're talking about 888, I'm sure you're thinking, what about the mark of the beast, 666? This is a number that shows up obviously in the Revelation of John that has plagued many Christians for years. Constantly people are looking for the sign of things. The apocalypse, 666. Everyone's going to have this number. And the number six is said to represent mankind because in the creation story, humanity was created on the sixth day. 666 is often seen as falling short, one step away from completeness, seven, which represents divine, you know, unity. All of these numbers have deep significance in the realm of numerology. And each one has their own purpose, although they all connect back to each other in some way. So if six represents mankind, then 666 represents the culmination of the imperfections and the brutality and the ugliness of humankind. This idea caused many people to conclude that 888 is the exact opposite. It is completion. It goes beyond the seventh. It is renewal and perfection. We've seen words that connect back to each other as well as words that, you know, connect other words such as Noah and grace, love, unity, ladder, Sinai. And they would suggest, you know, many of the scholars that study this stuff, that these aren't coincidences. And if we look at other words in the Bible, we can see more connections and that even more, you know, mysteries can be revealed to us, some that are, you know, a little bit strange. So essentially, by, you know, calculating, in the English gematria, this is a different version again, that uses sort of a different code where a is one, b is two, and so on. Many scholars don't really take this seriously. They don't believe it has the ancient roots or, you know, the language of God himself. Right. God didn't write the Bible in, you know, in English. But others believe that it holds just as much value as the ancient forms. So if we're looking at English, Gematria, 444, this holds power because it appears in biblical prophecy as well as occult symbolism, causing many believe that it serves as a message from the divine or in some cases, something darker. Four often, you know, symbolizes creation, completeness. In English, gematria. And in the Bible, God's order of creation is structured around fours. The fourth day, he creates the sun, moon, and the stars. There's also four gospels. There's, you know, four. A different perspective on Christ's life. The number four is also in the natural world. Four seasons, you know, four cardinal directions, and four elements. Earth, wind, fire, air. Because of this, 444 could represent divine completeness or some type of message of perfection within God's order. In Gematria, some scholars say 444 is linked to Jesus through the Greek letters of his name. As we mentioned, the numerical values of the Greek name add up to 888, leaving some to suggest that 444 is half of Christ symbolization, again meaning that Jesus is fully human, yet fully divine. So while 444 is seen as a divine number, others connect it with Luciferian symbolism. So 444 represents in some interpretations as the Antichrist or the anti Christian message that there is a inversion of divine completeness, that basically there's a division of Christ's perfectness of 888, which is 444 representing evilness and wickedness. I know this sounds crazy. This is just what some people believe. Lucifer derives from the Latin lux, meaning light, and fair meaning to bring. So the light bringer. And it appears in the Vulgate translation of Isaiah 14, referencing a fallen Babylonian king metaphorically called the morning Star. In Christian tradition, the name Lucifer eventually became synonymous with Satan, although some people believe that it didn't originally have any connection to each other. So the original fall from heaven was really just a king's fall from the throne. Now back to the numbers. This is where we take the English gematria of Lucifer. We don't get four from four exactly, but when we tweak the gematria system to the cipher of multiples of six, this is what many people do. They believe that this is where it gets a little bit darker. If we use the 6 cipher, as we did for Lucifer and applied to the name Jesus, we also come out with 444. This creates this numerical paradox. Two opposing figures sharing the same value. Satan is 4 for 4. Jesus is 4 for 4. This is where the esoteric ideas come into play. Occult traditions will say that Jesus and Lucifer may represent cosmic balance between light and dark. Some mystics say that, you know, Lucifer was maybe misunderstood and that he's the lightbringer, comparing him to, like the Greek deity Prometheus, who took fire from the gods and gave it to humans. Now, obviously mainstream theology sees this as heretical and rejects this connection. You know, claiming that the triple four cipher relies on non traditional gematria, which is not present in obviously the ancient texts. So back to the mark of the beast. You know, when we're looking at the 6 cipher, again, this is completely sort of apocryphal and is related to a lot of, you know, occult practices. The word Christos, obviously the Greek word for Christ. If you use the 6 cipher of gematria, you'll get 666. Just like my friend Christos here. Apparently it all connects. It shows up numerous times. Again, the six cipher. I don't know how common this is or really even if there's any way to, if there's any connection here, if this is just people looking for some type of connection. So, again, this is a connection that people I've seen on Twitter and stuff. Some people say that 666 is referring to an actual person. So people have tried to claim that neural link is a gematria word for 666, but it's apparently not at all. To get the word neural link to add up to 666, you have to travel to the Greek beta code of gematria. And this was made to decode English words, Greek words into English so that people could read them for themselves. It's a whole thing. It seems like it's probably bunk, just like all of the numerology stuff, to be honest with you. But just because it's, you know, not linked to Elon, it could be connected to other things. So the most common belief that people have around the term 666 is that this is a reference to Nero Caesar, one of the most infamous rulers of Rome. In the first century, Nero was a figure of, you know, immense controversy. He ruled ancient Rome with brutal persecutions of Christians and was building these giant colossuses, and, you know, there was a fire that ravaged, and he didn't really help the people. And many early believers saw him as a tyrant who embodied the evils of Rome, while some believed he was the Antichrist himself. Foreshadowed in the Bible. But this is for good reason, because when applying gematria to Nero's name in Greek, the transliteration in Hebrew as well, an interesting pattern emerges. In Greek, Nero's name is written as Neron Caesar, which when translated into Hebrew, becomes Neron Kesar. And when taking the gematria of his Hebrew name, we get 666. This led many scholars to conclude that the number of the beast was a hidden reference to Nero Caesar, meant to be understood by the early Christians, but hidden to the Roman authorities so that they could talk about this person and their political rivals without fear of, you know, the authorities of the time knowing. But why would John use a coded number instead of just directly naming Nero? Obviously, because they're going to get murdered. As we have talked about before, a lot of the disciples in early church leaders and, you know, followers of Christ led a very dismal death. You can see that episode that we released a couple weeks ago. So during the time that Revelation was written, most likely around like, you know, 90 AD, Christianity was heavily persecuted, particularly under Emperor Domitian. However, Nero set the precedent for Christian persecution decades earlier. Nero blamed Christians for the Great Fire of Rome. In 64, he had believers torn apart by dogs, crucified, and even burned alive. To openly criticize the Roman emperor would have been dangerous, obviously. But by encoding the name into Gematria, the message could be conveyed safely among believers while avoiding direct accusations that may have led to persecution. But while 666 is the most famous number associated with the beast, some early manuscripts of Revelation contain a variation.616. How does this happen again? Gematria provides an explanation. In some regions at that time, Nero's name was spelled differently. Instead of Neron Caesar, it was Latinized to Nero Caesar as we know it now. And in that case, the transliteration into Hebrew without the final sound of the N on Neuronthe letters add up to 616 instead of 666. This explains why some early copies of Revelation have 616 in the text. It was likely adjusted to fit the spelling familiar to different regions of the Roman world. And actually, one of the earliest writings we have found from the Book of Revelation comes from an artifact called Papyrus 115. And on this papyrus, in the same verse that mentions the mark of the beast, this ancient find doesn't have 666, it has 616, reinforcing the idea of changing the words to accommodate other regions, basically as a translation for the people that would be reading it. So if John is in fact referencing Nero, does that mean he believed Nero was the actual Antichrist? Some scholars believe that Revelation is using Nero as a symbol of future evil rulers, rather than declaring him literally the Antichrist. But many early Christians believe that, you know, in this sort of Nero Redivius legend, which states that Nero would return even after his death. Many people believe this at the time. And this comes from Revelation 13:3, where it describes the beast as having a mortal wound that was healed. A possible reference to this belief that Nero's reign, or maybe someone like him, would be revived even beyond Nero. 666 has a deeper meaning. The number six represents imperfection, while seven is divine perfection. Six falls short of seven, representing human weakness, imperfection, and sin. But notice that the beast number is not just six, it's triple six, emphasizing the human imperfections and rebellions against God. Again, just a triplet, aggregating, sort of exaggerating the evilness of this Number it could also be seen as a counterfeit of the Trinity, which is obviously three. It is some sort of perversion of the perfect triune God, but instead it is a beast, a false prophet, and Satan mirroring the roles of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. All right, so let's finish up with a classic from the Bible. We've kind of been skirting around this, but the Garden of Eden, right, Obviously Adam and Eve are tempted by an evil serpent that leads to the fall of man. So the Hebrew word for Satan obviously is translating to the adversary or the accuser. And when we break it down to its letters and we, you know, use gematria, we get 3, 6, 4. Which again, might sound random, but there's a deeper meaning. The whole solar year has 365 days. And the Talmud notes that Satan's numerical value of 364 implies that he only has power over the Earth for 364 days, leaving one day powerless. And now in Judaism, the day of atonement, Yom Kippur. This is the holiest day. Jews fast, they pray, they seek forgiveness, symbolizing a direct communion with God. Rabbi Yehuda Ha Nasi explains. On Yom Kippur, Satan says, master of the universe, you have one nation like the ministering angels, acknowledging Israel's purity on this specific day. Satan in Judaism has a function not necessarily as a fallen angel, but as a persecuting angel testing humans devotions. Again, this is a specific subset of some interpretations of this story. So the 364365 dichotomy underscores free will, displaying evil's constant presence versus humanity's capacity for repentance. Now, let's end things where we started, right? Garden of Eden. This specific connection is the main defense that people use when saying that the God of the Old Testament is actually Satan. Isn't that crazy? This is a Gnostic tradition that some people believe that, you know, the Old Testament God was actually evil and bad. But it's an actual belief that certain Gnostic sects had. Specifically in the time of early Christianity and even until today, these people claimed that the snake in the garden was actually the good guy trying to give Adam and Eve divine knowledge and trying to help them, you know, have the, the wisdom of God himself, while the deity that people call God was attempting to keep that divine knowledge from them. But to understand this, there's an even deeper geometric meaning in the Hebrew Gematria. Both Mashiach, meaning Messiah, and nakash, meaning snake, share the same numerical value. 3, 5, 8. This connection hints at this profound theological paradox. Again, are these two balancing forces? Or is possible that the force responsible for humanity's fall and the figure destined to redeem are intertwined in the numerical world? Yes. This goes back to the Freemasonic and the Templar ideas of duality between things. The serpent in Jesus is a trickster. It embodies this innate inclination towards selfishness and rebellion within human beings. And Jewish scholars often interpret the snake not as a literal creature, but as a metaphor for the internal battle that human beings face. And The Gematria, the 358 symbolizes humanity's vulnerability to temptation, the flaw embedded in our spiritual DNA since the Garden of Eden. Yet the snake's role is not purely destructive. Rabbinic text suggests that this idea of the innate human selfishness which they call yet so hara also drives ambition and creativity and growth when properly channeled. The snake's duality, corruptive but necessary, sets the stage for redemption. The Messiah in Jewish tradition is neither a supernatural savior or a warrior. Prophetic texts like Isaiah 11 describe a humble, righteous leader who restores justice and unity with God. But you know, many Jews do not believe that Jesus was God in the flesh. The Jewish philosopher Mammides emphasizes this in the Mishnah Torah, framing the Messiah as a human king who upholds the Torah law, rebuilds Jerusalem and inspires global peace. The shared Gematria 358 between Messiah and snake suggests a divine remedy tailored to undo the serpent's damage. Just as the snake introduced separation and doubt, the Messiah's mission is to heal division and reaffirm divine purpose. Kabbalistic teaching expands on this idea, saying redemption emerges not by erasing evil, but just by transforming it. The Zohar, which is a book containing the mystical aspects of the Torah, describes this nature of tikkun, or repair the snakes 358 represents fractured holiness, the sparks of divine light scattered throughout creation. While the Messiah's 358 symbolizes gathering those sparks through acts of justice and ethical living. Rabbi Isaac Luria, who was a 16th century mystic, taught that human beings partnered with God to repair the world. He said that every moral choice chips away at the snake's influence, paving the way for the new era of the Messiah. The identical gematria underscores the idea that the tools for redemption are woven into the fabric of the problem itself, essentially meaning that, you know, there's good in the bad, there's a yin and that there's a yang, and it just has to be discovered. So after all this we can see that Gematria is pretty confusing and, you know, pretty weird, right? You got the snake, Messiah, Christos, Lucifer, all these polar opposites that have similar numbers that people are trying to draw connections to. And, you know, is there a duality there? I don't really think so, but perhaps, you know, this is how some people interpret it, that evil exists not as a permanent force, but as a challenge to overcome, and that there's redemption and rebirth and that it's encoded into the struggle itself. And while Gematria is, you know, just kind of one frame or one sort of lens, you can interpret the Bible or the Torah or, you know, many other, you know, books and pieces of literature from antiquity. It's just one. It's just one way that you could use to, you know, interpret, you know, these texts. But it's an interesting insight that many people happen to believe that in numbers and in language that there is, you know, secret teachings and secret ideas that we can understand the world better. So many of these Freemasons and, you know, secret societies that try to uncode information have used this as a way to, you know, look at the world around us, to predict future events. So that's Gematria. That's just like a little rundown. I'm curious what you guys think. I've never, like I said, I've never been big on numerology. That's, you know, of all the conspiracy stuff, that's the one where I'm just like, I don't know, people draw it into all sorts of events. Natural disasters, terror attacks. People look at Gematria to say, like, look, this is what it really means. Curious what you guys think. If you have experience with this, if you've researched this, if you're a practitioner of numerology, drop a comment. Let me know what I missed. Let me know the connections that exist in our world today, and maybe, I don't know, let me know a prophecy that you think is going to come true. Curious to know what you think you know. As always, we'll be here every Sunday in my tent talking about interesting things from all the religions from around the world. So thank you all so much for listening. I appreciate you dearly. I've been Mark. And peace be with you if you've made it to the end of this episode. You are clearly someone who understands that beneath every historical event lies a deeper truth waiting to be uncovered. You're the type of person who knows that real history is more fascinating than any fiction, and we deeply appreciate that about you. I'll be honest. That's exactly why I personally invite you to sign up for Today in History, our free newsletter that goes beyond the surface of historical events. We dive into the stories that textbooks never told you, the secrets that challenge the course of nations, and the forgotten tales that deserve to be remembered. Let's continue this journey of discovery together. Take the conversation Conversation from your headphones into your inbox. 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