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Numbers in the Hebrew Bible
A survey of the numbers that recur in the Hebrew Bible, from three and seven to twelve, forty and seventy, and how scholars interpret their repeated use.
Scripture, Letters and Calendars
Numbers in Jewish and Biblical Texts
Counted periods, letter values and numerical motifs in Hebrew scripture and its commentary.
Chai and the Number Eighteen in Jewish Custom
Why the Hebrew word chai, meaning life, adds up to eighteen, and how that letter value came to shape gifts and charitable donations in Jewish communities.
Counting the Omer
How the forty-nine day count from the second day of Passover to Shavuot works, where it comes from in Leviticus, and the customs that surround the period.
Forty Days and Forty Years in Scripture
A survey of the flood, Sinai, wilderness and prophetic passages that use the number forty, and what scholars say the figure may signal about time and testing.
Gematria and Hebrew Letter Values
How the Hebrew alphabet doubles as a number system, and how gematria links words of equal value in rabbinic and later commentary, with worked examples.
Jubilee and Sabbatical Years
How Leviticus sets a seven-year cycle of rest for the land and a fiftieth-year jubilee of release, and how later Jewish and Christian traditions treated both.
Seven Days of Creation and the Sabbath
The creation week in Genesis 1, the two reasons the Bible gives for Sabbath rest, and how a seven-day rhythm shaped Jewish observance from antiquity to today.
The Number of the Beast and Its Textual Variants
What Revelation 13:18 says about 666, why some early manuscripts read 616, and how gematria readings of the name Nero are used to explain both numbers.
The Ten Sefirot in Kabbalah
What the ten sefirot are in Jewish mysticism, how medieval Kabbalists arranged them, and why the number ten mattered to the early texts that introduced them.
The Twelve Tribes of Israel and the Twelve Apostles
How the twelve tribes descended from Jacob structured ancient Israel, and why the New Testament presents twelve apostles in a way that echoes that tribal framework.
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