PART II, ARTICLE VIII: NUMEROLOGY MADNESS, SECTION IV

After this we are told that the number thirteen signifies sin and rebellion. Why not grant that it does? Joktan is singled out for special consideration here because he is the thirteenth in the order of Shem’s descendents (Genesis 10) and the Gematria of his name amounts to a figure of 169, or 13 x 13. That he was the thirteenth in order after Shem is debatable. But for the sake of argument, why not grant the wish? According to the PowerPoint, Joktan is supposed to be ‘the ancestor of sinful and rebellious people.’ But how sinful and rebellious? What is the measure? Isn’t every sinner sinful and rebellious? Did the people from Joktan’s line become any more sinful and rebellious than the people from the line of Peleg, Joktan’s brother? Abraham is from the line of Peleg (1 Chronicles 1.) Why was Abraham called out of Ur to begin a new line of people if it wasn’t because the people from whom he came were sinful and rebellious? Joktan is no more deserving of the number thirteen epithet than anyone else in his day. If one were to look into it, a bona fide saint from the Bible would soon be found to have a Gematria that could be cleanly divided into thirteens. I was going to try to find one, whereupon I immediately discovered that there are several Gematria models to choose from: Jewish, English, and Simple, each one with its own way of calculating. So I never minded. These three models give Joktan’s Gematria as 801, 426, and 71, none of which divide crisply into thirteens. On another site, I found that there are four ways of computing letters: according to ‘absolute’ value, ‘ordinal’ value, ‘reduced’ value, and ‘integral reduced’ value. “Each letter represents a different creative force,” it says there, which sounds eerily magical, and which reminds me of what charismatic churchgoers believe: that words, especially when uttered, have a power of their own. It is no wonder, then, that my superstitious ‘full gospel’ friend would be roused by Gematria. Anyway, it appears as though it does not matter what model or value system a person chooses to use, or even if a person chooses to come up with his own. It’s all about causing enthusiasm and discussion through a discovery of something that even the prophets and apostles were too unspiritual to investigate. Not knowing which model and value formula Panin and Bullinger used, and thus, which one my friend used to build his project, I will pose a question instead. Why not single out Judas? Does he not, or should he not, signify sin and rebellion even more than Joktan? Maybe coming up with a figure that would show Judas to be associated with the number thirteen is not so easily done. Could that not be the reason why the obscure Joktan is singled out instead of the infamous Judas? Well, this seems entirely likely. What I found from Dr. Bullinger is that to make Judas into some sort of number thirteen wonder-boy, one has to take, not only his first name, last name, or even his two names together, but this whole phrase: ‘Judas Iscariot, he that should betray him.’ Then you get a numerical value of 4,511, which divides itself neatly into 347-13s. That is not part of the PowerPoint, though. Why not? Because my friend must have recognized that it was too much of a reach. No doubt, like what happened to me, he must have run into farfetched numbering like that during his research. (Not that this whole business is not farfetched.) Maybe he is smarter than his masters in numerology.