Numbers Prove Nothing

Here is one more thing that shows their opinion false and their invented system untenable: the very way they go about proving it. Sometimes they argue from numbers and from the syllables of names, sometimes from the letters that make up syllables, and again from the numerical values that Greek practice attaches to the several letters. Nothing displays their overthrow — or their confusion — more clearly than this, or shows better how untenable and perverse the “knowledge” they profess really is. [a]

Take the name Jesus. It belongs to another language altogether, yet they carry it over into the Greek way of reckoning. Sometimes they call it the Episemon, because it has six letters; at other times the Fullness of the Ogdoads, because its letters come to eight hundred and eighty-eight. But his corresponding Greek name — Soter, that is, Savior — they pass over in silence, because it will not fit their scheme, either in its numerical value or in its letters. Yet if they really hold that the Lord’s names, by the Father’s settled purpose, indicate number in the Pleroma through their letters and through the numbers those letters carry, then Soter, being a Greek name, ought precisely because it is Greek to display the mystery of the Pleroma by its letters and its numbers. It does not. It is a word of five letters, and its numerical value is one thousand four hundred and eight. Those figures answer to nothing whatever in their Pleroma. So the account they give of what went on inside the Pleroma cannot be true.

Furthermore, Jesus is a word belonging to the Hebrews’ own tongue, and it contains — so their learned men say — two letters and a half, and it means the Lord who contains heaven and earth. For in the ancient Hebrew language Jesus means “heaven,” while “earth” is expressed by the words sura usser. The word that contains heaven and earth, then, is simply Jesus. So their explanation of the Episemon is false, and their calculation of the number is plainly overthrown as well. In their own language Soter is a Greek word of five letters, while in the Hebrew tongue Jesus contains only two and a half. The total they reckon up, eight hundred and eighty-eight, therefore falls to the ground.

And all through, the Hebrew letters do not agree in number with the Greek — though these above all, being the older and unchanging ones, ought to be what holds up any reckoning made from names. For these ancient, original letters of the Hebrews, the ones called priestly, are ten in number, though they are written by means of fifteen, the last letter being joined to the first. Some of them they write in their natural order, just as we do; others they write the reverse way, from the right hand toward the left, tracing the letters backwards.

The name Christ, too, ought to be capable of being reckoned up in harmony with the Aeons of their Pleroma, since on their own account he was produced to establish and set right that Pleroma. So too the Father ought, by his letters and by their numerical value, to contain the number of the Aeons produced by him; and Bythus likewise, and Monogenes no less. Above all, so ought the name that is above every other, the name by which God is called, which in the Hebrew tongue is expressed by Baruch — and that word also contains two letters and a half. Since, then, the more important names in both Hebrew and Greek do not conform to their system, either in the number of their letters or in the total reckoned out of them, the forced character of their calculations about everything else becomes perfectly plain.

They pick out of the law whatever things agree with the number their system has adopted, and so wrench proofs of its soundness out of it. But if it was really their Mother’s purpose, or the Savior’s, to set out through the Demiurge types of the things that are in the Pleroma, they should have seen to it that the types were found in things that matched more exactly and were more holy — above all in the ark of the covenant, for the sake of which the whole tabernacle of witness was built. Now the ark was made this way: two and a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, a cubit and a half high. Such a count of cubits corresponds to nothing at all in their system, and yet it is here beyond anything else that the type ought to have been set out clearly. The mercy seat likewise does not fit their explanations. The table for the bread of the Presence, again, was two cubits long, and its height a cubit and a half. These stood in front of the holy of holies, and yet not one number in them amounts to anything that so much as hints at the Tetrad, or the Ogdoad, or the rest of their Pleroma.

What of the lampstand, with its seven branches and seven lamps? If it had been made after the type, it ought to have had eight branches and as many lamps, after the type of the primary Ogdoad, which shines out among the Aeons above the rest and lights up the whole Pleroma. They have carefully counted the curtains as ten and declared them a type of the ten Aeons — but they have forgotten to count the coverings of skin, which were eleven. Nor have they measured the size of those very curtains, each of them twenty-eight cubits long. They give the length of the pillars as ten cubits, with an eye to the Decad of Aeons; but “the breadth of each pillar was a cubit and a half,” and that they do not explain, any more than they explain the whole number of the pillars or of their bars, because it does not suit the argument.

And what of the anointing oil that made the whole tabernacle holy? Perhaps it escaped the Savior’s notice; or perhaps, while their Mother was asleep, the Demiurge gave the instructions about its weight on his own. That would account for its being out of tune with their Pleroma — five hundred shekels of myrrh, five hundred of cassia, two hundred and fifty of cinnamon, two hundred and fifty of calamus, and oil besides, so that it was made of five ingredients. The incense in the same way was compounded of stacte, onycha, galbanum, mint and frankincense, and none of that agrees with their argument, either in its mixture or in its weights. It is unreasonable, then, and altogether absurd, to hold that the types were not preserved in the law’s grandest and most impressive requirements, and yet, wherever some number happens to coincide with their claims, to declare that it was a type of the things in the Pleroma — when in fact every number turns up in the Scriptures in the greatest variety, so that anyone who wanted to could put together not only an Ogdoad and a Decad and a Duodecad, but any sort of number at all out of the Scriptures, and then maintain that it was a type of whatever system of error he had devised for himself.

That this is so — that the number five, which agrees in no way with their argument, does not harmonize with their system, and is no use for a typical showing of the things in the Pleroma, nevertheless turns up everywhere — will be proved from the Scriptures as follows. Soter is a name of five letters. Pater contains five letters. Agape, love, consists of five letters too. Our Lord blessed five loaves and fed five thousand men with them. Five virgins were called wise by the Lord, and five in the same way were called foolish. Again, five men are said to have been with the Lord when he received testimony from the Father: Peter and James and John, and Moses and Elijah. The Lord also went in as the fifth person to the room where the dead girl lay, and raised her up; for Scripture says, “He let no one go in except Peter and James, and the father and mother of the girl.” The rich man in hell said that he had five brothers, and wanted someone rising from the dead to go to them. The pool from which the Lord told the paralyzed man to go home had five porches.

The very shape of the cross has five ends: two in its length, two in its breadth, and one in the middle, where the man rests who is fastened by the nails. Each of our hands has five fingers. We have five senses. Our inner organs may likewise be reckoned as five — heart, liver, lungs, spleen and kidneys. The whole person, too, may be divided into this number of parts: head, chest, belly, thighs and feet. The human race passes through five ages: infancy first, then boyhood, then youth, then the prime of life, and then old age. Moses handed the law to the people in five books. Each tablet he received from God contained five commandments. The veil that covered the holy of holies had five pillars. The altar of burnt offering was five cubits in breadth. Five priests were chosen in the wilderness: Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, Ithamar. The ephod and the breastpiece and the other priestly garments were made out of five materials, since they combined gold and blue and purple and scarlet and fine linen. And there were five kings of the Amorites whom Joshua son of Nun shut up in a cave, telling the people to trample on their heads.

Anyone, in fact, could collect many thousand other things of the same kind, both about this number and about any other he chose to fix on, either from the Scriptures or from the works of nature lying open to his observation. But although that is so, we do not therefore assert that there are five Aeons above the Demiurge. We do not consecrate the Pentad as though it were something divine. We do not labor to establish untenable positions, or ravings such as theirs, by that empty kind of work. We do not perversely force a creation that God fitted well for the ends it was meant to serve into turning itself into types of things that have no real existence. And we do not set out to put forward irreverent and abominable teachings, which anyone with any intelligence can detect and overthrow easily enough.

For who can grant them that the year has only three hundred and sixty-five days so that there may be twelve months of thirty days each, after the type of the twelve Aeons — when the type is in fact completely out of tune with what it is supposed to represent? In the one case each of the Aeons is a thirtieth part of the entire Pleroma; in the other they declare that a month is the twelfth part of a year. If the year were divided into thirty parts and the month into twelve, then a fitting type might be regarded as having been found for their invented system. But as things actually stand, their Pleroma is divided into thirty parts and a portion of it into twelve, while the whole year is divided into twelve parts and a certain portion of it into thirty. So the Savior acted unwisely in making the month a type of the entire Pleroma, but the year a type only of that Duodecad which exists in the Pleroma; for it would have been more fitting to divide the year into thirty parts, as the whole Pleroma is divided, and the month into twelve, just as the Aeons are in their Pleroma.

Besides, they divide the entire Pleroma into three portions — an Ogdoad, a Decad and a Duodecad — while our year is divided into four: spring, summer, autumn and winter. And again, the months they maintain to be a type of the Triacontad do not even consist of exactly thirty days; some have more and some fewer, since five days are left over. Nor does the day always consist of exactly twelve hours; it climbs from nine to fifteen and then falls back again from fifteen to nine. So it cannot be held that months of thirty days were formed for the sake of representing the Aeons, since in that case they would have consisted of exactly thirty days; nor that the days of those months have twelve hours in order to symbolize the twelve Aeons, since in that case they would always have consisted of exactly twelve hours.

Then there is their calling material substances “on the left hand,” and their insisting that whatever is on the left hand must necessarily fall into corruption. They also say that the Savior came to the lost sheep in order to move it over to the right hand — that is, to the ninety-nine sheep that were safe and did not perish but stayed inside the fold, and yet were of the left hand. It follows that they must acknowledge that enjoying rest did not amount to salvation. And whatever does not reach the same number they will be forced to acknowledge as belonging to the left hand, that is, to corruption. Now this Greek word Agape, love, by the letters the Greeks reckon with, has a numerical value of ninety-three, and so it too is assigned to the place of rest on the left hand. Aletheia, truth, on the same principle, has a numerical value of sixty-four, and so exists among material substances. In short, they will be forced to acknowledge that all those sacred names which do not reach a numerical value of one hundred, but contain only the numbers summed on the left hand, are corruptible and material.

Someone may answer all this by saying, “What then? Is it a meaningless accident that the positions of names are what they are, that the apostles were elected as they were, that the Lord worked as he did, and that created things are arranged as they are?” Our answer to them is: certainly not. Everything has plainly been made by God with great wisdom and diligence, fitted and prepared for its own purpose; and his Word formed both the things of long ago and the things belonging to the latest times. But people ought not to be tying those things to the number thirty. They ought to be bringing them into harmony with what actually exists, or with sound reason. And they should not go looking into God by way of numbers and syllables and letters. That is an unreliable way to proceed, because their systems are so many and so various, and because in our own day any hypothesis at all can be devised by anyone in the same manner — so that they can draw arguments against the truth out of these very theories, since such theories can be turned in any number of directions. What they ought to do is the opposite: fit the numbers themselves, and the things that have been formed, to the true account that lies before them. For a rule does not spring out of numbers; numbers spring out of a rule. God does not derive his being from the things that were made; the things that were made derive their being from God. For all things come from one and the same God. [s]

Created things are various and many. Taken as a whole they are well fitted and adapted to the whole creation; but taken one by one they are opposed to each other and out of tune. It is the same with the sound of a lyre, which is made of many notes that are opposites of one another and yet gives rise to one unbroken melody, precisely through the interval that separates each note from the rest. A lover of truth, then, ought not to be thrown off by the interval between one note and another. He should not imagine that one note was due to one craftsman and author and another to another, or that one man tuned the high strings, another the low, and another those in between. He should hold instead that one and the same person made the whole, so that the judgment and the goodness and the skill displayed in the entire work, and its wisdom, may be proved. Those who listen to the melody, too, ought to praise and exalt the craftsman: to admire how some notes are stretched tight, to attend to the softness of others, to catch the sound of those that lie between the two extremes, and to consider the particular character of others, asking what each one is aiming at and what the cause of their variety is — never failing to apply our rule, never letting go of the one craftsman, never throwing off faith in the one God who formed everything, and never speaking against our Creator.

If anyone does not discover the cause of everything he sets out to investigate, let him consider that a human being is immeasurably less than God; that he has received grace only in part, and is not yet equal or similar to his Maker; and that he cannot have experience or form a conception of all things as God does. In the same proportion as one who was formed only today, and has received the beginning of his creation, is less than the one who is uncreated and always the same, in that same proportion he is less — in knowledge and in the ability to investigate the causes of all things — than the one who made him. For you are a man, and not an uncreated being; you did not always exist alongside God, as his own Word did. Through his surpassing goodness you have received the beginning of your creation only now, and you are learning by degrees from the Word the ways of the God who made you.

So keep your knowledge in its proper order. Do not, out of ignorance of what is really good, try to rise above God himself, for he cannot be surpassed. Do not go searching for anyone above the Creator, because you will not find one. Your Maker cannot be shut up within limits; and though you were to measure this whole universe, and pass through the whole of his creation, and consider it in all its depth and height and length, you would not be able to conceive of any other above the Father himself. You will not be able to think him fully out. Instead, by indulging in trains of reflection contrary to your own nature, you will prove yourself a fool; and if you keep on in such a course, you will fall into sheer madness, thinking yourself loftier and greater than your Creator, and imagining that you can push your way beyond his dominions.