Genesis 1:1 · Book · Featured Study

The Mathematical Order of the Bible

Prime factors and triangles of dots test the letter total of Genesis 1:1, and the counts beside it, for design.

Add the letters of the first sentence of the Bible and you get 2701.

Date: the soferim's counts recorded in the Talmud (b. Kiddushin 30a); the modern counts from 1894 to 1999 (probable)
Written by: the soferim, Ivan Panin, E. W. Bullinger
Occasion: Readers have added the letter values of Genesis 1:1 and other verses and asked whether the totals show design.
Edition: The Masoretic Hebrew text of Genesis 1:1, valued by the standard letter values

Rembrandt van Rijn, The Scholar at the Lectern, 1641. Public domain.

Genesis 1:1 BSB

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

8The Alphabet Is Also a Number System
9Genesis 1:1 Adds Up to 2701
22701 Splits Exactly One Way: 37 × 73

Summary

Each step from the alphabet to that total can be checked by hand, and the sevens are set beside what chance alone would give.

The seven Hebrew words of Genesis 1:1 hold 28 letters, each valued by the standard table.
2701 is 37 × 73 and is also the 73rd triangular number.
John's 153 fish and Luke's 276 souls on the ship are triangular numbers too.
The Talmud records that the early scribes counted every letter of the Torah and knew its middle letter, words and verse.
Oswald T. Allis argued in 1944 that counts of this kind select their hits and leave out their misses, and his test is applied to each count here.

The Alphabet Is Also a Number System

The tables give the standard values of the Hebrew and Greek letters.

Hebrew and Greek had no separate digits, so each letter was both a sound and a number.

A Hebrew book still numbers its pages this way, and every sum below can be checked against these tables.

Five letters change shape when they end a word, and the standard system gives each final form the value of its ordinary form.

Other systems run the five from 500 to 900, and every figure here keeps the standard values.

The twenty-two Hebrew letters and the five final forms1 to 400

The Hebrew letters with their standard values: the units, the tens and the hundreds to 400.

Letter	Name	Value
א	aleph	1
ב	bet	2
ג	gimel	3
ד	dalet	4
ה	he	5
ו	vav	6
ז	zayin	7
ח	chet	8
ט	tet	9
י	yod	10
כ	kaf	20
ל	lamed	30
מ	mem	40
נ	nun	50
ס	samekh	60
ע	ayin	70
פ	pe	80
צ	tsade	90
ק	qof	100
ר	resh	200
ש	shin	300
ת	tav	400

ז, ח, ט, י, כ, ל, מ, נ and 8 more

The five final forms take the values of the letters they close.

Letter	Name	Value
ך	kaf sofit	20
ם	mem sofit	40
ן	nun sofit	50
ף	pe sofit	80
ץ	tsade sofit	90

Greek: the same idea, three extra letters27 letters

Greek works the same way; to reach nine units, nine tens and nine hundreds it keeps three letters that had left the spoken alphabet: stigma at 6, koppa at 90 and sampi at 900.

The Greek letters with their number values, stigma, koppa and sampi among them.

Letter	Name	Value
α	alpha	1
β	beta	2
γ	gamma	3
δ	delta	4
ε	epsilon	5
ϛ	stigma	6
ζ	zeta	7
η	eta	8
θ	theta	9
ι	iota	10
κ	kappa	20
λ	lambda	30
μ	mu	40
ν	nu	50
ξ	xi	60
ο	omicron	70
π	pi	80
ϙ	koppa	90
ρ	rho	100
σ	sigma	200
τ	tau	300
υ	upsilon	400
φ	phi	500
χ	chi	600
ψ	psi	700
ω	omega	800
ϡ	sampi	900

ζ, η, θ, ι, κ, λ, μ, ν and 13 more

Type a word in Hebrew or Greek letters to add its values.

Add up a word yourself

Pick one of the words below, or paste any Hebrew or Greek, and the sum builds a letter at a time.

The word

Letter	Name	Value	Running total
ב	bet	2	2
ר	resh	200	202
א	aleph	1	203
ש	shin	300	503
י	yod	10	513
ת	tav	400	913
ב	bet	2	915
ר	resh	200	1115
א	aleph	1	1116
א	aleph	1	1117
ל	lamed	30	1147
ה	he	5	1152
י	yod	10	1162
ם	mem sofit	40	1202
א	aleph	1	1203
ת	tav	400	1603
ה	he	5	1608
ש	shin	300	1908
מ	mem	40	1948
י	yod	10	1958
ם	mem sofit	40	1998
ו	vav	6	2004
א	aleph	1	2005
ת	tav	400	2405
ה	he	5	2410
א	aleph	1	2411
ר	resh	200	2611
ץ	tsade sofit	90	2701

Total2,701

2701, added a letter at a time from the table above.

Each preset is a word whose total stands in the sections below or on the codes exhibit.

Genesis 1:1 Adds Up to 2701

Each word's letters are looked up in the table and added.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Genesis 1:1BSB

It opens the Bible, and every one of its seven words is counted.

Two of the seven words, et and ve'et, mark the object of the verb, and ve'et adds “and”.

The letter count, 28, is also the second perfect number, the sum of everything that divides it: 1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14 = 28.

Two of the seven words, et and ve'et, mark the object of the verb, and ve'et adds “and”.

The letter count, 28, is also the second perfect number, the sum of everything that divides it: 1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14 = 28.

The seven words add to 2701.

Word	Letters	Value
בְּרֵאשִׁית bereshit	6	913
בָּרָא bara	3	203
אֱלֹהִים elohim	5	86
אֵת et	2	401
הַשָּׁמַיִם hashamayim	5	395
וְאֵת ve'et	3	407
הָאָרֶץ ha'aretz	4	296
The whole verse	28	2701

The seven words of Genesis 1:1 with their letters and values.

הָאָרֶץ ha'aretz, The whole verse

2701 Splits Exactly One Way: 37 × 73

Trial division by every prime up to the square root settles it.

To know that 2701 is 37 × 73 and nothing else, every smaller prime is tried in turn.

A factor pair always has one member no larger than the square root, which for 2701 is about 52, so only the primes below 52 need trying.

The first prime that divides it is 37.

37 and 73 are prime, each is the other's digits reversed, and they stand 12th and 21st in the list of primes, which are reversed digits as well.

The trial division, prime by primetwelve primes

Trial division of 2701 by each prime to 37, with the remainder each leaves.

Divisor	Working	Divides 2701
2	2701 is odd	no
3	2 + 7 + 0 + 1 = 10, not a multiple of 3	no
5	2701 does not end in 0 or 5	no
7	7 × 385 = 2695, remainder 6	no
11	2 − 7 + 0 − 1 = −6	no
13	13 × 207 = 2691, remainder 10	no
17	17 × 158 = 2686, remainder 15	no
19	19 × 142 = 2698, remainder 3	no
23	23 × 117 = 2691, remainder 10	no
29	29 × 93 = 2697, remainder 4	no
31	31 × 87 = 2697, remainder 4	no
37	37 × 73 = 2701, remainder 0	yes

17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37

The primes counted in order37 is 12th, 73 is 21st

73 and 37 pass the same test against every prime below their square roots, so both are prime.

The first twenty-one primes by their place in the list.

Place	Prime
1	2
2	3
3	5
4	7
5	11
6	13
7	17
8	19
9	23
10	29
11	31
12	37
13	41
14	43
15	47
16	53
17	59
18	61
19	67
20	71
21	73

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 7 more

2701 Is the 73rd Triangular Number

The triangle and the factors are one fact seen from two sides.

A triangle of 73 rows holds 2701 dots, and two of them make a rectangle of 73 by 74.

Genesis 1:1

2701 dots73 lines, from one dot to seventy-three

Genesis 1:1

Two copies, 73 by 74

73 × 74 = 5,402 dots, in two matching staircases. One staircase is 2,701.

Each dot stands for one unit of the verse's sum.

A triangular number is the count of dots in such a triangle, and T(n) = n × (n + 1) ÷ 2, half the rectangle of n rows by n + 1.

Halve the 74 before multiplying: 74 ÷ 2 = 37, and T(73) = 73 × 37 = 2701.

For any odd n, (n + 1) ÷ 2 is a whole number, so every triangle with an odd number of rows splits into that pair; that part is forced by arithmetic.

That this verse's total splits into two primes, and that the two primes are each other's digits reversed, is not forced by anything.

A number of that size could have been prime, or the product of two composites, and this one is 37 × 73.

Why 1 + 2 + 3 + … + n = n(n + 1) ÷ 2the proof

Write the sum forwards, and write it again backwards beneath it.

Every column then adds to n + 1, and there are n columns, so twice the sum is n(n + 1) and the sum is n(n + 1) ÷ 2.

The sum written forwards and backwards; each column adds to n + 1, and for n = 73 the sum is 2701.

Line	Terms
Forwards	1 + 2 + 3 + … + (n − 1) + n
Backwards	n + (n − 1) + (n − 2) + … + 2 + 1
Each column	n + 1, taken n times
For n = 73	73 × 74 ÷ 2 = 5402 ÷ 2 = 2701

The Same Shape in Two More Counts

John 21:11 and Acts 27:37 give totals of 153 and 276.

2701, 153 and 276 are each a triangle of dots.

Genesis 1:1

2701 dotsT(73)

Genesis 1:1

John 21:11, the fish in the net

153 dotsT(17)

John 21:11

Acts 27:37, the souls aboard

276 dotsT(23)

Acts 27:37

Each count drawn as a triangle of dots.

So Simon Peter went aboard and dragged the net ashore. It was full of large fish, 153, but even with so many, the net was not torn.

John 21:11BSB

The net held a counted catch.

In all, there were 276 of us on board.

Acts 27:37BSB

Luke counts the ship's company on the way to Malta.

Augustine preached on 153 as the triangle of seventeen in Tractate 122 of his Tractates on the Gospel of John, adding every number from 1 to 17.

E. W. Bullinger gave 153 a section of its own in Number in Scripture and printed Augustine's sum in full.

Nobody had to look for 153 or 276, because John and Luke wrote the numbers down.

The Sevens, and How Far Past Chance They Run

The ledger holds eight multiples of seven in nine rows.

The ledger counts nine quantities in the verse.

Quantity	Value	In sevens
Words in the verse	7	7 × 1
Letters in the verse	28	7 × 4
Letters in the first three words	14	7 × 2
Letters in the last four words	14	7 × 2
Letters in words 4 and 5, “… the heavens”	7	7 × 1
Letters in words 6 and 7, “… and the earth”	7	7 × 1
Value of the three nouns: God, heavens, earth	777	7 × 111
Value of the verb “created”	203	7 × 29
Value of the whole verse	2701	not a multiple of 7

The sevens ledger of Genesis 1:1, every quantity computed from the seven words.

Value of the three nouns: God, heavens, earth, Value of the verb “created”, Value of the whole verse

One number in seven divides by seven, so nine independent quantities would give about 9 ÷ 7, or 1.3, multiples of seven by chance.

The nine are not independent: 14 + 14 = 28 ties the third and fourth rows to the second, and 7 + 7 = 14 ties rows five and six to the fourth.

That leaves seven independent quantities, six of them multiples of seven and one a miss, where chance would give about one, and that is the figure worth quoting.

The standing objection to counted sevens is that a counter with a long enough list of things to count will always find some.

The ledger's rows for the whole verse choose nothing, which is why Genesis 1:1 leads.

Its other rows choose groups of words, the nouns and the verb among them, and those rows answer to the same objection.

The Composite Triangle: Genesis 1:1 and John 1:1 Together

The John 1:1 total rests on how one Greek word is spelled.

2701 and 3627 together close a triangle of 112 rows.

Genesis 1:1 and John 1:1

6328 dotsT(112)Genesis 1:1 at the apexJohn 1:1 beneath

Rows 1 to 73: T(73) = 73 × 74 ÷ 2 = 2701 dots
Rows 74 to 112: 6328 − 2701 = 3627 dots
All 112 rows: T(112) = 112 × 113 ÷ 2 = 6328 dots

John 1:1

Genesis 1:1 at the apex and John 1:1 beneath it.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

John 1:1BSB

It opens with the same words as Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning”.

The triangle's 112 rows are 7 × 16.

The 2701 of Genesis 1:1 is a count of the text, and anyone with the Hebrew gets the same answer.

The 3627 is a modern computation: the Greek letters of John 1:1 add to 3617, and the figure reaches 3627 only by counting the iota subscript under ἀρχῇ as 10.

Byzantine scholars introduced the iota subscript in the twelfth century, and the early manuscripts of the Gospel do not have it.

The figure of 3627 and the composite triangle are credited to Peter Bluer's 373: A Proof Set in Stone, and the arithmetic from that figure is exact.

John 1:1 added word by word: 3617, and 3627 with the iota17 words

The seventeen Greek words of John 1:1 valued by the table above; they add to 3617, and the iota subscript under ἀρχῇ adds 10.

Word	Value
εν	55
αρχη	709
ην	58
ο	70
λογος	373
και	31
ο	70
λογος	373
ην	58
προς	450
τον	420
θεον	134
και	31
θεος	284
ην	58
ο	70
λογος	373
the iota subscript under ἀρχῇ	10

ο, λογος, ην, προς, τον, θεον, και, θεος and 4 more

How the Scribes Made the Scroll Add Up

Kiddushin 30a names the midpoints of the Torah.

The Talmud says the first Sages were called soferim, “those who count”, because they counted all the letters in the Torah.

Their counts fixed three midpoints of the five books.

Gary Pratico and Miles Van Pelt hold, in Basics of Biblical Hebrew Grammar (2009), that such counts also guarded the accuracy of copies made by hand.

The other counts are arithmetic performed on the text; this one was performed by the people who carried it.

All three midpoints fall in Leviticus.

Midpoint	What stands there	Verse
The middle letter	the vav of gachon, “belly”, written large in the scroll to this day	Leviticus 11:42
The middle words	darosh darash, “he diligently inquired”	Leviticus 10:16
The middle verse	a verse of the law on skin disease	Leviticus 13:33

The midpoints the Babylonian Talmud records in Kiddushin 30a, by letters, by words and by verses.

Where the counting ran out, in the Sages' own wordsb. Kiddushin 30a

On the same page the Sages admit a limit: they were no longer expert in the full and short spellings of words, so their letter totals could not settle every case.

A tradition that records where its counting stopped working gives a reason to trust its other figures.

It is also why a letter sequence stretched over thousands of letters is a harder claim than a count inside one verse: one letter added or dropped moves every position after it.

Panin's Sevens in Matthew 1, Worked

Ivan Panin reported four counts in Matthew 1:1 to 17.

Three of Panin's four counts divide by seven, and the miss is printed.

Quantity	Count	In sevens
Distinct words in the vocabulary	72	72 ÷ 7 = 10, remainder 2
Distinct words in verses 1 to 11	49	7 × 7
Nouns	56	7 × 8
Sum of the letter values	42,364	7 × 6,052

Each of the four counts tested for sevens.

In all, then, there were fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ.

Matthew 1:17BSB

Matthew states here that he set the generations in three sets of fourteen.

Fourteen is two sevens, and David, דוד, is 4 + 6 + 4 = 14 in Hebrew letters.

The figures are those Panin printed in The Structure of the Bible and The Heptadic Structure of Scripture (1923), and seventeen verses offer far more quantities to choose from than seven words.

The Standing Objection to Counted Numerics

Allis argued that the counts select their hits.

The four rules of the countmethod

Four rules for testing a count for design.

Rule	Why
Name the convention before computing	Hebrew letters can be valued more than one way, so the standard values are stated once and never switched.
Show the working	A column of seven numbers adding to 2701 can be checked by any reader.
Count the whole passage, or name the words chosen	The whole-verse totals take every word, and a row of chosen words names them.
State what chance would give	The number of quantities counted stands beside the number of hits.

The selection objection, and Allis on Paninpublished critique, 1944

Oswald T. Allis was a conservative Old Testament scholar and one of the men who began Westminster Theological Seminary, so his objection came from inside the house.

In Bible Numerics he argued that Panin's features were chosen after the fact from many kinds of count, with the failures left out.

He showed that the feature of seven named writers among the twenty-one of the Old Testament ignores Solomon and Jonah, who are on the list and are named in the New Testament.

He wrote that the slip invalidates three of the ten features Panin's pupil Karl Sabiers stressed.

He found the names spelled unevenly as well.

The Greek ending of James is left out of its value while the endings of Peter and Paul are counted, and with its ending James no longer divides by seven.

Panin's aim was to settle the correct text of the Bible by its numbers, and Allis asked whether a verse whose letters do not come out in sevens must then have been copied wrongly.

The sevens section puts his objection into arithmetic.

The statistical debate over the equidistant letter sequences is set out on the codes exhibit.

Witztum, Rips and Rosenberg argued for the sequences in 1994, McKay, Bar-Natan, Bar-Hillel and Kalai answered them in 1999, and the Aumann committee reported in 2004.

Books to Read Next

Bible Numerics
Oswald T. Allis · 1944

The objection to Panin's method from a conservative scholar, with the errors he found.

Read the 1952 printing

Number in Scripture
E. W. Bullinger · 1894

Bullinger sets out the Victorian case for design in the numbers of Scripture.

Read it at archive.org

Does God Play Dice? The New Mathematics of Chaos
Ian Stewart · 1989

A mathematician explains chaos theory to the general reader.

Borrow it at archive.org

What the Count Shows

The total of 2701 and its factors 37 and 73 can be checked by anyone with the Hebrew alphabet and a pencil.

The scribes' counting of the Torah is the oldest evidence on the page, and the Talmud that records it also records where it ran out.

Sources

Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.

Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin 30a, the William Davidson edition (Sefaria, CC BY-NC)
Oswald T. Allis, Bible Numerics (Moody Press, 1944; the 1952 printing)
E. W. Bullinger, Number in Scripture: Its Supernatural Design and Spiritual Significance (1894; the 4th edition of 1921, the section One Hundred and Fifty and Three)
Ian Stewart, Does God Play Dice? The New Mathematics of Chaos (1989; 2nd edition 1997)
Ivan Panin, The Structure of the Bible and The Heptadic Structure of Scripture (1890s to 1923)
Chuck Missler, Cosmic Codes: Hidden Messages from the Edge of Eternity (Koinonia House, 1999; expanded 2004), the chapters The Magic of Sevens and On the Fringe: Numerics and Gematria.
The Designer's Fingerprint, the codes exhibit: Witztum, Rips and Rosenberg (Statistical Science, 1994); McKay, Bar-Natan, Bar-Hillel and Kalai (Statistical Science, 1999); the Aumann committee (2004)
Peter Bluer, 373: A Proof Set in Stone (self-published, no date)
The arithmetic worked in the figures of this page, recomputable by the reader.
The standard Hebrew and Greek letter values, the tables of this page (src/components/diagrams/gematria-values.ts)
The Genesis 1:1 word list of the codes exhibit (src/content/els-demonstrations.ts, gen-1-1-heptadic)
Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 122, tr. John Gibb (1888)
Iota subscript, Wikipedia: invented by Byzantine philologists in the 12th century AD; absent from pre-medieval sources.
Masoretic Text, Wikipedia: the enumeration of letters, words and verses; the counting held to ensure accuracy in the transmission of the text, citing Gary D. Pratico and Miles V. Van Pelt, Basics of Biblical Hebrew Grammar (2nd edition, Zondervan, 2009)
Westminster Theological Seminary, its founding faculty of 1929.

Every cited work: the sources registry →

Keep Studying

Studies3

People and groups1

The Genealogies: the lists Matthew 1 draws on

Symbols2

The whole shelf: Numbers, Letters & Hidden Design →

Place	Prime
1	2
2	3
3	5
4	7
5	11
6	13
7	17
8	19
9	23
10	29
11	31
12	37
13	41
14	43
15	47
16	53
17	59
18	61
19	67
20	71
21	73

Place	Prime
1	2
2	3
3	5
4	7
5	11
6	13
7	17
8	19
9	23
10	29
11	31
12	37
13	41
14	43
15	47
16	53
17	59
18	61
19	67
20	71
21	73

Place	Prime
1	2
2	3
3	5
4	7
5	11
6	13
7	17
8	19
9	23
10	29
11	31
12	37
13	41
14	43
15	47
16	53
17	59
18	61
19	67
20	71
21	73