Thank you for your time and insights, AG. You have again been helpful.
You are saying that as a separate study (within the parameters of valid statistical research) that ELS can be engaging and should be pursued.
You appear to be suggesting with the commercialization that ELS has gone after the sensational and left any rigid standards to which statistical research might have subjected it.
Do I have that correct?
Also, I saw the 5's discussion on the "standing in awe" thread and appreciated it at that time. I wonder if Seven_0 has any comments on this subject?
imho,
the scholars at BIBLECODESDIGEST.COM
have overcome that problem. They are a nonprofit group working on it as a personal interest, passion and ministry.
The standards that they are evolving took a big jump with the last parallel comparison between WAR AND PEACE in HEBREW and the Scriptures.
They are in working dialogue with the best Israeli researchers as well as those in this country.
Most of the naysaying I've seen is very behind the times and usually more blind and biased than informed.
The commercialization has brought all kinds of ridicule on the serious mathematicians and thus diminished the value of their effort to many.
This is a great subject, Quix. Thanks. I have found the study of the structure of scripture to be a lonely study. You would think that the proof of scripture would be popular, but that is not going to happen. God is allowing sin to take its course. Nevertheless this is part of scripture, and that makes it profitable, even if we do not know the benefits now.
The critics do not attack the works of Ivan Panin, because it is easy to confirm the veracity of what he claims. Rather they say that it is useless, or that we cannot trust whatever meaning someone might claim to have found in it. If something is in the Bible, it is there because God put it there, who are we to take it lightly?
I put the numerical structure in the category of concealed things referenced in Proverbs 25:2. I have not studied Panins work as much as F. W. Grants, but they are two systems that run together. An example in the natural world might be to look at the numbers on a molecular level and then the look at them on an atomic level. There are similarities and differences, but this is true of Gods work and his word also.
Few would argue that 7 is not significant in scripture. We can debate the meaning, but there are so many examples that we build a strong argument. 7 completes the week just as 8 begins the new week. Look at some 8s in scripture and see if you see a pattern. The priest consecrated on the eighth day, the child circumcised on the eighth day, 8 souls entered the Ark, David, the eighth son, eight New Testament writers. Consider the subject matter of the Psalm 119, a psalm stamped with the number 8 , twenty- two times. The resurrection is on the first day of the new week, the eighth day.
I suspect that the Bible is the most complicated book ever written. Perhaps it is even more complicated than a DNA molecule. Perhaps it is the Genome of Christ. Christ said of the scriptures they are they which testify of me.
I wish I had more time to participate on this thread, but I have to go back to work. I thank you all for your comments, they are a blessing to me.
Seven