Why Did You Choose “Catholic? (Why do adults become Catholics?)

CE.com ^ | January 27th, 2012 | George Weigel

[Salvation]

Why Did You Choose “Catholic?”

January 27th, 2012 by George Weigel

Why do adults become Catholics?

There are as many reasons for “converting” as there are converts. Evelyn Waugh became a Catholic with, by his own admission, “little emotion but clear conviction”: this was the truth; one ought to adhere to it. Cardinal Avery Dulles wrote that his journey into the Catholic Church began when, as an unbelieving Harvard undergraduate detached from his family’s staunch Presbyterianism, he noticed a leaf shimmering with raindrops while taking a walk along the Charles River in Cambridge, Mass.; such beauty could not be accidental, he thought—there must be a Creator. Thomas Merton found Catholicism aesthetically, as well as intellectually, attractive: once the former Columbia free-thinker and dabbler in communism and Hinduism found his way into a Trappist monastery and became a priest, he explained the Mass to his unconverted friend, poet Robert Lax, by analogy to a ballet. Until his death in 2007, Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger insisted that his conversion to Catholicism was not a rejection of, but a fulfillment of, the Judaism into which he was born; the cardinal could often be found at Holocaust memorial services reciting the names of the martyrs, including “Gisèle Lustiger, ma maman” (“my mother”).

Two of the great nineteenth-century converts were geniuses of the English language: theologian John Henry Newman and poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. This tradition of literary converts continued in the twentieth century, and included Waugh, Graham Greene, Edith Sitwell, Ronald Knox, and Walker Percy. Their heritage lives today at Our Savior’s Church on Park Avenue in New York, where convert author, wit, raconteur and amateur pugilist George William Rutler presides as pastor.

In early American Catholicism, the fifth archbishop of Baltimore (and de facto primate of the United States), Samuel Eccleston, was a convert from Anglicanism, as was the first native-born American saint and the precursor of the Catholic school system, Elizabeth Ann Seton. Mother Seton’s portrait in the offices of the archbishop of New York is somewhat incongruous, as the young widow Seton, with her children, was run out of New York by her unforgiving Anglican in-laws when she became a Catholic. On his deathbed, another great nineteenth-century convert, Henry Edward Manning of England, who might have become the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury but became the Catholic archbishop of Westminster instead, took his long-deceased wife’s prayer book from beneath his pillow and gave it to a friend, saying that it had been his spiritual inspiration throughout his life.

If there is a thread running through these diverse personalities, it may be this: that men and women of intellect, culture and accomplishment have found in Catholicism what Blessed John Paul II called the “symphony of truth.” That rich and complex symphony, and the harmonies it offers, is an attractive, compelling and persuasive alternative to the fragmentation of modern and post-modern intellectual and cultural life, where little fits together and much is cacophony. Catholicism, however, is not an accidental assembly of random truth-claims; the creed is not an arbitrary catalogue of propositions and neither is the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It all fits together, and in proposing that symphonic harmony, Catholicism helps fit all the aspects of our lives together, as it orders our loves and loyalties in the right direction.

You don’t have to be an intellectual to appreciate this “symphony of truth,” however. For Catholicism is, first of all, an encounter with a person, Jesus Christ, who is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). And to meet that person is to meet the truth that makes all the other truths of our lives make sense. Indeed, the embrace of Catholic truth in full, as lives like Blessed John Henry Newman’s demonstrate, opens one up to the broadest possible range of intellectual encounters.

Viewed from outside, Catholicism can seem closed and unwelcoming. As Evelyn Waugh noted, though, it all seems so much more spacious and open from the inside. The Gothic, with its soaring vaults and buttresses and its luminous stained glass, is not a classic Catholic architectural form by accident. The full beauty of the light, however, washes over you when you come in.

 

George Weigel is author of the bestselling books The Courage to Be Catholic: Crisis, Reform, and the Future of the Church and Letters to a Young Catholic.

This column has been made available to Catholic Exchange courtesy of the Denver Catholic Register.

 

[boatbums]

Great insight!

[vladimir998]

You wrote:

“You did, and anyone can read it.”

I never posted what you falsely claim I did. The fact that it is false probably will not stop you from repeatedly posting the claim, however.

[daniel1212]

One the other hand.. see http://peacebyjesus.witnesstoday.org/Ancients_on_Scripture.html#2

[verga]

The Apocrypha was not officially accepted by the Catholic Church at a universal council until 1546 at the Council of Trent. This is over a millennium and a half after the books were written, and was a counter reaction to the Protestant Reformation.

I am on my way to bed but I had to point out this glaring error. I teach a communications class, I suggest you look up the Gutenberg Bible. The first one was printed in the 1450's (about 100 years before you claim the council of Trent put the Deutrocanonicals in) You will find that every book in the Catholic Bible are in the Gutenberg's. You can even see one at the Library of Congress in D. C.

So if your source is wrong about something this simple what else are they wrong about.

This is not opinion, it is historical fact.

[metmom]

I understand you must resist the mark of the beast and have your head cut off during the tribulation to become a tribulation saint. What happens to the souls in NYC who miss the rapture and are vaporized 3 seconds later in a nuclear blast? Do they qualify as tribulation saints?

If someone gets saved in those three seconds, they probably would qualify as Tribulation saints. However, I doubt there will be many who accept Christ in that 3 second time period.

[papertyger]

Well, this is certainly interesting. How do Bible- only Protestants say God acts?

Depending on the Protestant: pretty much however they want him to....

[Alamo-Girl]

Excellent insights, dear sister in Christ, thank you so much for sharing them!

[boatbums]

Here is what he said in post 253. People can read it for themselves and decide if the post was unreasonable and caustic. JFTR - I was a little offended by it, too.

I use an online name and always have. I am glad to do so because in past years I had one Protestant anti-Catholic stalker on the internet who followed me from one website to another, and I had another anti-Catholic Protestant (who was mentally ill; which seems quite common) who threatened my with violence and clearly meant it. Because of these and other experiences I concluded long ago that Protestant anti-Catholics are often unhinged and potentially dangerous. I have no desire to expose myself, or my family members, or my friends to possible acts of violence committed by unhinged Protestant anti-Catholics. Thus, I continue, and will always continue, to use a pseudonym. I could care less if you take me less seriously or have no respect for me. I don’t trust you, will not trust you, and from hard experiences have learned that Protestant anti-Catholics should never be trusted.

The label is "Protestant anti-Catholics" or "anti-Catholic Protestant" and, sorry, Vlad, I've never seen a response yet that doesn't put all of us non-Catholics in that same boat. I'd like to think you don't see us all that way, and that you at least respect some here who are not Catholic yet are fellow Christians nonetheless.

[boatbums]

Here is what he said in post 253. People can read it for themselves and decide if the post was unreasonable and caustic. JFTR - I was a little offended by it, too.

I use an online name and always have. I am glad to do so because in past years I had one Protestant anti-Catholic stalker on the internet who followed me from one website to another, and I had another anti-Catholic Protestant (who was mentally ill; which seems quite common) who threatened my with violence and clearly meant it. Because of these and other experiences I concluded long ago that Protestant anti-Catholics are often unhinged and potentially dangerous. I have no desire to expose myself, or my family members, or my friends to possible acts of violence committed by unhinged Protestant anti-Catholics. Thus, I continue, and will always continue, to use a pseudonym. I could care less if you take me less seriously or have no respect for me. I don’t trust you, will not trust you, and from hard experiences have learned that Protestant anti-Catholics should never be trusted.

The label is "Protestant anti-Catholics" or "anti-Catholic Protestant" and, sorry, Vlad, I've never seen a response yet that doesn't put all of us non-Catholics in that same boat. I'd like to think you don't see us all that way, and that you at least respect some here who are not Catholic yet are fellow Christians nonetheless.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for sharing your testimony, dear brother in Christ! Evidently God has given you many open doors (or at least doors slightly ajar.)

[metmom]

I use an online name and always have. I am glad to do so because in past years I had one Protestant anti-Catholic stalker on the internet who followed me from one website to another, and I had another anti-Catholic Protestant (who was mentally ill; which seems quite common) who threatened my with violence and clearly meant it. Because of these and other experiences I concluded long ago that Protestant anti-Catholics are often unhinged and potentially dangerous. I have no desire to expose myself, or my family members, or my friends to possible acts of violence committed by unhinged Protestant anti-Catholics. Thus, I continue, and will always continue, to use a pseudonym. I could care less if you take me less seriously or have no respect for me. I don’t trust you, will not trust you, and from hard experiences have learned that Protestant anti-Catholics should never be trusted.

And we non-Catholics have been harassed relentlessly and mercilessly for not wanting to compromise our screen names. We're considered cowards for it and accused of hiding something, being ashamed of our beliefs, etc. We've been asked for that information, attempted to be provoked into anger in an attempt to get it, tried to have the information be gotten by any unscrupulous means, and yet when a Catholic gives reasons for not wanting to compromise his screenname, where are the rest of the Catholics condemning and denouncing him?

The hypocrisy abounds and continues.

As expected.

[boatbums]

Thus, Christ was filled with God-given knowledge (inspired, that is) as one would expect God to be but that doesn’t say anything about Matthew, or his text, or even if he wrote the text. Remember, I was specifically asking for proof - from scripture alone - that Matthew wrote the Gospel (you provided none), that his Gospel was inspired (you provided none; an interesting theory, but one that logically fails is all you provided).

I can't believe you are still not satisfied with the answers to your challenge. Are you seriously doubting that Matthew the Apostle wrote the Gospel attributed to him? If so, although there is ample evidence that the author was never in question to the early church, can you at least consider that:

1. No other author's name was attached to this writing out of all the extant copies that existed then or still do today.

2. It was never and would never have been accepted if the writer was anonymous.

3. (From http://www.tektonics.org/ntdocdef/gospdefhub.html)Second-century testimony is unanimous in attributing the four Gospels to the persons that now carry their name. This suggests that they received their titles early; for if they had not, there would have been a great deal of speculation as to who had written them - "a variation of titles would have inevitably risen," as had happened with the apocryphal gospels. [Thie.EvJ, 15]; see also [Heng.Mark, 82] It is rather harder to believe that the Gospels circulated anonymously for 60 or more years and then someone finally thought to put authors on them -- and managed to get the whole church across the Roman Empire to agree.

4. Why then were such unlikely characters chosen as authors? Luke is mentioned a few times by name in the NT, a very obscure personage. Mark was a rotten kid; he abandoned Paul (Acts 15). Matthew was an apostle, but he was also a tax collector - would you pick the IRS man, and an obscure apostle, to author your Gospel? [Wilk.JUF, 28] Only John is a logical choice for a pseudonymous author.

The strength of this point is demonstrated in that some will use the rationale that obscure persons were deliberately chosen as authors in order to fool us into thinking that this would mean they were authentic.

5. How could the early Christian community honor the Gospels as authoritative unless they knew who had written them?

6. Under the "Q/Marcan priority" hypothesis, how is it they suppose that "Matthew" and "Luke" would choose to use an anonymous document as a source? Mark could not be recognized as authoritative until it was known what source it came from; yet if the critics are right, "Mark" was considered authoritative enough to use not by just one, but by two others working independently of one another.

There is also internal evidence for proving Matthew is the author, which I gave you already in another post. The link to that information is http://www.tektonics.org/ntdocdef/mattdef.html. In it, we learn:

In line with the criterion that we would expect the claimed author of a document to reflect the vocabulary and interest of that author, there are certain touches that point to the figure we know as Matthew:

- In the story about a publican called to follow Jesus, the publican is called "Levi" in Mark and Luke, but "Matthew" in Matthew; in the same vein, Mark and Luke refer to "his house" whereas Matthew refers to "the house" as one would when writing of their own house in a third-person narrative context.

If Matthew was a tax collector, and, as suggested by his alternate name, a Levite, the content of his Gospel fits with what his expected life experiences would be. A Levite like Matthew would normally be a Pharisee, and would receive training for Temple service. In line with this, Matthew shows signs of proper Jewish religious training: His significant use of OT quotes; his use of typology, and his concern with Jewish issues. But because there would be room for only so many Levites at the Temple, someone like Matthew might be forced to seek employment elsewhere -- and if he found work as a tax collector, he would be rejected by his Pharasaic cohorts.

- Matthew also shows through his writing that he is a Hellenized Jew: he has good Greek style, and would appear to be "at home" in the Roman world. Again, this fits right in with the idea of Matthew as a tax collector.

[boatbums]

You made good points. I think another reason why God inspired the four gospel writers is also for verification. If there had only been one written account, it could not have included all the different aspects that you explained. There would also be the problem of having no corroborating witnesses. Each of these accounts reinforce the others and each brings out a unique message inherent in each one about our savior. But, above all that, let’s not forget that God has his reasons for including them in the collection we have and, as divinely-inspired, we have assurance that they came from him FOR a purpose. It was no accident that they are in the Bible. Those who want to cause doubt or confusion about God’s word have evil intent for doing so and we should be wise to those motives.

[Lera]

Ivan Panin made a statistical anomalies case for for the Divine Inspiration of the 66 books written in their original language . He spent over 50 years of his doing statistics on the text . His work is the best way I can think of to silence someone who does not believe scripture is inspired of course to understand it the person needs to have some common sense to begin with and if they understand math at all they should be blown away .
If you click on my name I have a link to a pdf on my page that is a small sample of his work . It’s an article he wrote to refute a New York newspaper that said the New Testament was not inspired .
Incredibly interesting

[boatbums]

I hope you had a good night's sleep.

The source did not say that those books were not in the Bibles, but that they were placed in separate sections apart from the other Scriptures. Those books did not become "officially" part of the whole canon until Trent as a counter to the Reformation's charges of some Catholic doctrine not being validated by Holy Scripture. Councils before Trent, where the canon was addressed, were not in unison concerning the questionable books. Some were accepted and some weren't. Even today, the Eastern Orthdox canon differs from the Roman Catholic one. From the link http://peacebyjesus.witnesstoday.org/BooksOfTheBible.html#Apocrypha:

The Apocrypha refers to extra books included in Roman Catholic and Orthodox Bibles, though their lists are not quite the same, but which are not contained in the Protestant (and most popular) canon of inspired Scripture, as they are manifested to be of an inferior quality, although for most of Protestant history they were typically printed in a separate section of their Bibles. The Roman Catholic books are: Tobit; Judith; Additions to Esther (Vulgate: Esther 10:4-16:24); Wisdom; Sirach (also called Ben Sira or Ecclesiasticus); Baruch, including the Letter of Jeremiah (additions to Jeremiah in the Septuagint); Additions to Daniel, which are the Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Holy Children (which in the Vulgate was Daniel 3:24-90) and Susanna (Vulgate: Daniel 13, Septuagint: prologue) as well as Bel and the Dragon (Vulgate: Daniel 14, Septuagint: epilogue); 1 Maccabees; 2 Maccabees. The Greek Orthodox adds 1 Esdras, 3 +4 Maccabees and Psalm 151.

While Roman Catholic apologists infer or assert that the canon was indisputably settled from the 4th century onward until Luther changed it, and that this is why the Protestant canon only has 66 books, this is based on ignorance of deception.

Luther was not alone in questioning or rejecting certain books, and the Protestant canon of inspired Scripture is not the same as that of Luther's canon of inspired books, although he contained the disputed books, including the apocrypha, in his Bible, but separately and with notes explaining his conclusion on their Divine inspiration, which was a historical practice. The 66 book Protestant canon is more ancient than that of Rome's, as its 39 book O.T. canon is seen as being held by Palestinian Jews around the time of Christ, while it contains the 27 book N.T. canon which was overall settled very early in church history. However, within Roman Catholicism substantial dissent existed among scholars through the centuries and right into Trent over the apocryphal books, and a few N.T. books. (Hubert Jedin, Papal Legate At The Council Of Trent: St Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1947; pp. 278, 281-282.)

Despite decrees by early councils such as Hippo, Carthage and Florence, the decision of Trent in 1546 was the first “infallible” and final definition of the Roman Catholic canon, (New Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. II, Bible, III (Canon), p. 390; The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent : Rockford: Tan, 1978), Fourth Session, Footnote #4, p. 17) apparently after an informal vote of 24 yea, 15 nay, with 16 abstaining (44%, 27%, 29%) as to whether to affirm it as an article of faith with its anathemas on those who dissent from it. This definition, coming over 1400 hundreds years after the last book was written, was issued in reaction to Martin Luther and the Reformation. And in so doing, it went against a tradition of substantial weight in pronouncing the apocryphal books to be uninspired, while there is confusion over whether canon of Trent is exactly the same as that of Carthage and Hippo. In addition, Roman Catholic liberal scholarship impugns the integrity of the Word of God by its adherence to the discredited JEDP theory, and relegates* numerous historical accounts in the Bible to being fables or folk tales. (*as seen in St. Joseph’s medium size, NAB, Catholic publishing co., copyright 1970; in “Literary Genres,” etc.)

[Quix]

Evidently God has given you many open doors (or at least doors slightly ajar.)

.

Thanks for your kind reply.

Perhaps.

I think it's MORE likely . . . that after 30+ years of living otherwise . . . He began to open my eyes on the possibilities about how . . . were I to be confident IN HIM . . . and seek His creativity in being open to, perceptive of, sensitive to, caring towards folks HE BROUGHT ACROSS MY PATH in various ways . . .

AND TO EVEN MERELY LISTEN to His Holy Spirit's still small voice whenever I was around anyone else, if not constantly . . .

then numbers of folks could be rescued from the fires who might well not be, otherwise.

Certainly in China, I wanted every interaction possible to COUNT FOR THE KINGDOM and I tried to live each day with that mentality.

That is a very DIFFERENT MENTALITY, SPIRIT, ATTITUDE than the one that primarily or only the professional & overtly gifted evangelists do well to evangelize.

And fruit differs accordingly.

There are many millions of people who PROFESSIONAL evangelists CANNOT POSSIBLY reach. . . . people who flinch or run from any hint of such. Yet, who are open to simple face to face love and caring from a fellow human being with not title or label or obvious role 'in the business.'

RELATIONSHIP EVANGELISM can be an overworn phrase. Yet, I think, on the whole, it is the main one illustrated in the Gospels and in Paul's letters.

And RELATIONSHIPS are what we make of them . . . whether for 90 seconds or less or 90 years.

And, NO, I'm NOT trying to let you off easy, on this one. LOL. I have to answer to The Lord about it.

I think we all have pretty much a similar amount of 'open doors.' However, even a door LOCKED OPEN will not be open to us, if we ignore it or pretend it is closed, wish it closed, for whatever reasons.

There are probably a dozen to 2 dozen people in each of our lives--those whose paths we cross daily to frequently--for whom NO ONE ELSE has quite the access or quite the currency or quite the influence with them that we have--because of our heart, our personality, our caring--whatever.

To ignore that access and currency instead of prayerfully capitalizing on it, with Holy Spirit's direction and help--in behalf of the other person and the Gospel . . . seems . . . spiritually criminal, to me. . . . at least needlessly fruitless.

For example, in my classes at the college . . . it was very hazardous to my job to say much of anything about my Christianity. However, responding to questions fittingly sooner or later outted my walk with Christ and that it was very important to all I was about in terms of my character and my priorities and certainly my capacity to love each student as they were--which they all tended to automatically exclaim about routinely.

So, that was a two pronged effort.

I really did seek to love them as Jesus loved them way above and beyond the call of duty as an Intro to Psych Instr. And, God's Grace was on such an effort so heavily that they all found that rather uncommonly, shockingly wonderful. Then they kind of . . . wallowed in it, luxuriated in it, enjoyed it--the whole semester.

Occasionally one would ask a spiritual question after class or in writing. One was quite surprised at their spiritual transformations in their life after merely a suggestion or 3.

However, I fully expect that mostly I just sowed seeds. And that Holy Spirit will tend to the watering and harvesting--perhaps in traumatic situations still in the future. I have no doubt that most of those now thousands of students will recall a crazy prof and in a moment of crisis ask themselves what Dr Quix would think, say, do. And then God's Holy Spirit will be right there to help them take the next step toward God and His redemptiveness.

Yes, not all are teachers with so much time with students. However, I think the principle is the same even with a 90 second conversation in a Walmart line.

Do I get it right all the time? No. I may have missed it yesterday at Wendy's. There was evidently a Marine and his son who caught my eye and spirit. I had a word or a sentence to start with but I could never catch his eye quite right and I talked myself out of walking over to their table and intruding. I think I missed it. I don't know whate God would have done. They may even have been Christians already. I just know I wimped out. That God was pressing me to say the sentence He'd given me, to the father and to follow that up as He led. And I wimped out.

I repented but I won't know until eternity what might have transpired had I not wimped out. I will do better next time. I usually don't wimp out in such situations. Not sure why I did then.

All I had to start with was "Are you a Marine? I saw your license plate. I really appreciate your service. Is there anything I can pray for in your life?"

But I wimped out. Sigh.

Anyone who can hear God can ask of Holy Spirit what to say when He begins to highlight a person nearby. And we can step out in faith and offer such a statement or queary or encouragement. And we can offer the next sentence Holy Spirit provides. Or the next paragraph. And when the moment is through, we can trust Holy Spirit to continue to follow up on the 'coincidental contact.'

And if we close ears, our hearts and/or our sensibilities to such a prospect, we are closing God out. He is not likely to bless THAT, now is He?

[Quix]

THANKS TONS.

WILL CHECK IT OUT.

I do know that Genesis alone has incredible uniqueness in the original text. The Bible Codes research discovered that . . . many layers deep from many perspectives.

[Lera]

I’ll salute you if you can write 17 verses that come up with these same statistics. The Gospel of Mathew was written word by word by The Holy Spirit just like the rest of scripture was.

---

THE NUMBER SEVEN
By Dr. Ivan Panin
Part 1: Matthew 1:1-17. Part 2 (below) is Matthew 1:18-25.
This numbering structure only work’s with the TR which the King James Bible is translated from. Why? Westcott and Hort Greek NT
adds “Achaz/Ahaz” in Matthew 1:9 and in Matthew 1:25, omit’s “autos prototokos” or in the English “her firstborn.”
Part 1: If we look at the first 17 verses of the New Testament (The Gospel of Matthew) which deals with a single principal subject: the
genealogy of Jesus Christ, It contains 72 Greek vocabulary words in these initial 17 versus(*note;The verse divisions are man’s allocation for
convenience, added in the thirteenth-century A.D.). We find the following Heptadic (7) structure throughout these original Greek verses in
the King James Bible. NOTE: The Westcott and Hort Greek N.T. text adds “Achaz/Ahaz” in the Greek manuscript in Matthew 1:9
#1. The number of words which are nouns is exactly 56, or 7 x 8.
#2. The Greek word “the” occurs most frequently in the passage: exactly 56 times, or 7 x 8.
#3. Also, the number of different forms in which the article “the” occurs is exactly 7.
#4. There are two main sections in the passage: verse 1-11 and 12-17. In the first main section, the number of Greek
vocabulary words used is 49, or 7 x 7.
#5. Of these 49 words, The number of those beginning with a vowel is 28, or 7 x 4.
#6. The number of words beginning with a consonant is 21, or 7 x 3.
#7. The total number of letters in these 49 words is exactly 266, or 7 x 38-exactly.
#8. The numbers of vowels among these 266 letters is 140, or 7 x 20.
#9. The number of consonants is 126, or 7 x 18-exactly.
#10. Of these 49 words, the number of words which occur more than once is 35, or 7 x 5.
#11. The number of words occurring only once is 14, or 7 x2.
#12. The number of words which occur in only one form is exactly 42, or 7 x 6.
#13. The number of words appearing in more than one form is also 7.
#14. The number of 49 Greek vocabulary words which are nouns is 42, or 7 x 6.
#15. The number of words which are not nouns is 7.
#16. Of the nouns, 35 are proper names, or 7 x 5.
#17. These 35 nouns are used 63 times, or 7 x 9.
#18. The number of male names is 28, or 7 x 4.
#19. These male names occur 56 times or 7 x 8.
#20. The number which are not male names is 7.
#21. Three women are mentioned-Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth. The number of Greek letters in these three names is 14, or 7 x 2.
#22. The number of compound nouns is 7.
#23. The number of Greek letters in these 7 nouns is 49, or 7 x 7.
#24. Only one city is named in this passage, Babylon, which in Greek contains exactly 7 letters.
And on and on it goes. Just to understand how unique these properties are try to design a genealogy-even from fiction that meets the
following criteria:
1) The Number of words must be divisible by 7 evenly (In each of these constraints, it is assumed that the divisions are w/o remainders.)
2)The number of letters must also be divisible by 7.
3)The number of vowels and the number of consonants must be divisible by 7.
4)The number of words that begin with a vowel must be divisible by 7.
5)The number of words that begin with a consonant must be divisible by 7.
6)The number of words that occur more than once must be divisible by 7.
7)The number of words that occur in more than one form must be divisible by 7.
8)The number of words that occur in only one form shall be divisible by 7.
9)The number of nouns shall be divisible by 7.
10)Only 7 words shall not be nouns.
11)The number of names in the genealogy shall be divisible by 7.
12)Only 7 other kinds of nouns are permitted.
13)The number of male names shall be divisible by 7.
14)The number of generations shall be 21, also divisible by 7.
There are even more features in the numerical structure of the words themselves. As you may know, both the Hebrew and
Greek use the letters of the alphabet for numerical values. Therefore, any specific word in either Hebrew or Greek- has a
numerical value of its own by adding up the values of the letters in that particular word. The study of the numerical values of
words is called gametria. The 72 vocabulary words add up to a gametrical value of 42,364, or 7 x 6,052. The 72 words appear in 90 formssome
appear in more than one form. The numeric value of the 90 forms is 54,075, or 7 x 7,725. Exactly. It becomes immediately obvious that
hidden below the surface are aspects of design that cannot be accidental or just coincidence

[Lera]

ping to the previous post I made

[Lera]

Welcome :)
All 66 books have similar statistics
now compare that to this UNBIBLICAL garbage the Roman Catholics insist is also scripture

from the book of Tobit
Tob.6
[1]

Now as they proceeded on their way they came at evening to the Tigris river and camped there.

[2] Then the young man went down to wash himself. A fish leaped up from the river and would have swallowed the young man;
[3] and the angel said to him, “Catch the fish.” So the young man seized the fish and threw it up on the land.
[4] Then the angel said to him, “Cut open the fish and take the heart and liver and gall and put them away safely.”
[5] So the young man did as the angel told him; and they roasted and ate the fish.

And they both continued on their way until they came near to Ecbatana.

[6] Then the young man said to the angel, “Brother Azarias, of what use is the liver and heart and gall of the fish?”
[7] He replied, “As for the heart and liver, if a demon or evil spirit gives trouble to any one, you make a smoke from these before the man or woman, and that person will never be troubled again.
[8] And as for the gall, anoint with it a man who has white films in his eyes, and he will be cured.”