Weird word and phrase frequency number patterns

[sixtynine seventy]

Hi,

I am not Jewish, and am looking for Jewish opinions on the concept found in Cascione's "Repetition in the Bible" book. Since the book is obscure, here is an explanation: He posits that there are weird number frequency patterns interlaced throughout the Torah. He also finds them in other books of the Bible, and even outside the Bible, but they are not as strong as in the Torah.

(Cascione is a Lutheran;' some of the research underlying the book was done by Jews; especially this is why I am posting on this forum.)

Is this sort of thing generally known and discussed about already? Cascione mentions Umberto Cassuto, but is he a scholar who is generally well known and accepted, or is this all new to you? In general do you reject or affirm this sort of thing?

Are numerologically significant word frequency patterns discussed in Kabbalah? (Or in maybe smaller movements I haven't heard of?) I am aware of gematria mentioned a decent amount, but not this.

I suppose I should give an example of some of the less intense number patterns so you know what I am meaning; not anything as serious as in the Torah. (I went and looked for weird number patterns in a variety of works. This is one of the ones that had them.) 

Tomer Devorah (The Palm Tree of Deborah)
http://www.digital-brilliance.com/kab/de...eborah.pdf

"According to the secret"-26 times
It is proper for man to imitate his Creator, resembling Him in both likeness and image[1] according to the
secret of the Supernal Form...it is proper for man to imitate the acts of the Supernal Crown, which are the thirteen highest attributes of mercy
13x2=26

'He has done forty good deeds and committed ten sins. The ten cancel each other out leaving thirty good deeds,' God forfend.

"God forfend"-10 times, this seems like some sort of superstition to keep from becoming unclean by talking about sin, as in "Make sure to say 'God forfend' ten times to ward off evil."

How shall a man train himself to acquire the quality of Understanding? ...according to the secret of the Jubilee
The Jubilee was 7x7.
This book has 7x7, as:
"acquire the quality"-7 times
"good qualities"-7 times (not counting singular uses)

Also,
"good deed"-7 times, not counting plural uses
"The Holy One, Blessed is He, actually recalls all the good deeds they have done from the day of their birth and all the good
qualities"

this is linked in that "good deed" (although notice it is plural) is seven and "good qualities" is also seven

[searchinmyroots]

Hello and welcome to the forum.

Just to let you know, the first three posts are moderated to help keep out spam and bots.

My thoughts on your post -

Yes, there are patterns.

Are they mystical or divine?

That is a matter of opinion and cannot be proven either way.

[sixtynine seventy]

That is a matter of opinion and cannot be proven either way.

Cascione thinks they are divine, and along with a Jewish math professor attempts to prove it by showing that Moses apparently had knowledge of the Chinese remainder theorem well before it was discovered in history.

A more secularized Bible scholar he contacted thought the patterns were put into the text by copyists who rewrote the text. But this opinion is questionable because of the sheer number of them in the Torah. There are so many of them it doesn't seem humanly necessary or practical. Also they interlace the entire text, which goes against JEPD theory. 

Cascione thinks that some writers of pseudepigrapha must have been aware of the patterns and attempted to copy them so that people would accept their works as Biblical. But their works exhibit a less-intense patterning because it is not practical to add in large numbers of them.

What sort of works did I find weird numerological patterns in?

• Another Kabbalahistic book, from the 17th century
  
• A 19th century English novelist who was addicted to drugs
  
• An anti-Jewish work from a 16th century author who had previously studied Kabbalah (ironic), and also in another work in which he may have been using Kabbalah for his spiritual benefit
  
• An 18th century theologian who often had dreams and visions
  
• A 19th century poet who was mentally ill
  
• Various ancient sacred extrabiblical works associated with Christianity, Judaism, or both, and also a secular work in Aramaic
  
• Also, modern hypnosis literature sometimes repeats things twice, deliberately. This one shouldn't count as weird.
  

Although my judgements have a degree of subjectivity to them, it could in theory be tested by giving a bunch of people in a psych lab some computers with documents and loaded with WordStat 8. They could look for patterns, and if they all find the same ones in the same works, it is not just my imagination.

Of these, obviously the last one is deliberate. Additionally it seems reasonable that a poet might purposely add in a word frequency pattern into a poem. Yet the weird thing is that both the novelist and the poet tend towards 12 or 24; which symbolize hours in the day and mortality. Modern life is ruled by clocks in a way that ancient life wasn't. So it makes sense that if the number patterns are some sort of reverse apophenia a modern writer is going to have different numbers on the brain than numbers ancient writers had.
Another possibility is whether the patterns indicate that that the authors were in a trance when writing. Perhaps all of the works I studied were written while in a trance; at least some of them must have been. Once I read a great deal of poetry to a young child who then proceeded to talk in poetry for a while. On a few occasions I visited people who worshiped with the King James Bible--and then entered a mild trance and spoke in King James style English for a while. The patterns were unconsciously imbibed and reproduced. So maybe people who read and memorized works with word and phrase frequency number patterns unconsciously reproduce them. And in the same way that patterns in poetry and music appeal to the soul within, the patterns may have brought out and encouraged a more mystical state.
This could be where varying degrees of divine or angelic inspiration (and hopefully not diabolical) feed into the writing. But this is matter of faith and cannot be proven in the way some might like to prove it. The differences between ancient and modern writings make me wonder how much we are divorced from communing with the divine and with the ancient world due to the differences of modern life.
Or are the patterns a mnemonic device for oral transmission? This would make sense for the ancient ones, but not the modern ones.

Perhaps the patterns are sort of a security seal that means the received text is unaltered. Cascione thinks along these lines, and uses them to resolve textual questions much as chiastic patterns have been used. He comes to different conclusions from the people using chiastic patterns at least sometimes though.

[Jason]

There are so many worthwhile things to think about. How do people get bogged down in things like this?

It's obvious that the text of the Bible is not "unaltered." We have different versions of the texts in various languages – and even in Hebrew! These theories fly in the face of both lower and higher text criticism. They should be discarded.

[sixtynine seventy]

How do people get bogged down in things like this?

I wondered how he came up with this too, soon after learning about it. My pet theory is it is because before learning classical languages and working on a Bible translation he was an art history professor for his first career. A well known art theorist is Henry Schaefer-Simmern (https://www.google.com/search?sa=X&rlz=1C1KMZB_enUS511US511&tbm=bks&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22Henry+Schaefer-Simmern%22&ved=2ahUKEwjklqqF2vzpAhUvaDABHTUIDZ8Q9AgwAHoECAEQBQ&biw=969&bih=630&dpr=1.25) who for years operated a drawing lab for children.

Schaefer-Simmern classifies children's artistic development using his system from simple things like circles and lines to more complicated drawing methods like perspective. Then he uses the same method to understand drawing and engravings by modern folk artists, tribes, and historical works of art going back to the ancients. As best as I can tell, he is correct or nearly so. It seems unlikely that Cascione would have studied art and not known of this theory because it is well known. I can't say he agrees with it or not though.

So then if in his early days of learning the Bible if he came across Umberto Cassuto's take on Biblical word or phrase frequency patterns he would have instinctively recognized it as something similar to this psychological art theory. Additionally, the Lutheran revivalist Johann Georg Hamann several centuries ago thought that the inspiration of the Bible was the same sort of inspiration found in art. Cascione may not have been aware of this, but these ideas don't just go away and so you can see why a Lutheran might link the inspiration of art the inspiration of Scripture. So if Schaefer-Simmern's theory proves the inspiration of art, then Umberto Cassuto's theory proves the inspiration of Scripture.

My pet theory about how he got bogged down in things like this is almost certainly wrong, but I would be surprised if it is completely wrong.

different versions of the texts in various languages

Cascione claims that the Septuagint translators did not see the weird frequency patterns because they made mistakes they would not have made had they known of them.

lower and higher text criticism. 

He has done some work with other patterns that he collectively terms "meter"-- and he thinks it is possible to use these details to better understand the verse used in Psalms and Proverbs. He likes the idea of reproducing the various literary devices in English when it is possible. The problem with this is that if you do it wrong you are very wrong and end up with a considerably worse quality translation that what is found in common translations today.

I think even someone who is completely secular might find some value in studying weird patterns to see if there is some sort of subliminal triggering going on. I wonder if they might be a trigger for scrupulosity (religious OCD)--where people so afflicted may become obsessed with symbolic numbers and doing rituals a certain number of times.

[sixtynine seventy]

Cascione recently sent out a mass email discussing the work of this scholar:

https://blogs.yu.edu/facultynews/2020/01...leitworte/