THE FIRST CHECKSUM
 contributed by Jack Decker

.     This article is reprinted from NORTHERN BYTES, a newsletter for TRS-80 
(Model I/III/4/4P) owners and users (address:  c/o Jack Decker, 1804 West 18th 
Street # 155, Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan  49783).  Actually, most of the text 
that follows was originally excerpted from a tract entitled "The Holy Bible - 
Wholly True", which is authored by Winkie Pratney.  This tract has recently 
been reprinted, and much of the material below has been removed from the 
latest reprint (apparently the publisher, Last Days Ministries of Lindale, 
Texas, felt that the subject of Bible numerics was just too complex for the 
average person to understand).  However, I suspect that those of us with a 
computer orientation will be able to understand and appreciate the subject 
discussed below. 
 -Jack Decker

.     In 1882, a young immigrant from Russia was just graduating from Harvard.  
He had a wonderful conversion to Christ, after traveling as an agnostic who 
often lectured on atheism!  A brilliant mathematician, multi-lingual scholar 
and literary figure [A personal friend of men like William James, Pres. Eliot 
of Harvard, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott's father and other well-
known scholars of that day ("Shorter Works" p. 11)], Ivan Panin began to study 
the Scriptures as a Christian.  Knowing Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, he began to 
read them in the original languages.  Now both Hebrew and Greek are unique in 
that they do not have a number system.  In other words, they do not use 
special symbols for their numbers (like our Arabic numerals 1, 2, 3, etc.) but 
use instead the letters of their alphabets to represent numbers.  Each letter 
also has a numeric value [the tract contains a chart to illustrate this -
Jack]. 
.     Aware of the numerical values of the Greek and Hebrew alphabets, Panin 
experimented one day by replacing the letters with their corresponding numbers 
in Scripture. 
.     Here is Panin ... a mathematical genius, a Hebrew and Greek scholar, and 
he loves playing with numbers.  Suddenly, his trained mind saw a mathematical 
pattern!  As he studied more intensely, his excitement grew.  A few short 
hours of work had him utterly amazed.  The verses he had studied bore 
unmistakable evidence of an elaborate mathematical pattern, far beyond random 
chance, or human ability to construct.  This discovery marked the turning 
point of his career, and from that time until his death in 1942, he devoted 
his entire life to the study of Bible numerics. 
.     He showed, first of all, that the Bible, in its original language, is a 
skillfully designed product of a mathematical mastermind - far beyond any 
human possibility of deliberate structuring.  He later supplied a 
representative of the Nobel Research Foundation with over 43,000 sheets of his 
studies [remember, this was before computers! -Jack] accompanied by his 
statement that this was his evidence that the Bible was the Word of God.  
Their reply was, "As fas as our investigation has proceeded... we find the 
evidence overwhelmingly in favor of such a statement." 
.     He then issued a challenge throughout leading newspapers of the world to 
offer a "natural explanation" or refute the facts; not a single person was 
able to do so. 
.     Panin found that patterns of prime numbers, such as 11, 13, 17, and 23, 
BUT ESPECIALLY 7, were found in great clusters.  He would add up the sum of 
all numerical values for different words, sentences, paragraphs, passages, and 
whole books, and he found the same patterns in each of these forms!  He found 
that the number of WORDS in a vocabulary divides by 7.  The number of proper 
names, both male AND female divides by 7.  The number of words that begin with 
a vowel divides by 7, likewise the number of words that begin with a 
consonant.  The number of LETTERS in a vocabulary divides by 7, and of those 
letters, those that are vowels AND those that are consonants also divide by 7.  
Words that occured more than once divide by 7, and also words that appeared 
only once! The number of nouns is divisible by 7, also the words that are not. 
.     Even the number of words beginning with each letter of the alphabet! And 
on and on...  Panin only stayed on a passage long enough to confirm beyond 
reasonable doubt the statistical evidence for supernatural design. 
 But he stated that the longer you stayed on one, it
would continue to yield further and further evidences
of pattern within patterns until the mind reeled!!
.     Here is an example from the Old Testament.  Just the very first sentence 
of the Bible - "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" 
(Genesis 1:1). 
.     That's the way it comes out in English, in the Hebrew it is exactly 7 
words.  The 7 words have exactly 28 (4x7) letters.  There are three nouns 
(God, heavens, and earth). 
.     Taking the letters of these, substituting their number equivalents and 
adding them up, you get a combined total of 777 (111x7)!  There is one Hebrew 
verb - created. 
.     Its total numerical value is 203 (29x7).  The first three words contain 
the subject with exactly 14 (2x7) letters, likewise the other four are the 
object with exactly 14 letters.  The Hebrew words for the two objects (heaven 
and earth) each have 7 letters.  The value for the first, middle, and last 
letters in the sentence is 133 (19x7).  The numeric value of the first and 
last letters of all words is 1393 (199x7); the value of the first and last 
letters of the first and last words of the verse is 497 (71x7).  The value of 
the first and last letters of EACH of the words between is 896 (128x7). 
 And so on, and so on ... in this verse alone there are
30 different features of 7.  I have listed only 11 of
them!  The chance of this happening accidently is 1 in
33,000,000,000,000 (33 trillion).
.     And now an example from the New Testament:  Matthew chapter 1, verses 1 
through 11.  The vocabulary has 49 words (7x7).  28 words begin with a vowel 
(4x7), the remaining 21 with a consonant (3x7).  7 end with a vowel, 42 with a 
consonant (6x7).  The 49 words have 266 letters (38x7).  Out of the 266 
letters, 140 are vowels (20x7), 126 are consonants (18x7).  Also, of these 49 
words, 14 occur only once (2x7), 35 occur more than once (5x7), 42 (6x7) are 
nouns, 7 are not.  The remaining common nouns have exactly 49 letters (7x7).  
Male names occur in all 56 times (8x7).  The names of only 3 women appear in 
the passage, and the Greek letters of their names add up to 14 exactly! 
.     Panin said it would have taken Matthew several months, working 8 hours a 
day to construct the genealogy [this passage is part of the genealogy of Jesus 
-Jack], even if it WERE possible.  But the names were chosen BEFORE MATTHEW 
WAS BORN! 
.     The whole Bible is like this.  I am just taking one small chunk of it and 
doing it in detail.  Every paragraph, passage and book in the Bible can be 
shown to be constructed in the same marvelous way.  What kind of fantastic 
collaboration between the disciples could have produced this structure without 
computers?  How could mere fishermen and tax-collectors produce this kind of 
incredible structuring and design?  What is crazy, is that Mark is a Roman, 
Luke a Greek, and Matthew a Jew, but they all wrote with the same pattern.  
Each one wrote with their own unique flavor.  Mark's style is different, but 
the pattern is the same right through! 
.     So who wrote it?  One Mind, one Author - one God - many different 
writers, but one Writer.  Can you imagine what kind of Mind would do this and 
not even care if you ever found out?!  What I want you to see is how smart God 
is!  These are not just words, it's an incredible mathematical pattern.  It 
dances with its own poetry in mathematics. 
.     A computer would go into raptures over this! It's like a building where 
every piece joins perfectly into each other.  And what is wild, is you can't 
pull even ONE word out, without damaging the whole pattern.  So the Bible 
carries within itself, a self-checking self-verifying protection factor.  If a 
person comes along and says I don't like this one, the whole pattern falls 
apart. 
.     This cannot be found in any other religious "holy" book in the world. 

.     [One closing editorial comment - since the Bible appears to have this 
"checksum" built in, it would seemingly be possible to apply this test for 
mathematical patterns to any "disputed" portion of scripture (there are a very 
few verses in our present-day Bibles that some theologians seem to think were 
added "after the fact" - by applying this test it should be possible to tell 
whether or not they were in fact part of the original scriptures). It would be 
interesting to program a computer to search for all such patterns in the 
entire Bible, and find out how many there actually are (and what are the 
chances that they would occur randomly).  "Inspiration Of The Scriptures 
Scientifically Demonstrated" and other works of Ivan Panin are available from 
Box 206, Waubashene, Ontario L0K 2C0 (write for list and prices).]