Three Gospel Number Puzzles (You've Probably Never Noticed)
Three Gospel Number Puzzles (You've Probably Never Noticed)
I am not good at maths. Despite my wonderful teachers, I gave up the subject as quickly as I could; which, in England, meant at sixteen (or was it fifteen?..)
But if there is anything that would compel me to dust off my calculator, it is the Gospels. So I now go where theologians fear to tread – and write about numbers.
Not another ‘Bible Code’
When talking about numbers in the Bible, it is not difficult to sound like a nutcase.
In 1997, the journalist Michael Drosnin popularised an idea that secret messages have been hidden in the Bible, and that a variety of techniques – such as skipping every fifth word – allow us to crack the code. He called it ‘The Bible Code’.
By way of throat-clearing, the Gospel ‘number puzzles’ I am about to present have nothing to do with Dronsin’s methods.
They do have something to do, however, with the tendency of ancient cultures to assign numerical values to letters – and to use those values to make a point. In Hebrew, for example, the letter aleph denoted one, bet two, and so on. This numerology was called gematria (גמטריא) and was widely employed in literature.1
As we turn to our first puzzle, then, we will keep this numerology in mind.
#1. Generations of Twelve (Matthew’s Genealogy)
Opening up the New Testament, it is not long until we stumble upon a numerical riddle. The Gospel of Matthew opens: ‘The book of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham’ (1:1) and the lineage closes off:
‘So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, fourteen generations’ (1:17).
What is Matthew’s obsession with the number fourteen?
It is not something we find in Luke’s genealogy. In fact, Luke has a much longer and very different set of names. So it looks like fourteen is a distinct emphasis of Matthew. This is confirmed by the fact that Matthew does not actually have fourteen generations in his first or last set. So if we take him literally, he has made a blunder.
As it happens, there is a very good reason for Matthew’s emphasis on fourteen. Namely, that fourteen is the numerical value of the name ‘David’. In gematria, only the Hebrew consonants are counted. The equation is therefore, d (4) + v (6) + d (4) = 14.
In Matthew’s time, it was thought that the coming King would be the Son of David. It makes total sense, then, that Matthew would structure his genealogy around him.
There are two factors which support this judgement:
First, gematria is attested in another biblical genealogy. It is therefore not only Matthew who made these connections. Dale Allison and William Davies find gematria in in Genesis 46:16, where Gad, whose name totals seven (3+4 = גד) is listed seventh in the genealogy, and has seven sons.2 This is surely not a coincidence.
Second, Matthew makes David very explicit. He opens by describing Jesus as ‘the Messiah, the Son of David’ (1:1) and then draws our attention to David twice at the end (1:17). Moreover, not only does he three sets of fourteen generations – the gematric value of David – he also lists David’s name as fourteenth in the list.
Woven into the structure of his genealogy, Matthew is crying out: David, David, David! The only figure marked out as ‘King’, Matthew points now to the arrival of the Davidic Messiah, Jesus.
#2. Six Stone Vessels (The Wedding of Cana)
Like the First Gospel, the Fourth Gospel also begins with a numerical puzzle.
Jesus and his disciples have been invited to attend a wedding at Cana. And we are told that there are six stone vessels stand by (2:6). Once the wine runs out, Jesus’ mother asks him to do a miracle, and he turns these vessels, filled with water, into wine.
Why does John specify that there are six jars?
Some conservative exegetes see this as a flash of eyewitness testimony. This may be supported by the fact that that such jars were common in Palestine. There also doesn’t seem to be any particular symbolic value to the idea that they contained ‘two’ or ‘three’ measures each – other than to emphasise the greatness of the coming miracle.
But there are a number of aspects of this story which don’t seem to add up, historically.3 Aside from the fact that the miracle is attested only in John, the role of a ‘chief steward’ is known only from Greek, not Jewish settings. Moreover, the story plausibly echoes the water-into-wine miracles of the Greek god Dionysus.
If we read this story symbolically, however, it might make more sense. We are specifically told by John that the stone vessels were used by Jews for ritual purifcation (2:6). Yet the number six is an imperfection, falling one short of the seven, the perfect number.
C.K. Barrett expresses the possible significance of these details, together:
“Six, being less by one and seven, the number of completeness and perfection, would indicate that the Jewish dispensation, typified by its ceremonial water, was partial and imperfect.”4
Jesus takes the ceremonial water of Judaism and transforms it into wine, a well-known symbol of his blood. On this reading, the ‘water’ of the six jars is incomplete without the new wine which Jesus provides. As he will later declare, ‘I am the true vine.’
Taking a similar view, Maurice Casey suggests that “the running out of wine (Jn. 2:3) and the excellence of the new wine (2:10) symbolically… [indicate] the inadequacy of Judaism and the excellence of the new revelation through Jesus.”5 The interpretation of ‘six’ as a symbol of imperfection ties into this reading well.6
#3. Groups of Fifty (The Feeding of the Five Thousand)
Finally, we turn from a miracle attested only in John to the only miracles found in all four Gospels: the so-called feeding of the five thousand.
In this episode, Jesus actually feeds more than five thousand people – only the men are counted (Mk. 6:40) – with just five loaves and two fish. As scholars have demonstrated, this scene is modelled on Elisha’s feeding of one hundred with twenty loaves in 2 Kings 4.7 Jesus is thus depicted as doing more with less; he is a greater Elisha.
Yet one numeric detail is often overlooked in this miracle story: Jesus’ division of the ‘groups of hundreds and fifties’ (6:40). This plot-point finds no parallel in the Elisha feeding. So where does it come from? What is Jesus doing?
The explanation comes when we turn from Elisha to Moses typology. When Moses led the Israelites out into the wilderness, he organises them in a similar fashion:
“Moses chose able men out of all Israel, and made them heads over the people, rulers of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens. And they judged the people at all times” (Exod. 18:25-26; cf. Deut 1:13-15)
Around the time of Jesus, the community of the Dead Sea Scrolls thought that a Messiah would arise who would echo Moses’ actions. He would be a ‘new Moses,’ liberating Israel like Moses had in the past. See, for example, this fragment:
“These are the men who are to be summoned to the community council from … all the wi[se men] of the congregation … together with [the chiefs of the tri]bes and all their judges, their officials, the chiefs of thousands, the chiefs of [hundreds,] of fifties and of tens… At [a ses]sion of the men of renown, [those summoned to] the gathering of the community council, when [God] begets the Messiah with them … the men of renown, and they shall sit be[fore him, each one] according to his dignity.8
Strikingly, the context for the organisation of the groups into ‘hundreds’ and ‘fifties’ is a great banquet, in which the Messiah will bless bread. This reminds us of the scene in the feeding of the five thousand, in which Jesus does the same. It continues:
‘After, [the Mess]iah of Israel shall [enter] and before him shall sit the heads of the th[ousands of Israel, each]... And [when] they gather [at the tab]le of community [or to drink the n]ew wine, and the table of the community is prepared [and the] new wine [is mixed] for drinking, [no-one should stretch out] his hand to the first-fruit of the bread and of [the new wine] before the priest, for [he is the one who bl]esses the first-fruit of the bread and of the new win[e and stretches out] his hand towards the bread before them. Afterwar[ds,] the Messiah of Israel [shall str]etch out his hands toward the bread. (1QRule of the Congregation 1:27-2:21).9
This solves the mystery of Jesus’ grouping into ‘hundreds’ and ‘fifties’. Jesus is acting out the belief that the Messiah will host a great banquet, in which a ‘new Moses’ will organise the reconstituted people of God into groups of the same numbers.
The Meaning of Numbers
In these three number puzzles, we have uncovered a common thread: the evangelists often use numbers to express Jesus’ relationship to Judaism and its heroes.
For Matthew, Jesus is the new David, for Mark, he is a new Elisha and Moses; while for John, the number ‘six’ might point to Jesus’ completion of various Jewish institutions. He is the ‘true vine’ who provides an abundance of new wine.
See, for example, Rev 13.18; Barn. 9; Sib. Or. 5.12—51; T. Sol. 6.8; 11.6; b. Yoma 20a; b. Makk. 23b-24a; b. Ned. 32a; b. Sanh. 22a cited in Dale C. Allison, W.D. Davies, Matthew 1-7. ICC (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 163 n.16.
Allison, Davies, Matthew 1-7, 163-64.
See Andrew T. Lincoln, “"We Know That His Testimony Is True:’ Johannine Truth Claims and Historicity” in John, Jesus, and History, vol. 1, eds. Paul N. Anderson, Felix Just, S.J., and Tom Thatcher, SBLSS 44 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 179-197.
C.K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John: An Introduction with Commentary and Notes on the Greek Text, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: The Westminster Press, 1978), 191.
Maurice Casey, Is John’s Gospel True? (London: Routledge, 1996), 52.
On the danger of a supersessionist reading, Ian Paul follows Barrett (p.191) in noting that Jesus does not provide a new vessel, but rather transforms what is in the jars. At most, John depicts Jesus, not as the negation, but as the completion of Jewish ritual. See Ian Paul, “How should we interpret the stone jars in John 2?” Psephizo [Blog]: https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/how-should-we-interpret-the-six-stone-jars-in-john-2/ Accessed 16/8/24.
On imitation of the Elijah-Elisha cycle in Mark, see Adam Winn, Mark and the Elijah-Elisha Narrative: Considering the Greco-Roman Imitation in the Search for Markan Source Material (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2010).
Cf. Damascus Document, 12:21-13:2|: ‘And this is the “rule of the assembly of the cam[ps]. Those who walk in them, in the time of wickedness until there arises the Messiah of Aaron and Israel, shall be ten in number as a minimum to (form) thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens.’
For translation and commentary on these texts, see Brant Pitre, Jesus and the Last Supper (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017), 66-90.