Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Anyone who tells you the Pentateuch doesn't employ a secret tradition to preserve a hidden doctrine should be beaten mercilessly. Such a person likely couldn't even spot the messianic references in Pentateuch if it hit him/her on the head:

I see him, but not now;
I behold him, but not near (וְלֹא קָרוֹב = 345)
A star will come out of Jacob;
a scepter will rise out of Israel.
He will crush the foreheads of Moab,
the skulls of all the people of Sheth

Stupid:

The scepter will not depart from Judah,
nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,
until he to whom it belongs (שִׁילֹ֔ה = 345) shall come
and the obedience of the nations shall be his.

Doubly stupid:

The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me (Moses = 345)from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him. 16 For this is what you asked of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, “Let us not hear the voice of the Lord our God nor see this great fire anymore, or we will die.” The Lord said to me: “What they say is good. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth. He will tell them everything I command him.

The Samaritans clearly preserve the original understanding that the one who would come would be a returning or second Moses. Everything else is a later corruption. It also proves IMO the Pentateuch had messages encoded in numerology.

So the passages should be read:

I see him, but not now;
I behold him, 345
A star will come out of Jacob;
a scepter will rise out of Israel.
He will crush the foreheads of Moab,
the skulls of all the people of Sheth

Stupid:

The scepter will not depart from Judah,
nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,
until 345 shall come
and the obedience of the nations shall be his.

543 I am that i am?

For those of us who like to see chapter and verse with their citations...

Numbers 24:17 ("but not near")
Genesis 49:10 ("the one to whom it belongs")
Deuteronomy 18:15 ("like me")

It certainly is interesting that the author is using gemetria (if that's a sure conclusion--it looks good the way you tell it).

Is the author doing more than being clever? Does he see these as "messianic" and see their reference as something other than King David? (I know that you aren't saying that they were originally 'messianic', but I'm still a little curious ... would you say that?)

Deuteronomy 17:14-15

When you enter the land which the LORD your God gives you, and you possess it and live in it, and you say, 'I will set a king over me like all the nations who are around me,' you shall surely set a king over you whom the LORD your God chooses, one from among your countrymen you shall set as king over yourselves; you may not put a foreigner over yourselves who is not your countryman.

Consider it an open question.

Which author? Are gemetria used by one or more possible authors?

And before we formalised "numbers" and "words" into separate professions - maths and arts, were people making these distinctions?

The word of god? The number of god? Logos? ?

Was it actually secret or is it we no longer read numerically unless looking at numbers? We don't translate numbers unless they are obvious?

Is the author doing more than being clever? Does he see these as "messianic" and see their reference as something other than King David?

I guess 'messianic' is the wrong or misleading term because this has NOTHING to do with David. Is 'Mosianic' a word? It's just about Moses and his friend Ishu. Ishuanic?

Secret Alias wrote:

Is the author doing more than being clever? Does he see these as "messianic" and see their reference as something other than King David?

I guess 'messianic' is the wrong or misleading term because this has NOTHING to do with David. Is 'Mosianic' a word? It's just about Moses and his friend Ishu. Ishuanic?

I have been reading all your references to the special "Man" as part of the Pentateuch as actually references as to how later people read the Pentateuch.

I haven't been reading you as saying that the Torah's authors were trying to predict the coming of someone like Moses, totally unrelated to the kings narrated later in the Bible (David, Solomon, etc.).

That's a different thesis -- and a much stranger and harder-to-believe one.

Why is that stranger and harder to believe?

The classic argument was about should you have a king? A permutation of this is no, you do not need a king, you already have one - the holy man.