Well, I was reading an article about tomorrow being 6-6-06, and I got to wondering if there are any numbers that are sacred, damned, or just recurrent in several different religions?
Right off the top of my head, I would say that the numbers in Christianity (thusly, I suppose, in Judaism/Islam as well) are 666, 3, 7, 40, and so on.
Pretty much every number has something special about it in Judaism. There’s a Passover song which goes “Who knows one? I know one. One is…” and listst something religiously significant about every number through 13. The list in that song:
1 is G-d.
2 tablets of the covenant
3 patriarchs
4 matriarchs
5 books of Moses
6 sections of Mishnah/Talmud
7 days of the week - seven is a number that represnts physical completion
8 days for a baby boy’s circumcision - eight being representative of transcending the physical
9 months of pregnancy
10 commandments spoken at Sinai
11 stars in Joseph’s dream
12 tribes of Israel
13 attributes of G-dly mercy
Beyond that, here are a few others…
the combinations of letters that would ordinarily be used for 15 (yod (10) + heh (5)) and 16 (yod (10) + vav(6)) are considered holy since they’re found in G-d’s four-letter name, so they are never written to represent those numbers. Instead, the forms tet (9) + vav (6) and tet (9) + zayin (7) are used, respectively.
26 is a holy number in Judaism, representing the numeric value of the four-letter name of G-d.
You already noted 40. 40 is the number of days for an embryo’s organs to reach human form, and as such, the number often occurs in situations that relate to rebirth or attainment of a new soul, such as Moses’s stay atop Mount Sinai.
613 is the number of commandments in the Torah.
Then, I guess I should ask if other non-judeo-christian religions don’t put the same significance on numbers. Does anyone have any insight on the Mayan religions or the Eastern religions?
Also, I’ll add that I’ve seen heard the year 2012 in many prophecies about the apocalypse (from Christian to Mayan), I’m wondering if this occurs in any other religions. I know it’s a year and not just a number, but it’s fair game isn’t it?
My FIL sings a ladino version of the song with a few different lines. I’ll see if can get it for you.
Another important number in Jewish tradition is 18, the Gematric sum of chet and yod, which together spell Chai, or “alive.” That’s why money given as Jewish wedding presents is often in multiples of 18.