Absolute Mathematical Proofs

Of the Divine Inspiration of the Bible

Comments on the Work of Panin and Others

By Dr. Keith L. Brooks

Scientific Demonstration of the Inspiration of the Bible

One of the most remarkable occurrences in our time is God’s preparation of one individual to produce positive evidence that would completely undermine all Biblical criticism and bring atheism toppling to the ground wherever honest, thinking men will face the facts.

More startling still is the fact that this individual was a converted Russian Nihilist—a Harvard scholar and a mathematician. At the very time when organized atheism was laying its plan to get control of Russia and make use of its vast resources to sow the seeds of atheism in every nation of the earth, God was preparing His Russian—Ivan Panin—to bring forth scientific evidence of the verbal and plenary inspiration of the holy Scriptures in the original languages.

Dr. Panin, who passed away in October, 1942, after 50 years of work on Bible numerics, was not the first to discover that there was a strange mathematical structure running through the Bible. There was Browne in his Ordo Saeculoreum, and Grant in his Numerical Bible, and Bullinger in his Numbers of the Scriptures. These all brought forth many striking examples of numeric features in the Bible. Other competent scholars now carry on further research in this line.

It remained for Dr. Panin, however, by giving his very life to the task, to find that every letter of the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts is numbered and occupies its own special place in the order of the total number of letters in the Bible, the slightest variations of orthography being all God-ordained. Since every Greek and Hebrew letter carries a numerical value (letters being used for figures in these languages), every word, phrase, sentence and paragraph has a definite arithmetical sum.

Dr. Panin devoted himself so persistently to counting letters and working out mathematical problems, that he often wore himself out physically. His works were voluminous and his discoveries seemingly without end. He was the author of a volume, Structure of the Bible, and of a revision of the New Testament based upon his numeric discoveries. Since his death the Nobell Research Foundation, which took over some 43,000 sheets of his pen work, has employed Hebrew and Greek scholars to further pursue the study and issue a book on the subject.

Panin’s establishing of the practically infinite series of complex systems, in the Hebrew and Greek texts, all sequences, combinations, ratio etc., following a uniform design from Genesis to Revelation, is undoubtedly God’s answer to modern atheism and higher criticism and His vindication of the verbal and plenary inspiration of Scripture.

The discovery settles many questions of text. It proves that the books of our present Bible, and they alone, have the required features. It settles disputes of long standing as to some portions which scholars have said should be eliminated from the Bible.

In this leaflet it is possible only to touch the surface of this study.

The doctrine of the divine authority of the Scriptures has always been fully sustained by the proofs from fulfilled prophecy, from the inexhaustible depths of truth revealed, from its matchless power over the lives of men, from its indestructibility and from the testimony of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. However, some have been wont to wave these lines of evidence aside as unscientific.

Dr. Panin has submitted conclusive scientific proof that the Bible could not have been produced by the unaided human mind. This proof is found in the amazing numeric phenomena in the very structure of the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts. Dr. Panin demonstrated, either that every other writer of Scripture was an unparalleled literary and mathematical genius, or that he wrote as he was moved by the Holy Ghost. Prof . John C. Banks, a worthy successor of Dr. Panin, has been offering numeric evidence to the same proposition.

Panin laid his discoveries before the readers of a New York paper, copies of which were sent to leading skeptical educators and scientists with a challenge they disprove, if possible, the phenomena to which he had called attention. Since that time many other learned skeptics have been confronted with the same evidence and not one has been able to discredit it. Some challenged him to find the same mathematical structure in Hebrew and Greek classics outside of the Bible. Panin, therefore, gave much time to the examination of other writings, failing to find such phenomena. No such features were found in the seven books added by the Roman Church to their old Testament.

It is a well-known fact that the number 7 is found throughout the universe. It is evidently the number of the Creator and the number of fullness, rest, completeness.

Not only is this law of seven found running through creation, but it is found scores of times on the surface of Scripture, and always appears to be significant. Furthermore, careful students have often been amazed to find this number always appearing in unexpected ways. However, skeptics might attribute this to the writer, considering 7 a mystical number, and studying to write important sentences in exactly seven words, or to cleverly develop subjects under seven points.

Panin’s work, however, deals not with translations but the Hebrew and Greek. One is foolish to attempts to maintain verbal inspiration of the King James Version or any other version. Translation difficulties have been tremendous. It is a well-known fact that the constant change going on in language usage, has rendered many words in our English translation practically obsolete, hence the various attempts at “modern speech” translations.

But how could Panin get back to originals since we do not know that we have originals. The answer is that the comparison of hundreds of manuscripts preserved to us, shows a uniformity that proves a common source

Following is an abbreviated example of the kind of phenomena found by Dr. Panin in these texts:

He takes a given subject like the genealogy of Christ in Matt. 1:1-17, or a book of the Bible as a whole, or the Bible in its entirety, and shows the following kind of phenomena:

The number of words in the vocabulary will divide by the number seven.

The number of words beginning with a vowel is divisible by seven.

The number of words beginning with a consonant is divisible by seven.

The number of letters in the vocabulary is divisible by seven.

Of these letters, those which are vowels and those which are consonants will both divide by seven.

The number of words in the vocabulary occurring more than once is divisible by seven. Those occurring only once likewise divide by seven.

The number of words occurring in more than one form is divisible by seven. The number occurring in only one form likewise divides by seven.

The number of nouns is divisible by seven. The number that are not nouns likewise divides by seven.

The number of proper names divides by seven. The male names divide by seven. The female names divide by seven.

The number of words beginning with each of the letters of the alphabet is divisible by seven.

The Bible is written in two languages: the Old Testament in Hebrew (the few chapters in Chaldee being for numeric purposes the same as Hebrew); the New Testament in Greek. Both these languages have this peculiarity: they have no separate symbols for numbers, corresponding to our Arabic figures, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0. In their place they make use of the letters of their alphabet, so that each Hebrew and Greek letter stands also for a certain number. This is called the numeric value of the letter. As each word consists of letters, the numeric value of a word is the sum of the numeric values of its letters. The numeric value of a sentence, paragraph, chapter, book or volume, or library, is the sum of numeric values of the words of which these consist.

By means of these numeric values the Greeks and Hebrews performed all their numeric operations. But in Scripture an additional system is used for the purpose of numeric construction of the text, that of Place Values.

The Place Value of a letter in the Scripture, whether Hebrew or Greek, is the number of the place the letter occupies in the alphabet. Accordingly, in the Hebrew the place values and the numeric values of the first ten letters are the same. And the same is the case with the first five letters in the Greek. But the eleventh Hebrew letter does not stand for eleven, but twenty. Accordingly its numeric value is 20, but its place value is 11; the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the twenty-second, stands for 400. Accordingly its numeric value is 400, but is place value is 22. The same applies to the Greek alphabet. Its sixth letter stands for 7; this is its numeric value, but its place value is 6.

The full value of a Hebrew or Greek letter or word is the sum of its numeric and place values: thus the value of the word “Jesus,” in Greek is 975, of which the numeric value is 888, and the place value is 87. Now note further features

The numerical value of the vocabulary is divisible by seven.

The numerical value of the various alphabetical groups of words is divisible by seven.

The numerical value of the various forms in which the words occur produce the same phenomenon.

The above enumeration barely touches the surface of the numerics Panin brought to light in the structure of this one portion. He challenged any man to write one paragraph of 300 words intelligently and produce some numeric phenomena of like designs, and complete it in six months. Any man who can do it will prove himself a wonder. No man has offered.

But many of the Scripture writers were men chosen from very ordinary walks in life, having little or no schooling. If Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, for instance, had attempted to write by unaided human wisdom, and produced the harmonious numeric features found throughout their books, how long would it have taken them? Remember that with each additional sentence the difficulty of constructing on this plan increases in arithmetical and geometrical progression, for they contrive to write each paragraph so as to develop constantly fixed numeric relations to what goes before and comes after.

But an even more amazing feature remains: the number of words found in Matthew, not foud in any other New Testament book, displays elaborate numeric design. How did Matthew know that he had used words that would not be used in any of the other 26 books? He would have to have before him all these books, and would have to have written last.

It so happens, however, that each of the other books shows the same phenomena. Did each writer write last? If not, then is each of the writers a mind reader as well as a literary and mathematical artist, never equaled and hardly even conceivable?

Panin proceeded to prove by numerics that every book of our Bible carries such features, that each one is necessary to cause the numerical scheme of the entire Bible to work out correctly, and that nothing can be added to or subtracted from the Bible, as we have it, without spoiling these features.

From the first verse of Genesis to the last verse of Revelation, these divine evidences are found. The God of nature is, therefore, proved to be the God of Scripture. The quarrel of modern skeptics, therefore, is not with believers of the Bible, but with God Himself.

But seven is not the only number that proves of interest. There are equally interesting developments with other numbers, all of which are significant in their places.

Our Bible has 66 books, of which some assign themselves to some author by name while others are anonymous. Those which assign themselves, either in whole or in part to certain writers, are as follows: Exo., Lev., Num., Deut., ascribe themselves at least in part to Moses, or are quoted as the works of Moses in other parts of the Bible. Isa., Jer., Ezek., and the 12 Minor Prophets, ascribe themselves to the writers whose names they respectively bear. Psalms is ascribed to David. Prov. and Song of Sol. ascribe themselves to Solomon, and Eccl. ascribes itself to “the son of David.” Dan., Ezra and Neh., ascribe themselves to these respective writers. Jas., 1 and 2 Pet., and Jude bear the names of the writers. The epistles of Paul, with exception of Heb., ascribe themselves to Paul. Rev. ascribes itself to John. The anonymous books are Gen., Josh., Judg., 1 and 2 Sam., 1 and 2 Kings, Job, Ruth, Lam., Esth., 1 and 2 Chron., Matt., Mk., Lk., Jno., Acts, 1, 2, and 2 Jno., and Heb.

Of the writers named as authors of the books of the Bible, some have ascribed to them more than one book. Moses has 4, Solomon 3, Peter 2, Paul 13. Other writers have only one book ascribed to them.

Now bear in mind that the books of the Bible are, in the Hebrew Received Text and the Greek Text, arranged differently from the English Bible. In the original texts, the order is thus: