Numbers

"'Bezaleel, the builder of the Tabernacle in the Wilderness,' says the Talmud,
'knew how to combine the letters by which the heavens and the earth were created.'" [1]

After reading this comment the other day, I realized that in ancient Hebrew, there are no separate symbols for numbers other than letters themselves. Therefore, I reasoned, this Talmudic statement might also be read as follows: "Bezaleel, the builder of the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, knew how to combine the NUMBERS by which the heavens and the earth were created."

W. D. Gann also cites a tradition according striking prominence to numbers at the beginning of his course "The Basis of My Forecasting Method": "Pythagoras, one of the greatest mathematicians that ever lived, after experimenting with numbers and finding the proofs of all natural laws, said: 'Before God was numbers.'" As a result, I decided to investigate further into Bezaleel. The following snippets, somewhat random perhaps, are the fruit of those labors.

WHO ENTERS HERE
STANDS ON HOLY GROUND

"The Torah was at the same time God's architect and the building plan that God consulted when he created the world. Accordingly, the first verse of the Bible does not mean, 'In the beginning God created,' but rather 'By means of reshit (sc. the Torah) God created.' The Torah was God's amon, his architect and building plan, through which God created the world. Whoever looks at the Torah thus sees the building plan of the world. It is through the Torah that God reveals the structure of the world --and himself as the Creator --to all human beings." [2]

"God looked in the Torah to see, as it were, how He should create the world (Bereshit Rabba 1:1), and the construction of the Tabernacle during Israel's stay in the desert could be done only by Bezallel, 'who knew how to combine the letters by which Heaven and Earth were created' (Berakhot 55a). Thus the Torah became the acme of sanctity and an object of great reverence." [3]

"Midrash Tehillim states: R. Eleazar said, 'The sections of the Torah were not given in order for, had they been given in order, anyone who would read them would be able to create a universe, to resurrect the dead and to perform wonders. Therefore the order of the Torah was concealed.'" [4]

"Thus Sepher Yetsira 2.2: 'The twenty-two letters: God carved them and shaped them, weighed them and changed them round and combined them and then created with them all that has been created and all that will be created.'" [5]

"The operational significance of this doctrine is that, because creation involves a process predicated on the sounds, shapes, relative positions, and numerical values of the Hebrew alphabet, this creative process could be replicated by man if he but knew the proper technique for combining and manipulating the letters. ... because Bezalel was divinely inspired, he ... attained some knowledge of how the world was created through manipulation of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. " [6]

"The letters were understood by the rabbinic commentators to be the letters of the divine name." [7]

"Rashi ... states that the creation was performed by means of mystic combinations of the Divine Name, which does not come under the ban of witchcraft. Its basic idea is that the Creation was accomplished by means of the power inherent in those letters (Cf. Rab's saying: ‘Bezalel knew how to combine the letters by which heaven and earth were created’. Ber. 55a. Cf. also Enoch LXI, 3 et seq.; Prayer of Manasseh: Ecc. R. III, 11 on the magic power of the letters of the Divine Name), and that this same power could be utilised in further creation." [8]

"III ENOCH: Chapter Forty One

"'Metatron Shows Rabbi Ishmael the Letters Engraved on the Throne of Glory by Which Letters Everything In The Earth Has Been Created.'

"Rabbi Ishmael said: Metatron, the Angel, the Prince of the Presence said to me:

"1. 'Come and behold the letters by which heaven and the earth were created,[']

"[footnote:] This verse reflects the teaching in Qabalah (shared by Sufism and the Tantras) that the universe and everything in it is literally created from the letters of the alphabet as vibrational differentiations of the Alef of Unity." [9]

"Ramban's commentary provides additional insight into the essence of Betzalel's special wisdom:

"[']… They [the Sages?] also said: Betzalel knew how to combine the letters by which the heavens and the earth were created, for the Mishkan [the Tabernacle] was meant to allude to these, and it was he who knew and understood their secret.[']

"Thus, the building of the Mishkan was not just skillful workmanship, but rather a spiritual undertaking, just like the creation of the world." [10]

"The volume of the Sacred Law is the record of the Creator's revelation of Himself. 'The Almighty has been pleased to reveal more of His Divine will in that holy Book than by any other means.' Even in that record, through a large portion of it, the symbolic method is used for guidance and instruction. The construction of the Tabernacle in the wilderness by the skill of Bezaleel and Aholiab, was carried out according to the plan revealed to Moses on the Mount, and included squares, angles, and oblongs, as well as sacred numbers and figures.

"The secrets of a Master Mason which were given to Hiram the widow's son, consisted of geometrical knowledge, and of the mystic value of sacred numbers and proportions; so that the building of the Temple was a setting forth of the Divine plan of Creation. The sacrificial system of the Temple ritual served to inculcate a conscientious dread of sin, and a desire for righteousness and purity. The prophets preached the righteous glory of God, and the awful retribution which is the inevitable nemesis of wilful sin." [11]

"All the Masonic ritual, its Egyptian signs, its Chaldean grips, its Sanskrit passwords, its ancient Hebrew symbols, its cabalistic allusions and its historical records are supremely scientific and a survival through long ages, by various underground channels, of the knowledge of the universe which was gained by Sabean astronomers from the temple tops of Chaldea, India and China and recorded by the equally learned geometers and mathematicians of the ancient Orient. ...

"The key to the entire secret system is to be found in the ancient method, preserved from ages long anterior to their reputed time by the Israelites, of using identical characters for letters and numbers, a system called gematria, and upon which a simple mathematical formula, 10-5-6-5 ... is shown to be the basic source of all manifested existence --that formula when presented in the Hebrew letters corresponding to the numbers being 'Jod-Ha-Vv-Ha, ' or in English 'J-H-V-H,' or Jehovah. ...

"The crowning secret of the ancients, as well as of our own time, is that the study of the structural proportions of our universe as evinced in lines of force and direction, cyclic time periods, celestial areas and visible parts, reveals the fact that it is of definite form, perfectly balanced proportion and just such a synthesis of the principles of pure geometry as to show that the features exhibited are from the same causative source as that which geometrizes the snowflake, the crystal and the blossom. Hence the expressions used in Masonry of the Grand Architect and the Great Geometrician of the Universe." [12]

“Rabbi Meir, one of the most important teachers of the Mishnah [early part of the Talmud], relates: 'When I was studying with Rabbi Akiba, I used to put vitriol in the ink and he said nothing. But when I went to Rabbi Ishmael, he asked me: My son, what is your occupation? I answered: I am a scribe [of the Torah]. And he said to me: My son, be careful in your work, for it is the work of God; if you omit a single letter, or write a letter too many, you will destroy the whole world…'" [13]

"The Pythagorean concept of the creative power of numbers and letters was known in Tannaitic times; the famous Amora Rab (about 200 C. E.) said of Bezalel that 'he knew how to combine the letters by which heaven and earth were created.' The Geonic mystic lore made much of this doctrine, and in the Sefer YeZirah it was elevated into one of the pillars of the Kabbalah. It was especially popular in the German Kabbalah of the thirteenth century which above all insisted upon the mysterious powers inherent in the letters of the Hebrew alphabet and developed a fine art of combining and recombining these letters to evoke from them their highest potency." [14]

"Indeed, he [Bezaleel] was said to be filled with God's Spirit and with divine, secret knowledge, by means of which the 'heavens were established' and the 'depths broken up' (Prov. 3:19-20). Clearly, Bezaleel was already a well-known figure for the Creator." [15]

"There are two main strands in the Jewish mystical tradition. One of these, Ma'aseh Bereshit, concerns the work of creation. Ma'aseh means 'work' and Bereshit, the first word in the Bible, means 'in the beginning': this strand of the tradition originates in a meditation on the first chapter of Genesis. Ma'aseh Merkabah, the second strand, originates in a meditation on the first chapter of Ezekiel. (The word merkabah means chariot --the chariot of God.)" [16]

"We know that in the period of the Second Temple an esoteric doctrine was already taught in Pharisaic circles. The first chapter of Genesis, the story of Creation (Maasch Bereshith), and the first chapter of Ezekiel, the vision of God's throne-chariot (the 'Merkabah'), were the favorite subjects of discussion and interpretation which it was apparently considered inadvisable to make public." [17]

"In the Merkabah schools, the role of the divinely inspired architect took on increasingly magical connotations. It was now claimed that Bezalel, the archetypal master mason, knew the secrets of creation and the magical names and numbers of God ... Bezalel could body forth the body of God; in fact he and his Merkabah brothers could see and manipulate the 'measure of the body' of God (called the Shi'ur Komah). By duplicating Bezalel's magical Gematria, the adept could ascend through the celestial architecture of gates and palaces. ... Having mastered the difficult passage through the gates and palaces, the adept finally stood before God's supernal throne. There, he was granted a vision of God in quasi-bodily form, which was daringly identified with the 'figure in the form of a man' whom Ezekiel had seen on the throne (Ezekiel 1:26)." [18]

"There arose a mysticism that sought to explore the secret world behind the letters. And out of this came the 'Merkabah' mysticism, in which the journey to the 'Throne of God' (merkabah) is a central concept in creation mysticism and, some centuries later, in the Kabbalah." [19]

"1. Merkabah mysticism is the name of a mystical movement within Judaism’s Talmudic and Gaonic Periods (ca. 100-1000 c. e.). This school produced what is called the Hekhalot literature.

"2. This mysticism, ma’aseh merkabah (work of the chariot), is mentioned in the Mishna itself (in Hagigah 2:1): The work of creation (ma’aseh bereshit) may not be expounded in the presence of two or more. The description of the chariot (merkabah) may not be expounded even in the presence of one, unless he is a sage who already understands out of his own insights. (quoted from Lipman, Eugene. THE MISHNAH, ORAL TEACHING OF JUDAISM. [New York:] Schocken, 1974, p. 150)

"3. Implied in this quote is that merkabah mysticism, though guarded, was not outside of the rabbinic tradition. One gets the impression that it was even thought of as the supreme mystery.

"4. Just as the work of creation comprised mystical speculation on the first part of Genesis, work of the chariot comprised mystical speculation on, and amplification of, the first chapter of Ezekiel.

"5. The literature of this school describes the mystical journey through various heavens and palaces (hekhalot) leading to the ultimate vision of the throne and chariot, and, in some cases, 'the figure in the form of a man' (Ezekiel 1:26)." [20]

"Before the end of the second century CE, the rabbis had excluded most of the apocalyptic literature from the Jewish canon of scripture, and placed restrictions upon the study of the two Biblical texts most used by early Jewish mystics, Genesis 1 (cosmology) and Ezekiel 1 (merkavah)." [21]

"Origen writes in the prologue to his Commentary on the Song of Songs that 'it is a practice among the Hebrews that no one is permitted so much as to hold [the Song of Songs] in his hands, unless he has reached a full and mature age.' The Jewish sages, he continues, teach all the Scripture to the young, but keep four passages to the end: 'the beginning of Genesis, in which the creation of the world is described; the beginning of Ezekiel the prophet, which tells of the cherubim; the end [of Ezekiel], which deals with the building of the Temple; and this book of the Song of Songs' …" [22]