And in the fourteenth day of the first month is the passover of the Lord.
Of course that's on the Hebrew calendar, and today is not Passover. Still, it was a bit of a coincidence to read about "the fourteenth day of the first month" on the fourteenth day of the first month.
How much of a coincidence? Well, there are 21 chapters in John, and the rest of the Bible consists of 65 books comprising 1,168 chapters. So going through the whole Bible on my system would mean reading a total of 2,533 chapters (the 21 chapters of John 65 times each, plus each of the non-John chapters once)
Seven different chapters, none of which are in John, mention the date of Passover. Thus of the 2,533 possible three-chapter readings that might happen to fall on January 14, 21 of them include a reference to "the fourteenth day of the first month." Thus, the chance of occurrence for the coincidence I observed today is in the neighborhood of 1% -- lowish but not extraordinarily low. And of course many other dates are also mentioned in the Bible (though none in John), so the chance of reading about any of those dates on the date itself would be considerably higher than 1%. If it's even as high as 3%, I should expect coincidences like this to occur about once a month. Nothing to write home about -- but, apparently, something to write a blog post about!
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Update: The next day, January 15, I read the next three chapters of Numbers -- which just happen to contain the one and only biblical reference to the fifteenth day of the first month (Num. 33:3):
And they departed from Rameses in the first month, on the fifteenth day of the first month; on the morrow after the passover the children of Israel went out with an high hand in the sight of all the Egyptians.
Of the 2,533 possible three-chapter readings that might happen to fall on January 14, only one of them makes it possible to read about 1/14 on 1/14 and about 1/15 on 1/15. So this coincidence is now 21 times as impressive as I had originally reckoned!
6 comments:
William,
Switzerland's unofficial motto is : Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno.
1 4 all..... and all 4 1. The mirror aka twins number: 14/41
Is the Bible perhaps 'telling' us that the Octagon ( 8's ) are the chosen ones ( the 144? )
Marshall and my house number is 'coincidently 401.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unus_pro_omnibus,_omnes_pro_uno
The Bible actually uses the British date format: 14/1. The ordinal gematria value of my surname is 141.
Your house is number 401? It must have been tough getting authorization to build there!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes#401
William,
It's actually another zero in the mix of our address, but zeros are place holders.
Also I try not to put too much info out in cyberspace;-))
Reminds me of when I lived at 404... kept getting letters in the post about how they couldn't find my address!
Quoth the server... (This one is less suggestive but also less authentic to the original poem.)
A small observation -- 7, 14, 21 and 28 all appear in your post at least once.
Remember this? While wandering around the shop that day, the cover of another book gave me a vague déjà vu flash. Unsure about it at the time, I went back and bought it the following week; it's a bit New Agey, but I take what's useful and leave the rest. I bring it up now because in late September I ended up rereading this post of yours, and 14:14 being made up of a repeating number, I had a look at what the book said about it. "Forward Thinking - You're planting the seeds for your future." That seemed rather curious.
@WG
Read your emailerinos
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