Gematria

In numerology, gematria (/ɡəˈmeɪtriə/; Hebrew: גמטריא or גימטריה, gimatriyyā, plural גמטראות or גימטריות, gimatriyyot, borrowed via Aramaic from Koine Greek: γραμμάτια)^[1] is the practice of assigning a numerical value to a name, word, or phrase by reading it as a number, or sometimes by using an alphanumeric cipher. The letters of the alphabets involved have standard numerical values, but a word can yield several values if a cipher is used.

According to Aristotle (384–322 BCE), isopsephy, based on the Greek numerals developed in the city of Miletus in Anatolia, was part of the Pythagoreanism, which originated in the 6th century BCE.^[2] The first evidence of use of Hebrew letters as numbers dates to 78 BCE; gematria is still used in Jewish culture. Similar systems have been used in other languages and cultures, derived from or inspired by either Greek isopsephy or Hebrew gematria, and include Arabic abjad numerals and English gematria.

The most common form of Hebrew gematria is used in the Talmud and Midrash as in Jerusalem Talmud, Genesis Rabba 95:3, and elaborately in Rabbinic literature. It involves reading words and sentences as numbers and assigning numerical instead of phonetic values to each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. When read as numbers, they can be compared and contrasted with other words or phrases; cf. the Hebrew proverb נִכְנַס יַיִן יָצָא סוֹד (Nik̲nas yayin yāṣāʾ soḏ, lit. 'wine entered, secret went out', i.e. in vino veritas). The gematric value of יין ('wine') is 70 (י=10; י=10; ן=50) and this is also the gematric value of סוד ('secret', ס=60; ו=6; ד=4)‎, cf. Babylonian Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin 38a.^[3] Gematria sums can involve single words or lengthy strings of calculations. A short example of Hebrew numerology that uses gematria is the word חי, chai, 'alive', which is composed of two letters that (using the assignments in the mispar gadol table shown below) add up to 18. This has made 18 a "lucky number" among Jews. In early Jewish sources, the term can also refer to other forms of calculation or letter manipulation, for example atbash.^[4]