Western Philosophy
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the Pythagorean numbers 3,
4, and 5, forming a right
triangle. But absolutely nothing was
known about Jewish
mathematics at the time
of the destruction of the
First Temple (586 B. C. E.),
when Thales lived and Pythagoras
was born, until I discovered
the three-dimensional structure of the
Ten Commandments.7) As
a legal scientist, convinced that
Jewish legal and scribal
tradition would not change one
jot or tittle of the law of the
Torah of Moses from the
Sinai, I found the distribution
of the letters on the
original stone inscription.8) They were
entered into squares like those
of a crossword puzzle, which disclosed
the
7) "There are no passages of any
significant mathematical interest in the
Bible," is the expert
opinion, now obsolete of
the article on
Mathematics in the
Encyclopaedia Judaica of
1974 (vol. 11 at 1121)
written by Barry Spain, Head
of the Department of Mathematics,
City of London Polytechnic;
but see Ed Metzler, Discovering
Mosaistics (N. 1) p.
24 Note 18, p. 38 Note 16, p.
81 Note 35, p.
135 Note 16, and p.
195 Note 18, as well
as the diagram on p.21 infra.
8) The Jewish attitude concerning the Letter
of the Law is well summed
up by Jesus of
Nazareth in the gospel according
to Saint Matthew (5,
18): "For verily I say unto you,
Till heaven and earth pass, one
jot or one tittle shall in no wise
pass from the law (min
ha-Torah), till all be
fulfilled." In our time,
this has been confirmed
by the Dead Sea
Scrolls, cf. Ed Metzler,
Discovering Mosaistics (N. 1) p. 65 Note 4.
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