The Ten Sephiroth on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life
The use of gematria was widespread in esoteric Judaism at the time the New Testament was written. Although the Kabbalah did not exist during the first century, the esoteric influences that would later coalese into this practice were already fully developed and widely disseminated in Judaic thought. We can find the use of gematria in various other literary works dating back to well before the first century. Esoteric Judaism believed that numbers held a mystical symbolic value, and because each letter of the Hebrew alphabet was also used as numerals, each word in the Hebrew language had a numerical value. Jewish mystics believed that words with equal numerical value were purposely associated by God at the creation of the world, and spiritual insight into the properties of names and words could be found by exploring these connections.
As can be seen from the table above, the Hebrew letter waw is transliterated into English as the letter w, and has the numerical value of 6 - so www in Hebrew has the numerical equivalent of three sixes - 6-6-6.
The most famous use of gematria is of course the number of the Beast in the book of Revelation. The fact that the number of the Beast, 666, was also the number of a man's name (most likely the Roman Emperor Nero in the preterist layer of interpretation) makes it explicitly clear that the use of gematria should be used to decipher this riddle. The threefold repitition of sixes in this number was the primary symbolic value for the author of the Apocalypse. Falling short of the perfect divine number seven (which is to be found repeated throughout Revelation both in the central narrative itself and also hidden in the sub-text), the number six represented imperfection - the seperation between the Creator and the creation itself. The fact that it repeated three times in this number connotes the use of the Hebrew superlative. Hebrew does not use the superlative in the same singluar way as most other languages. To emphasise that the superlative is being used the word is repeated three times. So the fact that the word "holy" is repeated three times in Isaiah 6:3 indicates to the reader that God is holiest. The number six being repeated three times therefore suggests that the Beast is the superlative of imperfection - the exact opposite of the Holy Trinity which is represented by three sevens.
To the semitic mind of the author of the Apocalypse three sixes would be represented by a threefold repetition of the letter waw. And a threefold repetition of the Hebrew letter waw is transliterated into the modern Latin alphabet as www - an acronym which is used to represent the medium through which all electronic commerce is now conducted - the worldwide web (see the post Hebrew 666 for more details).
The New Testament contains some other examples of gematria other than the number of the Beast. Pope Benedict XVI for instance explains that Matthew's genelogy of Jesus is seperated into three groups of fourteen generations because 14 was the numerical value of the name of King David (Jesus of Nazareth p9). In another mysterious use of number symbolism which has been widely speculated upon number is that of the 153 fishes in the net described in John 21:
So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, 153 of them. And although there were so many, the net was not torn. (John 21:11)
John Michell asks why such a precise number would be included, and argues that it has a special signifcance for the author of the fourth Gospel. Michell notes that 153 is a triangular number - the sum of all numbers from 1-17, and that the numerial value of both the Greek words to diktuon ("the net") and ichthyes ("fish") in isopsephy (the Greek version of gematria) is 153 (How the World is Made pp97-98).
The use of gematria became common in the occult largely through the influences of the Kabbalah on Western esotericism. Although many Kabbalah adherents believe that the Zohar, the foundational work of Kabbalistic teaching, was written during the second century AD by Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, it is more likely to have been written by Moses De Leon, who claimed to have discovered the book in the 13th century. After the publication of the Zohar, the Kabbalah became widely systemised, and began to attract thinkers from outside of Judaism. The renaissance philosopher and occultist Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) is thought to be the first to introduce Kabbalistic teachings to Western Hermetic thought, leading to the development of the so-called "Christian Kabbalah" which was to profoundly influence secret societies such as the Rosicrucians and Freemasons.
Many of the rituals of Freemasonry are based upon the principles of sacred geometry and the dimensions of the Temple of Solomon - influences which are derived from the Kabbalah. The infamous 19th century mason Albert Pike called the Kabbalah the "key of the occult sciences" and stated that this key turns on the secret science of numbers - given rise to the masonic motto omnia in numeris sita sunt - "Everything lies veiled in numbers" (Morals and Dogma pp626-642).
See also the related articles:
The Mark of the Beast?
NFC Technology and the Mark of the Beast