Opera omnia (vol. 5)

Description

[*Liber numerorum qui in Sanctis Scripturis occurrunt*](https://christianity.stackexchange.com/a/73652/1787) the [*Catholic Encyclopedia*](https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08186a.htm) describes as "a curious dissertation on the mystical significance of Scriptural numbers." I also remember that quote from his *Etymologies* , which is very observant and rarely highlighted among commentators—even less so today as numbers in Scripture tend to be brushed aside or childishly understood to have some unexplained, arbitrary meaning. That numbers are literally *figures* (“figurative” of hidden intellectual realities vehicled in the economy of divine revelation by means of both the structure of the natural world and the vast account of Scripture) is actually implicit in the idea of and word for ‘number’ occurring in biblical Hebrew: מִספָּר / *Mi* *SP* *ă* *R*. Hence, the *S* *o* *PH* *e* *R* *’im* /סופרים, or ‘scribes,’ whose task literally was to count (לִסְפּוֹר/ *li* *SP* *o* *R* ) and interpret numbers; and, likewise, a correlation is specifically made in the Gospel between the task of “understanding” [ *intellexistis* ] the hermeneutical mechanics (and number-based mnemotechnics) of the parables of the kingdom and becoming “scribes instructed [ *doctus* ] in the regulation/kingdom of heaven” (Matt 13:51-52). It’s in many ways like in physics and its study of the structure of the natural world. We, in reality, know very little... The meaning-packed sea of Sacred Scripture is alive and brimming with untold treasures hiding in its various depths (incomparably more so than the physical stage for this fading world, the structure, complexity, and natural depth of which eludes us more than we are prepared to even imagine).Latin-French version: * Isidore de Séville, and Jean-Yves Guillaumin. 2005. [*Le livre des nombres*](https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/470270101). Paris: Les Belles lettres. The Latin is in [v. 83 of Migne, pp. 179](https://archive.org/stream/patrologiaecursu83mign#page/90/mode/1up)-200 (DjVu pp. 94-104).