It reveals that God choses who will be saved. Some have drawn parallels: the wood boat, the wood cross, salvation, etc. What is really neat about Noah is his 3 sons. Ham was a reprobate. Shem was the elect--Jews. Then we have Japeth--the Gentiles, that would later be en-grafted in--compare and contrast the close relationship between Shem and Japeth; i.e. election pre-figured....
Now to the term 8. You have to be VERY CAREFUL with numerology (some good, some bad). Have fun with this: <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/heavy.gif" alt="" />
Gematria, the substitution of numbers for letters to discover hidden meaning in words through numerological analogies, is primarily associated with cabalistic scriptural exegesis in Jewish mysticism dating from 12th-cent. Languedoc and flourishing throughout Europe into the 17th cent. Although gematria, along with its related cabalistic arts of notaricon (acrostics) and temura (substitution of letters according to code), is an occult method of explication, it had, as did other principles of scriptural exegesis, some bearing on literary arts apart from Scripture. In the 15th cent., the Italian humanist Pico della Mirandola made extensive use of Cabala in his Apologia and Heptaplus. His interest was shared by subsequent Christian commentators, including such distinguished humanists and occultists as Anton Reuchlin (1494), Paul Ricci (1510), John Colet (1517), Jean Thenaud (1519), John Fisher (1521), Francesco Giorgio (1525), Henry Cornelius Agrippa (1532), Peter Bongo (1585), Giordino Bruno (1590), Robert Fludd (1629), Francis Bacon (1631), Thomas Vaughan (1650), John Dee (1659), Henry Moore (1662), and Bishop Burnet (1692). To some extent study of Cabala was looked on as a means of resurrecting Pythagorean study, because of its emphasis on number lore in general. Peter Bongo’s Mysticae Numerorum Significationis (1585) placed a wealth of numerology at the disposal of Renaissance authors.
But gematria is much more ancient than Cabala. The name is first recorded ca. a.d.200; its beginnings may be traced several hundred years earlier, however, to Pythagorean as well as midrashic practices, where letters in Greek as well as Hebrew alphabets were used for numbers (alpha = 1; beth, beta = 2; gimel, gamma = 3, and so on, 1-9, 10-90, 100-900, with diacritical marks to indicate multiples of thousands). The influence of gematria as an exegetical tool is well established by NT times and appears in John 2:17–22, where Jesus says that he will raise in three days the Temple, which was forty-six years in building; the temple of which he speaks is to be understood as his body. St. Augustine explains the riddle, noting that forty-six is a gematric sign for ADAM (1 + 4 + 1 + 40 = 46), from whom Jesus takes his body, which will be resurrected on the third day (In Joan. Ev. 10.12). It also appears in Rev. 13:18, where the number of the beast is said to represent a man’s name with numerical value of 666. A further example may be seen in scriptural glosses on Gideon’s 300 fighting men, represented by T (tau), which gematrists in the Glossa Ordinaria explain as a symbol anticipating the cross. In the hands of Christian cabalists in the Renaissance, gematria reveals such mysteries as the analogy between Gen. 49:10, “Shiloh shall come” (YBA ShILH = 358), where the number prefigures “Messiah” (MShYCh = 358) and also the serpent Nachash (NChSh = 358) which Moses lifted in the desert (Num. 21.9) and which Jesus mentions as a prefiguration of his own Crucifixion in John 3:14. That the name of Jesus, which in its Greek spelling equals 888, should be congruent in its iteration of eights with other scriptural eights associated with Jesus in addition to the 358—circumcision, baptism, and Resurrection—confirmed the mysteries of gematria with mystery upon mystery. Fourteenth-century curricula at Oxford devoted several hours a week to the study of gematria. Evidences of its influence on vernacular literature may be seen in riddles such as
In 8 is alle my loue
& 9 be y-sette byfore
So 8 be y-closyd aboue
Thane 3 is good therefore,
which works out in the English alphabet to the anagram for Jesus Christ: IHC. Some of the complex dating of the old judge’s life in the ME poem St. Erkenwald may entail gematric cruxes. Medieval authors sometimes built their names into their “anonymous” works by means of notaricon (cf. Thomas Usk’s signature THSKNVI=“Thin Usk” in Testament of Love [1385] and Ethel Seaton’s claims of acrostics in 15th-cent. poetry in her study of Sir Richard Ros). In the Renaissance one encounters number riddles like John Skelton’s “17.4.7.2.17.5.18/18.19.17.1.19.8.5.12” in The Garland of Laurel, which, through his special variant on gematria, spells the name Rogerus Stratham. Sometimes the riddles are based on syllable count. But gematria and cabalistic arts are so obscure that it is difficult to detect their presence, let alone explicate the riddles. Nonetheless, in view of the love of enigma in the coterie poetry of medieval and Renaissance secular and religious courts, there are probably more of such clever obscurities than modern readers suspect or would care to investigate.
Jeffrey, David L. A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans, 1992.
