Hello everyone,
This is my first post here so the first thing I would like to do is thank Richard for hosting this forum and for the sterling work he has done in presenting his research on the Bible Wheel and providing the gematria database - I have utilised these resources intermittently over the years while carrying out my own reseach, and finally got round to ordering the book there. I was very pleased to see the websites back online. I believe that the significance of Richard's work has yet to be fully appreciated or understood and I wish to give him every encouragement in his endeavours, and pray that God will bless him and inspire him in everything that he does.
With that said I would like to note what I think is a beautifull parallel to the Bible Wheel found in an important text of the Bible itself. We find it in Exodus 25:10 where instructions are given for the construction of the mysterious Ark of the Covenant, the sacred chest which housed the Ten Commandments and resided in the Holy of Holies inside the Tabernacle:
"And they shall make an ark of shittim wood: two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof, and a cubit and a half the height thereof."
Whilst it was embellished with ornament and the pair of cherubim, the ark was essentially a rectangular box measuring 2.5x1.5x1.5 cubits, therefore the length, breadth and height sum to 5.5 cubits and so the outer perimeter of the box is four times this or 22 cubits. Inside this box was placed the Ten Commandments; the pinnacle or consummation of the Law of Moses. Measurements have great significance in the Bible, one only needs to think of Ezekiel and St. John encountering angels with measuring rods in their visions, and being instructed to measure the dimensions of the temple.
The Bible Wheel consists of an outer ring of 22 segments containing the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, which houses the 66 books of the Bible as three cycles of books. The sevenfold division of the books - which Richard has compared with the Menorah or seven branch candlestick which stood outside the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle - creates a cross and therefore a fourfold division of the structure. This appears to me to provide a striking parallel with both the Ark of the Covenant which housed the Ten Commandments and the Menorah which illuminated the interior of the Tabernacle for the priests. One cannot escape the relation here to the 22/7 ratio for pi which is attributed to the Greek mathematician Archimedes.
Eventually the portable Tabernacle was replaced with the more permanent Temple of Solomon. Essentially it can be represented as a rectangular box measuring 60x20x30 cubits, so the outer perimeter is 4 x 110 or 440 cubits. Meanwhile the four space diagonals of this box measure 4 x 70 = 280 cubits, and 440 and 280 cubits just happen to match the base and height of the Great Pyramid of Giza - a monument long claimed to embody the 22/7 pi ratio and "square the circle" via the ratio of the base peirmeter to twice its height, or 1760 to 560 cubits.
Some food for thought perhaps.
Nick