
Babylonian Mathematics (2003) [pdf] - rsj_hn
https://www.math.tamu.edu/~dallen/masters/egypt_babylon/babylon.pdf
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dbatten
Related unsolved mystery in ancient mathematics - the Biblical genealogy from
Adam to Noah in Genesis 5 contains 10 individuals. For each of the
individuals, the genealogy reports the age at which their descendant was born,
the remaining number of years in their life, and their age at death. 30
numbers in total. In the Masoretic Text (often considered the most reliable),
those 30 numbers all end in a 0, 2, 5, 7, or 9. The chances of this happening
by chance are effectively 0.

Possible explanations include either 1) that the numbers were corrupted,
possibly when being converted from a sexagesimal system into decimal, or 2)
that the author never intended the numbers to be "real" numbers in the sense
we would understand them, but was instead intending to use a pattern to teach
symbolic meaning. However, to my knowledge, nobody has ever offered a
completely convincing interpretation of the puzzle. If #1 is correct, what
were the original values and what was the process by which they were
corrupted? If #2, what is the pattern that the author was constructing, and
what is it intended to communicate?

Other genealogies in Genesis have similar weird features, and some have
proposed theories that involve the other genealogies as well, but that's
beyond the scope of this comment.

See -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealogies_of_Genesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealogies_of_Genesis)

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pmoriarty
_" those 30 numbers all end in a 0, 2, 5, 7, or 9. The chances of this
happening by chance are effectively 0."_

What are the odds of those 30 numbers all ending in some numbers in a random
set of 5 single-digit numbers?

Also, considering all the numbers in the Bible, what are the odds that some
arbitrarily chosen set of them will contain some sort of unusual pattern?

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dbatten
I don't have the math in front of me for the first question, but I've seen it
worked out in the past. It's on the order of 1 in a billion.

On the second question, considering "all the numbers in the Bible," an
arbitrarily chosen number or set of numbers from the Bible will contain a
pattern very, very often, because that's how people thought in that culture.

Jesus didn't have 12 disciples by accident. They symbolically represent the 12
tribes of Israel.

The genealogy in Matthew 1 doesn't contain 3 sets of 14 generations by
accident. The author had to skip at least a few kings from the Jewish
tradition to make it work out. And the fact that it's intentional is
underscored by him explicitly saying "so, there were 3 sets of 14
generations..." (He's making a theological point, but the details of that
aren't relevant to the question at hand.)

I could go on... Intentional numerical patterns are, in fact, quite common!
And this gives us more, not less, reason to suspect that the Genesis 5
genealogy has an intentional pattern.

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rsj_hn
So one item on my "bucket list" is to write some math texts for either curious
school students or people who home school, or for older people interested in
learning math. And I think a good approach that I haven't seen before is to
intersperse the math with the history of it's discovery. So kids could spend a
chapter doing egyptian math. Then a chapter doing Babylonian math. Then a
chapter doing Greek math with a ruler and compass. Then some more. And in this
way, build math up together with fun facts and pictures of the historical
places where the math was created. That's I love documents like this.

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jkmcf
I have a similar desire but for science in general!

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rsj_hn
That would be awesome, too!

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adamnemecek
What blows my mind is that Babylonians knew about Fourier transform. What was
humanity doing for like 3000 years?

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knolax
I didn't see anything about fourier transforms in TFA? Do you have links?

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Koshkin
I too got curious, but the only thing that I have found is this paper from the
University of Babylon:

[http://www.uobabylon.edu.iq/eprints/paper_2_29545_76.pdf](http://www.uobabylon.edu.iq/eprints/paper_2_29545_76.pdf)

