1 Numbers in the Book of Genesis John P. Lowe Professor Emeritus Pennsylvania State University © May 2020 Abstract: Mathematical properties of numbers appearing in Chapters 5 and 11 of the book of Genesis (Masoretic) are presented. These properties include but are not restricted to: being equal to lengths of hypotenuses of Pythagorean triangles, being equal to sums of sequences of neighboring prime numbers, being the smallest number equal to a given number of summed quartets of squares, being generators of prime numbers when they do not end in 1, 3, 6, or 8, being sums of sequences involving 1, 2, 3, 4, and/or 6, 7, 8, 9 raised to various powers, being related to “magic square” sums, and sometimes being multiples of 7. Most of these properties have not been reported before. Much has been written about the numbers in the book of Genesis, particularly those in Chapters 5 and 11, where the ages in years of patriarchs are given for when their first (covenanted) son was born and their ages at death, along with the number of intervening years between the two. Up until now, the discussions have involved, among other things, the importance of “privileged” numbers 3, 5, and 7, the relevance of the base-sixty number system in the ancient world, the absence of numbers ending in 1, 3, 4, 6, and 8 in Chapter 5, and of numbers ending in 1 or 6 in Chapter 11. An internet search of “numbers in Genesis” suffices to bring up a listing of prior discussions. 1 When my father retired he was drawn into this subject, which made me aware of it. He passed away before reaching convincing conclusions, and I thought that was the end of the matter. But my own profession (quantum chemistry) kept me conversant with numbers, and I more or less accidentally stumbled upon a fact that made me feel that I was seeing something previously unrecognized and possibly significant—the fact that the numbers cited in Genesis 5 and 11 are almost all equal to the length of the hypotenuse of a Pythagorean triangle. (I will refer to such lengths as Pythagorean hypotenuse values, or PH values.) Of the integers from zero to 1000, 567 are Pythagorean hypotenuse values. Of the 32 numerical citations in Genesis 5, all but two are Pythagorean hypotenuse values. Of the 30 citations in Chapter 11, all but five are Pythagorean hypotenuse values. This seemed too far from the natural randomness of 1 Note that throughout this article I use the term number to refer to integers.