Textual Sources
A Mishnaic textual source makes clear that the use of gematria is dated to at least the Tannaic period.
Pirkei Avot 3:23:
רבי אלעזר בן חסמא אומר, קנין ופתחי נדה הן הן גופי הלכות. תקופות וגמטריאות פרפראות לחכמה.
Rabbi Eleazar Chisma said: the laws of mixed bird offerings and the key to the calculations of menstruation days—these, these are the body of the halakhah. The calculation of the equinoxes and gematria are the desserts of wisdom.
An alternative translation to the Hebrew word פרפראות is "minor side dishes".
Minor dishes may be served before, during, or after a meal, to add interest and variety; they are the appetizers, side dishes, desserts, tid-bits — never to be served as main dishes. In other words, these sciences, while important, are yet only auxiliary and secondary. What is primary is the Torah. What is central is the life giving law.
Read more about this topic: Gematria
Famous quotes containing the word sources:
“Even healthy families need outside sources of moral guidance to keep those tensions from imploding—and this means, among other things, a public philosophy of gender equality and concern for child welfare. When instead the larger culture aggrandizes wife beaters, degrades women or nods approvingly at child slappers, the family gets a little more dangerous for everyone, and so, inevitably, does the larger world.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (20th century)