Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

Deuteronomy 6.4f

When Jesus was asked to declare the greatest commandment, he quoted this verse. Its name, the Shema, is taken from the first word which means Hear. Modern Jews consider the recital of the Shema both evening and morning to be one of their most sacred duties, and heroes of the Jewish faith have been said to have died with the final letter Dalet still on their lips. Mystics refer to its recital as the Unification of the Name, and see it as one of the most direct routes to union with God.

The Shema opens with a statement of Unity followed by a Threefold commandment. The pattern based on One and Three is reiterated in the numerical weight of two of the fundamental terms used in the verse. In accordance with the Alphabet Table, we have:

This reiterates the intrinsic relation between 1 (Unity) and 3 (Trinity) which is the divine basis for the triad I-You-They that includes all possible interpersonal relationships. The Number 13 is the first non-trivial hexagonal Star Number:

The Jews have long recognized the profundity of this link between Love and Unity and have integrated it in their understanding of the Shema. For example, in the fifteenth century, Rabbi Meir Ibn Gabbai wrote:¹

For the perfect adoration worship demanded of the true worshipper is the service of the Unity, that is, the unification of the glorious and Only Name. But the essence of Love is the true Unity, and the true Unity is what is termed Love...

Obviously, we are not the first to note these identities. In fact, these ideas are linked so strongly in the Jewish tradition that we find them expressed even in the Daily Prayer Book:²

Our Father, merciful father, ever compassionate, have mercy upon us ... Thou hast chosen chosen us from all peoples and tongues, hast bought us near unto thy great name forever in faithfulness, to thank thee and proclaim thy Unity in Love ...  

These identities also relate directly to God as our Father, which is not only a Christian, but also a very Jewish way to refer to God. Consider the words of Dr. Schechter:³

the term "Father," or "our Father, who is in heaven," or "My Father, who is in heaven," is one of the most frequent in the Jewish Prayer Book and the subsequent liturgy. The latter seems to have been a favorite expression with the Tanna of the School of Elijah who very often introduces his comments on the Bible ... with the words "My Father in heaven, may thy great name be blessed for all eternity, and mayest thou have delight in thy people Israel."

The fundamental Hebrew word expressing this relation is:

(Avi, My Father) = 13

The influence of Gematria thoroughly suffuses the entire Rabbinical tradition. Moses Maimonides, considered by many Jews to be one of the greatest Rabbis ever to live, undoubtedly had these and many other such relations in mind when he codified Judaism as Thirteen Articles of Faith, implying that the essence of the faith is Love and Unity. He also wrote an exposition entitled "26 Propositions Employed by the Philosophers to Prove the Existence of God." Why 26? This is the numerical weight of the most holy personal name of God:

All of this adorns the doctrine that "God is love" with simplicity and grace. Furthermore, when this name is combined with the word one, as it is in the Shema, we have:

That these two ideas, Love and Unity, are subsumed in one numerical category is tremendously significant, but that the uniting number is itself composed of a One and a Three is nothing less than divine.

God used these relations in the design of I Corinthians 13, which is commonly known as the Bible's magnificent Love Chapter. There is no greater statement of the nature of love to be found in the Bible, or anywhere else, for that matter. And how was it designed? It is the 13^th chapter consisting of 13 verses with the 13^th verse explicitly built on the pattern of Three and One: "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity." (Charity being the translation of Agape, Love).

Yet there is more. Calculating the sum of the entire Shema yields yet another multiple of 13:

Sum of Shema = 1118 = 13 x 86

And what is the significance of the Number 86? This is the value of the name of God given in the first verse of the Bible:

Thus, the sum of the entire Shema has the obvious interpretation:

Sum of Shema = 1118 = 13 x 86 = ONE x GOD!

Remember, these identities are incontrovertible, and this is the verse that Jesus declared to be greatest commandment! The plain meaning of the text of this Scripture is fully coded in its intrinsic alphanumeric structure. These relations are represented in the following diagram:

Yet there is still more! Turning to the New Testament, we find the title Jesus Christ used most frequently to refer to God:

As an aside, this word links to the First Word of the Bible through the identity:

And now we can behold the most amazing fact of all. The three names of God, The Father, Elohim, and YHVH, are not independent! They share a common set of three prime factors:

Consider what this means. The numerical values of these three names are generated from a single set following a single rule: They are generated by multiplying pairs of primes from the set (2, 13, 43). And where have we seen this set? It is the set of the unique prime factors of the Shema!

Sum of Shema = 1118 = 2 x 13 x 43

There are exactly three numbers generated from this set in this fashion, and these three numbers mathematically interlock to form a self-contained, closed algebra of God's names. This set - the Unity Holograph Generating Set - is a variation of the theme of the Holographic Generating Set (27, 37, 73), and can be derived from it.

All of this conspires to show that the Shema, the first and greatest commandment - the greatest declaration of God unity to be found in all Scripture - mathematically declares the doctrine of the Trinity:

As it turns out, there is a large body of Jewish literature that uses the Shema as a starting point for the discussion of the "mystery of the threefold singularity" that is the Godhead. A brief introduction to this in found in my review of Yehuda Liebes "Studies in the Zohar."

The relations between the Numbers in the Shema and the Persons of the Holy Trinity has been detailed in the article The Shield of the Blessed Trinity. Here is a brief overview of the relation between the three primes and the Trinity:

The Number 13 and God the Father

The Number 13 This is the value of "My Father". It is reflected (x 2) in the value of the name of the Lord (26 = 2 x 13).

The Number 2 and God the Son:

This is the Number of the Son, as discussed at length in various articles relating to Spoke 2. In particular, we have this identity based on the Beyt KeyWord:

The Number 43 and God the Holy Spirit:

There are numerous relations to the Holy Spirit based on the Number 43. It is the value of (Gheel, Exceeding Joy) which is the gift of the Holy Spirit (Cf. also 710 and this word is found in Psalm 43 in conjuction with the name Elohim (= 2 x 43). The 43^rd Triangular Number is 946 = 22 x 43 = (, and we have the pair of identities:

1) Quoted in.phpects of Rabbinical Theology, pg. 75.

2) ibid. pg 22

3) ibid. page 55