Symmetrically Designed Sifrei Torah: A Quantitative Analysis - Hakirah

216 : Hạkirah, the Flatbush Journal of Jewish Law and Thought
Table 9 demonstrates that all of the Gemara’s highlighted
letter/words/verse can be shown to be at the center of a
symmetrically constructed S”T that includes an appropriate blank
parchment wraparound at the end, 72 without resorting to contrived
categories of letters and words. It furthermore demonstrates the
practicality of the soferim, and that their interest in counting was to
create the most attractive Sefer Torah that they could. Toward this end
they have given us the design of three S”T where each is based on a
different reasonable objective of equalizing the content of all of the
pages. The first two designs are implicitly given by stating the middle
letter and middle words, and the last design, equalizing the number of
verses, is more explicitly conveyed in the repeated allusions to
numbers that are multiples of 46. As discussed previously, the
frequency of the numbers in the Gemara divisible by 46 is so high as
to eliminate any possibility of occurrence by chance, and is clearly
indicative of a plan to have 46 verses on each page.
In reviewing the results of our analysis of letters and words, it
would further appear that these two designs were the motivation for
72 It does not mean that all of these are simultaneously middle letter,
word and verse. Note in Table 9 that the number of blank pages in
each design is different. As mentioned in Section 9, we expect the
variability between pages is greatest in the equal-number-of verses-perpage
design since the word-size of verses can vary greatly. However, we
surmised that since we are using a rather large number of verses per
page, i.e. 46, the average numbers of words per page would always be
about the same. This turns out not to be the case. The Chart below lists
details of the relationship between letters, words and verses in each
Chumash.
חומש
Number
of
Words
Number
of
פסוקים
Average
Words Per
Verse
Average
Letters Per
Word
Average # of
Words in 46
Verses
בראשית
20,614 1,533 13.4 3.8 619 שמות
16,714 1,210 13.8 3.8 635 ויקרא
11,950 859 13.9 3.8 640 במדבר
16,408 1,288 12.7 3.9 586 דברים
14,294 956 15.0 3.8 688 Total 79,980 5,846 13.7 3.8 629