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The Theomatic topic of ROOT is the last example of a clear instance of Theomatics given in the author's Theomatics web site. In this example, the author examines all 16 references to this topic in Nestle's 26th edition of the Greek New Testament, and considers phrases of 6 words or less that can be composed containing these references.

He introduces the example as follows: "In thumbing through the book of Mark chapter 4, verse 6, it was casually noticed that the word root in Greek, had an exact numerical value of 168." The word for root is given by the author as RIZA, with a numerical value of 118. It is a derivative, RIZAN, that the author noticed had a value of 168. The closeness of this value to a number familiar to the author as a popular Theomatic theme evidently prompted his research of this topic.

The casual approach of the author in noting the phenomenon is evident. It would appear that such examples of Theomatics are quite easily discovered, and that they are frequently observed to be the numerical value of the topic word (which, conveniently, gives such factors an edge by definition, obscuring the randomness of the discovery, especially if certain derivatives of the topic word happen also to be multiples of the chosen factor). He claims that this example yields a statistically significant number of phrases which have sums that are multiples of the factor 169, and concludes: "Looking at all of this from a logical and scientific perspective, there should be little question of the fact that we are dealing here with design and not random numbers." This approach in introducing the topic leads the reader to believe that Theomatic instances are both common and quite unusual from a statistical perspective.

He stresses repeatedly that rigorous scientific methodology has been employed in verifying the statistical significance of this phenomenon. He states concerning the need to examine all possible phrases, "In order to perform an objective and scientific analysis of any Theomatic pattern in the Bible, every single instance that refers to a particular word or topic ~ must be examined."

In examining each of the 16 references, the author does not indicate how many such phrases he actually composed from among the sixteen references, which number defines the sample size and the implied probability of the resulting hits, nor does he actually indicate the number of words allowed in constructing a phrase... which also affects the sample size. By defining the reference word and including a hit of six words in length (Rev 5:5), the author defines the context sufficiently to obtain a minimal sample... one that would give him the best possible consideration in verifying his result.

The six-word phrase employed is:
          Rev 5:5:       THE LION OF THE TRIBE of JUDAH, (the) ROOT (of) DAVID
                                               o lewn o ek fulhv Iouda riza Dauid

We found 721 phrases (following our phrase construction rules) in the Nestle-Aland text which contain one of these 16 references to ROOT, have six base words or less and have all words in juxtaposition. We trust that this is similar to the author's sample, though we cannot say for sure since he does not publish his sample.

The author provides 12 instances of successful phrases from among these 721 phrases, claiming that he has examined all of the references very carefully. We actually find 24 successful references -- twice as many, and in so doing discover that only 8 of the author's phrases conform to the guidelines he himself generally follows in phrase construction. In the following table, the reference word is preceded by an asterisk unless it is the first word in the phrase, and the 8 valid phrases located by the author are highlighted.

Results

The following 24 successful references containing root are evident in the Nestle-Aland Text.

In the above table the reference is given, the phrase SUM, the cluster radius R, the word length W, and the phrase itself with the reference word preceded by an asterisk unless it is the first word in the phrase.

Of the 12 phrases that the author reports, only 8 (highlighted above) are actually valid according to the scientific method employed in his research (which is clearly given in Lk15): 4 of the phrases he reports either fail to include a reference to root, take words out of juxtaposition, or use a variant (Majority Text) reading. If we allowed such deviations the number of phrases in our sample would explode into several thousand... making the results given by the author even less impressive.
 

Comments

The expected number of phrases that would be divisible by 169 with a cluster radius of 2 in a sample of 721 phrases in a purely random environment is:
                                                             721 x 5/169 = 21.33.

The odds of 24 hits is about 1:3.

In spite of this rather bland result, the author claims: "When one looks at the short explicit nature of the above phrases, and how many random phrase combinations would be required to produce each multiple of 169 ~ this pattern is occurring way beyond what the mathematical laws of chance would allow. For all the examples from the New Testament, the average length of all the above features was only 2.4 words in length."

Here, in a significant departure from his standard measure of Theomatic significance, being the number of hits obtained by the Theomatic factor, the author's basis for selecting 169 as a Theomatic factor apparently hinges primarily upon the Word length Average (WLA) of the hits he has obtained instead of the number of hits themselves... which is obviously quite insignificant in this case.

However, the author has evidently been as casual in finding all of the Theomatic instances relevant to this topic as he has been in defining the topic itself, clearly failing to locate two thirds of the phrases divisible by 169, conveniently locating the much shorter phrases. One can easily note in the table above that the author has selected the shortest phrases (those highlighted) from each reference, and that he has entirely ignored some references with no short hits (Rev 11:18, 15:12). The WLA of the 8 hits shown above is 3.25. The WLA of the entire set is 4.41. The expected WLA is actually 3.5 if the above hits are evenly distributed in word length. Clearly, there is nothing significant about the above result.

We are not exactly sure how the author derived his published WLA of 2.4 since he does not actually tell us, but it apparently involves arbitrarily considering phrases that do not meet appropriate phrase construction criteria, being quite subjective (or careless) in determining which phrases to include in his sample, or by a simple failure to be complete and thorough in his search for hits. His result has certainly not been determined scientifically and implies no significance whatsoever in his promotion of the Theomatic topic he proposes.
 

Conclusion

In the chosen subject of ROOT in the New Testament, the author has clearly failed to establish any significance for this Theomatic topic. His claim of statistical significance is evidently false. The supposed significance of his result lies exclusively in his subjective manipulation of the data in his experiment. He has freely deviated from established scientific methodology in locating his hits, and apparently also in defining his sample. We certainly do agree with the author's closing comment that this result is, "less than spectacular." The pattern is not impressive from any perspective, clearly not "occurring way beyond what the mathematical laws of chance would allow," and should therefore be ignored.

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