Numbers in Crafts

History of Counting

At some point in history, someone made a connection between the number of fingers on their hand to the number of animals that they had and the “number” was created. Historians even believe that mathematics came before writing.

Counting originated in the “Fertile Crescent” of southwest Asia. How this came about was by little clay “tokens” that represented an object of ownership. A clay token could represent a sheep, beer, or a crop. After years passed and the tokens would fall apart, the representation of an envelope system came about, where there would be a number of tokens in a sealed clay container. After correcting the problems with that system, the envelope showed just one token on the outside with the marks of how many tokens were inside the envelope, thus a true counting system was created. This was also the beginning of writing, according to some scholars.

The Bible

The Bible is very well known for having numbers. In fact, there is even a book in the Old Testament titled “Numbers”. In the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, counting began within the first five scriptures of the Bible. In verse five, it ends with the words, “the first day”. Now whether this was when man learned to count, it is unclear.

What is clear is in Genesis 4:15. Cain has already killed Abel. And Cain is pleading with God about his life and possible vengeance against him. And the Lord responds that should such a thing happen, that person will “suffer vengeance seven times over.” The seven is not only a number, but an understood number that Cain should and does understand, otherwise God would not have said it. Here’s the second generation of man with an understanding of a number system.

Numbers were also shown to tell the age of a person in the Bible. The following chapter lists the ages of people in the Old Testament before the great flood; the most popular had to be Methuselah, who lived the longest in the Bible at 969 years of age. There is some folklore that regards a woman named Serah bat Asher, who lived longer than Methuselah. Oddly enough the date of her death is uncertain at best. It is said that she died in the Old Testament times, while other sources claim she dies over the last century, and still other sources say she is still alive, however, it is very unlikely that Jacob’s daughter is still alive today.

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