Today in our books advent calendar: a significant number in religion and sport, extracted from Rogerson's Book of Numbers
If you look closely at medieval drawings of the seven-branched menorah candlestick of the temple of Jerusalem, you may be able to count 22 almond blossoms draped over the branches. These represent the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, which are themselves linked with the 22 different pathways that connect the 10 different divine attributes of the Kabbalah, the mystical interpretation of the Bible.
This chart of potential influences led to the 22 cards of the tarot pack, first used as a tool to understand basic human predicaments, and find possible ways out of dilemmas. Christian scholars, not to be left out of the intriguing intellectual dance of Kabbalistic thought, made their own lists of 22, such as the virtues of Christ, the number of works of God during the creation (as composed by St Isidor of Seville), and the number of books of the Old Testament. St Augustine may have been aware of this tradition when he divided his City of God into 22 chapters (the Revelation of St John also has 22 chapters). And 22 is also significant for the Zoroastrians, who inherited 22 ancient prayers in their holy book the Avesta.
However, in at least four current usages – Joseph Heller's book Catch-22; French criminal slang for the cops; the length of a cricket pitch in yards ("a chain"); and as an expression for the purity of gold – there seems to be no direct link with anything Kabbalistic.
Joseph Heller changed the title of his book from Catch-18 to Catch-22 right at the last moment, and 22-carat is not a measure of absolute purity (it comes in at just over 91%).
The ancient English measure of a chain had no connection to the God-created Hebrew alphabet, but was based on what a man and an ox could be expected to plough in one day – one acre, divided into 66 units of 660 foot-long trenches. A chain is therefore 66 feet in length, and the origin of the 22 yards between one wicket and another.
Tomorrow: the 23 enigma
• Taken from Rogerson's Book of Numbers by Barnaby Rogerson
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