Forty-Six Years

It took 46 years to build this temple, the Jews object to Jesus. And you’ll raise it up in three days? Clearly, the 46-year period refers to the building.

Or maybe not. In his Commentary on John , Aquinas summarizes the view of Augustine who says in his Book of Eighty Three Questions that “the conception and formation of the human body is completed in forty-five days in the following manner. During the first six days, the conception of a human body has a likeness to milk; during the next nine days it is converted into blood; then in the next twelve days, it is hardened into flesh; then the remaining eighteen days, it is formed into a perfect outlining of all the members. But if we add six, nine, twelve and eighteen, we get forty-five.” We’re almost there, and “if we add ‘one’ for the sacrament of unity, we get forty-six.”

He also cites an Augustinian gematria :

Augustine “says that if one adds the letters in the name ‘Adam,’ using for each the number it represented for the Greeks, the result is forty-six. For in Greek, A represents the number one, since it is the first letter of the alphabet. And according to this order, D is four. Adding to the sum of these another one for the second A and forty for the letter M, we have forty-six. This signifies that the body of Christ was derived from the body of Adam.”

Or we can do it in Greek: “Again, according to the Greeks, the name ‘Adam’ is composed of the first letters of the names of the four directions of the world: namely, Anathole, which is the east; Disis, which is the west; Arctos, which is the north; and Mensembria, the south. This signifies that Christ derived his flesh from Adam in order to gather his elect from the four parts of the world: ‘He will gather his elect from the four winds’ (Mt 24:31).”

Thomas is not convinced of Augustine’s first option because Christ was “formed and animated at the very instant of conception.” Mostly, he’s not convinced because he has some superior number-crunching to offer. He starts with the first and last of Augustine’s numbers, 6 and 46, multiples them to get 276, and then: “if we assemble these days into months, allotting thirty days to a month, we get nine months and six days. Thus it was correct to say that it took forty-six years to build the temple, which signifies the body of Christ; the suggestion being that there were as many years in building the temple as there were days in perfecting the body of Christ. For from March twenty-five, when Christ was conceived, and (as is believed) when he suffered, to December twenty-five, there are this number of days, namely, two hundred seventy-six, a number that is the result of multiplying forty-six by six.”