SAPIR 861 · Research
Exact matches and im hakolel: what the plus-one adjustment means
Of 8,629 attestations, 6,494 match exactly and 2,135 only with a ±1 adjustment. Where that adjustment comes from, when it is used, and why we never write “equals” where it was applied.
A simple rule
Im hakolel — “with the whole” — means one is added to the letter sum for the word itself. The rule is old and ordinary in the sources: an author writes that a word equals a number, meaning the sum plus one. Sometimes the one is added to the other side. We mark such cases separately and never mix them with exact matches.
The figures
6,494 of 8,629 attestations — 75.3% — match with no adjustment at all. 2,135 need the one. And 178 values have no exact attestation whatsoever: everything said about them rests on the adjustment. We treat that as a substantive difference, not a detail, and show it in the database as its own column.
Why this matters to us in particular
The number 861 is in the project's name. In the database it has two attestations, both in Bnei Yissachar, around 1830, and both exact: מתתיהו = ראש השנה and קרן השור = מתתיהו. Separately: מתתיהו, “Matityahu”, comes to 861 — but that is a coincidence of values, not an attestation from a source. So we write “861 ± 1” and do not write “equals”.
How it looks in the table
In the CSV every row carries a match_type column: exact or kollel. There is a left and a right expression — what the author equated — plus the work, the century and a reference. Nothing is reduced to “the sources say”: you can see exactly who and where. If a row looks wrong to you, write to us; we will fix the base and credit whoever found the error.
The attestation database · Which numbers are named most often · Principles
The structure of 354 pages of 861 letters follows the edition Binyamin Pichkhadze, “Chumash 354” (חומש 354), Bnei Brak, 2002. The calculation was reproduced independently from the Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0); 31 of 31 control pages match the edition.