Editing Hebrew numerals (section)

{{Short description|Numeral system using letters of the Hebrew alphabet}}
{{Table_Numeral_Systems}}
The system of '''Hebrew numerals''' is a quasi-decimal [[alphabetic numeral system]] using the letters of the [[Hebrew alphabet]].
The system was adapted from that of the [[Greek numerals]] sometime between 200 and 78 BCE, the latter being the date of the earliest archeological evidence.<ref>{{cite book |last=Rosenstock |first=B. |year=2017 |title=Transfinite Life: Oskar Goldberg and the Vitalist Imagination |publisher=Indiana University Press |page=61 |isbn=978-0253029973}}</ref>

The current numeral system is also known as the ''Hebrew alphabetic numerals'' to contrast with earlier systems of writing numerals used in classical antiquity. These systems were inherited from usage in the [[Aramaic alphabet|Aramaic]] and [[Phoenician alphabet|Phoenician]] scripts, attested from {{circa|800 BCE}} in the [[Samaria Ostraca]].

The Greek system was adopted in [[Hellenistic Judaism]] and had been in use in Greece since about the 5th century BCE.<ref>Stephen Chrisomalis, ''[[Numerical Notation: A Comparative History]]'', Cambridge University Press, 2010,
[https://books.google.com/books?id=ux--OWgWvBQC&pg=PA157 p. 157]; Solomon Gandz, ''Hebrew Numerals'',  Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research
Vol. 4, (1932 - 1933), pp. 53-112.</ref>

In this system, there is no notation for [[0 (number)|zero]], and the numeric values for individual letters are added together.  Each unit (1, 2, ..., 9) is assigned a separate letter, each tens (10, 20, ..., 90) a separate letter, and the first four hundreds (100, 200, 300, 400) a separate letter. The later hundreds (500, 600, 700, 800 and 900) are represented by the sum of two or three letters representing the first four hundreds. To represent numbers from 1,000 to 999,999, the same letters are reused to serve as thousands, tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands. [[Gematria]] (Jewish numerology) uses these transformations extensively.

In [[Israel]] today, the decimal system of [[Hindu–Arabic numeral system]] (ex. 0, 1, 2, 3, etc.) is used in almost all cases (money, age, date on the [[civil calendar]]).  The Hebrew numerals are used only in special cases, such as when using the [[Hebrew calendar]], or numbering a list (similar to a, b, c, d, etc.), much as [[Roman numerals]] are used in the West.