23

Clement takes care to separate this 5 from the one reached through 14. The 5 through 23 is described as a home-lover with an interest in spiritual things, and closer in character to an 8 than to a 5. It is one of the few places where an old handbook openly says the route changes the character of the digit it reaches.

Twenty-three is prime, in Westcott's phrase first and incomposite, measured by nothing except unity. He also records that the Sanhedrin needed 23 judges to hear capital cases. Sepharial's name list reads revolt, bigotry and prejudice, a long way from Clement's domestic portrait, and that distance is a fair measure of how loosely these systems fit together.