Religious counts

[mtbc]

This morning's Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4 mentioned the five precepts and reminded me of how Buddhists seem to me to have a marked predilection for counting abstract concepts: two truths, three natures, four truths, five ranks, six yogas, seven swansfactors, eightfold path, nine virtues, etc. Christians sometimes count things too but approach it differently: they tend to count concrete things like days or years or apocalyptic horsemen or how many times something happens. Also, with Christianity the counts typically feel vaguer as if they are more about scale than exactness. There are exceptions, like the Decalogue, but not many come to my mind.