### When a reflection survives grouping

A reflection survives a grouping only when every pair of items grouped together has reflected images grouped together as well. This gives a direct test across complete source objects. On the eleven Toledot occurrences, index reflection sends position i to 12−i. The two Esau occurrences, 9 and 10, reflect to 3 and 2: Noah and Adam, which remain distinct sections. A single Esau section would therefore have two different reflected section images. Its multiplicity preserves the count but cannot resolve that ambiguity.

A formal repair would also group Adam and Noah, yielding nine classes. That calculation identifies the obstruction; the supplied source does not authorize the extra grouping. It is therefore excluded from the reconstructed literary object.

The primary NT path provides the positive comparison. Its 77 seventy-year intervals, from 5326 BC to AD 65, divide into eleven complete blocks of seven intervals. Reflection reverses the block order and preserves every selected boundary at indices 0, 7, …, 77. Each block represents 490 years, so the coarsening retains both the measure and the reflection. The separately displayed AD 65–135 extension is outside this primary path. These examples explain why retaining a total is weaker than retaining an action: source grouping, boundary selection and interval coarsening each require their own compatibility check.

*Sources:* File_70 Appendix B.1; File_43 §3.4; File_54 §8.6, §§10.1–10.3.

*Research record:* C1025, C1026, C1027, C1028, C1029.