Mathematics bombshell: God 'confirmed in Bible'

World Net Daily ^ | December 12, 2004

[The Loan Arranger]

For a lot of people, the Bible and mathematics are dry subjects, but not for Edwin Sherman – he believes he's found how the two fit together.

Sherman, founder of the Isaac Newton Bible Code Research Society and a professional mathematician, is convinced that the Hebrew Bible contains coded messages that are evidence of God's authorship of the Bible. His book, "Bible Code Bombshell: Compelling Scientific Evidence that God Authored the Bible," describes numerous examples of encoded phrases and sentences that are both lengthy and relevant to the text where they were found.

[puppetz]

That doesn't stand up. There are numerous reasons why the entire experiment is flawned, not the least of which is that the Bible has gone through numerous revisions, edits, collections of writings, etc. for centuries before it was ever translated. Besides the fact Hebrew lends itself very well to interpretation of whatever your agenda may be. One of the quirks of the language is that they often leave out vowels for common or often used words. This allows a lot of leeway in reading something into nothing. I find with all these types of bogus 'experiments' they are big on reporting the coincidences and 'amazing finds' and small on talking about the 99$ of the evidence that doesn't support their work. Besides which, the code was devised by tweaking it until it worked. That maans they are tweaking the code to get a result, not applying an empirically established mean to a set of data (the ancient scrolls I guess) and seeing the outcome, they are changing the input until you get the desired outcome. This is commonly called GIGO.

It reminds me of the Nostrodamus apologists. Apparently any set of facts could be moved around to match any of his prophecies.

I think its an exercise in silliness for the gullible, and not serious science at all. In fact, its probably blasphemous to claim messages from God where none exist. God usually spoke to Man, when he did, very plainly and with no artiface and his meaning was QUITE clear and there were zero ambiguities. Satan was the one who spoke in riddles and codes and hidden meanings.

Beware of false prophets.

[Quix]

In terms of the Codes, you are grossly wrong, inaccurate and applying relatively off the wall analogies.

[papertyger]

The fool is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who can give a discreet answer.

[Quix]

One of the rarely admitted fallacies of that whole thing is that

the monkey would have to perform incredible statistical miracles EVERY LETTER AFTER EVERY LETTER.

The universe has not existed long enough.

[monkeyshine]

Besides the fact Hebrew lends itself very well to interpretation of whatever your agenda may be

I have no real agenda. I said what you said above. I also said "scientific proof" which is a very high standard. I also think it is problematic to tout this as "proof" of God.

But, keep in mind, that this phenomenon is not new to the sages. They obviously are already faithful and have found the meaning.

What would improve its chances of reaching the "scientific proof" burden would be to use it as a predictor of future events.

[Quix]

In find your purported

MIND-READING of God

to be rather flawed.

[monkeyshine]

I have no real agenda.

What I mean is, I am very interested in the subject and think there is something more to it than calling it bunk will bear. But, the one thing that I may never be able to reconcile is how Hebrew lends itself to this in ways other languages cannot. It makes it easier to find.

[Quix]

God hides things for just one person occasionally.

He's very into RELATIONSHIP ONE ON ONE.

I don't think you know near as much about God's tendencies in hiding things as you think you do.

[Quix]

Drosnin is a quack.

His codes rarely if ever meet current criteria.

His being a quack does not negate authentic professionals.

[papertyger]

There are numerous reasons why the entire experiment is flawned, not the least of which is that the Bible has gone through numerous revisions, edits, collections of writings, etc. for centuries before it was ever translated.

Then you should be able to cite some of those hebrew discrepancies, because it sounds like you're making gratuitous assertions you don't expect to be called on.

I have no problem with islam asserting the Bible has been corrupted, so long as they can provide to unsullied texts to demonstrate their assertions.... Thus far, I haven't even seen an attempt on their part.

[Quix]

YEA!

[Quix]

YUP.

[Quix]

Plenty of truth to that.

But that's likely true about many of God's proofs/evidences for faith.

Still doesn't negate powerful things to 0.0

[monkeyshine]

the Bible has gone through numerous revisions, edits, collections of writings,

Yes I wanted to comment on this comment. Torah scrolls are meticulously replicated by the faithful who do so because they believe it is necessary to do so. Not only are the words of contemporary scrolls identical in word, but the way in which the characters are drawn is identical. The people who write the scrolls are trained to do it and there has not been any evidence of major changes in the Torah scrolls themselves from, for example, archeological and historic segments of scrolls found around the world.

Yes, it may be a compilation of larger or multiple works, but by and large the changes that have occurred were by translation from Hebrew to Greek to Roman to Latin to the many Latin Languages, each translation losing and morphing its meaning.

I have every confidence that any Torah scroll you find in any Synagogue will be virtually identical to any other you can find anywhere.

[Quix]

Well put.

[Quix]

Well said.

[papertyger]

God usually spoke to Man, when he did, very plainly and with no artiface and his meaning was QUITE clear and there were zero ambiguities.

Now you're just parading your ignorance of Scripture. If I can provide a Scriptural example of Divine ambiguity, will you leave this thread, or at least hold your peace while people with an actual background in Scripture discuss this topic?

[Quix]

The granddaddy of all comparative experiments has been done.

You are wrong.

HEBREW WAR AND PEACE was compared with The Bible. The authentic codes varied VERY SIGNIFICANTLY from anything found in WAR AND PEACE--in terms of length and in terms of other qualitative features.

Your sources have been proven wrong in a professional juried paper. I don't recall where the paper is in the publication process.

[MissAmericanPie]

Reading the Bible is interesting, read it again, and you find deeper meaning, again and you find even deeper meaning, it's like getting pulled into deeper and deeper water. The Bible is layer upon layer. That the bible contains codes regarding the end times is no suprise.

Wasn't it Daniel that God told to seal up the prophecies so they wouldn't be understood until the end times? And also the book that John ate in Revelation sealed until men's knowledge had increased? Well these are the end times. So the codes will have alot more to tell us than the simple things revealed so far.

[Quix]

You:

Remember, we are not discussing the message of the bible, but rather a claim that using some sort of voodoo statistics (in my view, anyway) on the frequency of letters in the bible we can prove the inerrancy of the textual message of the bible.

---

Wrong.
The message of the Bible from the virgin birth; Christ coming in the flesh etc. is ALSO IN THE CODES. Which, according to the surface text, would indicate that such is from Holy Spirit. But authentic codes could be from NOTHING ELSE BUT HOLY SPIRIT BECAUSE THEY ARE SO INHERENTLY PART OF THE TEXT! SHEESH.

There's NO VOODOO STATISTICS INVOLVED. A fair-minded, thorough investigation of the current state of the science and art would have shown you that. The latest research is giving many atheist/agnostic mathematicians great consternation.

Given the requirement for the letters to be in precise arrangement, it does, in fact, offer some measure of proof of God's timelessness and omnicience. Of course, one is welcome--in a sense--to give God the finger about His gift of proof so provided.