Posted on 12/12/2004 3:07:51 AM PST by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
sorry but I meant number seven.
You're implying that Moses is a myth, the Flood is a myth, that Lot was a myth, that Elijah never existed, that Solomom was a myth.
"In the beginning, God created Heaven and Earth. and the Earth became without form and was void."
You saying THAT'S a MYTH???????????
And you are, as I'm becoming increasingly aware of, changing the parameters at will. I said ambiguous, and I meant ambiguous. Obviously, you're beginning to realize your sophomoric platitudes are unsupportable, so in an attempt to "save face" you try to breathe life into straw men.
And as to my "leaving this thread", in the vernacular of the playground, why don't you make me.
Again, obviously, that's something I have no authority to do. It was my hope that you possessed enough character to agree to withdraw once shown your opinion is of negligible value. Unfortunately, I was wrong. You will no doubt continue to cavil and jump tracks as it is demonstrated the substance of your argument is nothing but tangential anecdotes and scoffing.
A lot of people claiming to be christian have so undermined the authority of the Bible as God's word that one wonders what this is supposed to do in repairing that.
Please show me where anyone on this thread has defended Drosnan's book.
YOu assertation is that God is "ambiguous" in the Scriptures. Mine is that he is not, it is merely Man's inability to properly divine the meaning that leads to confusing and supposed "ambiguous" passages in the Bible. Non-believers use this trick to try to prove the Bible is full of contradictions. Nothing could be further from the truth. God makes his will known in open, honest and direct ways. He doesn't hide it in ambiguties and codes. That's how the devil communicates. The work of these charletans is demeaning the divinity of the Bible with trivia and parlor games and it is claiming false messeges and false words of God through chicanery. Its bad enough to use lies and obfuscations to rip people off selling books about bogus theories: when you do it with the Bible it borders on blasphemy and _distortion_ or God's word, not enlightenment. This is every bit as bad as trying to find messages by saying the Lord's Prayer backwards and other subversions of the Bible over the years. You have proven nothing but that you are a gullible tool of these fakirs and fakers.
Wrong. I proposed to show you examples of where G-d SAYS He's being purposefully ambiguous; thus showing your exegesis has more in common with Pollyanna than Polycarp.
God makes his will known in open, honest and direct ways. He doesn't hide it in ambiguties and codes. That's how the devil communicates. The work of these charletans is demeaning the divinity of the Bible with trivia and parlor games and it is claiming false messeges and false words of God through chicanery.
Spoken like one of Job's august friends.
Who are you to know the mind of G-d, and how He should see fit to array His word? Where is the heresy that comes from this study? Where the contradiction of the plain meaning of any text? Where has anyone advocated ignoring what the Bible says for the study of mysticism?
I'll tell you. It is no where. You make accusation and impugn benign issues to distract from your own vain scoffing.
For all your gassing on about people getting "ripped off" I can't help but see parallels with that other paragon of fiscal responsibility who presumed to criticize the way Christ handled not His message, but His money.
Without having studied out every example you cite, there's certainly evidence that the Torah was completed by someone other than Moses, possibly Joshua, and maybe even as late as Samuel-- although the credit goes to Moses for 'downloading' it in the first place.
Would appreciate your thoughts on this, lass.
as well as your research
far, far, far too flawed
for your intensity of conviction on the topic.
But, hey, if you want to insist that God hasn't given you a very, very Biblical gift--it certainly is your option.
I don't think, however, that HE is all that delighted with your blackwashing something so obviously and inherently Holy Spirit created, breathed every bit as much as the rest of Scripture is--including the Surface Text. There's actually no soundly logical way to extricate the Codes from being part and parcel, inherently aspects of the surface text.
We can't extricate St Paul's style of writing from the Epistles without destroying the Epistles AS GOD GAVE THEM. GOD'S VERY WORD in the Epistles is part and parcel of Paul's style of writing and vice versa, in a sense. In that writing, one can't destroy or alter or remove or ignore one, very well, without destroying or altering or removing or ignoring the other.
I find the slippery logic people use to pretend such an integral, inherent aspect is not involved with the Codes--I find that slippery logic to be a very fascinating psychological phenomena . . . MIND BOGGLINGLY MYSTIFYING but fascinating. I rarely see something where bias obliterates facts so glibly and illogically.
And, another fascinating phenomena related thereto, is how typically little research is made into the topic--especially thorough, fair-minded research--before such pontifications are so vigorously dispensed.
Very fascinating.
Check it out at the BibleCodeDigest.com website.
They cover that issue well, imho.
ABSOLUTELY!
YOU: tripe is as silly as Wiccan, relics of the Holy Cross sold by midieval merchants, cults who believed the Bible fortold Rapture in the year 2000 and other trivia, and is actually a bastardization and blapheme against the true Scripture.
NO!
Your associating something so obviously part and parcel of the Surface Text is the bastardization and blaspheming against the true Scripture. It's ALL TRUE SCRIPTURE. One can't take the ice out of ice cream and still have ice cream! Sheesh.
This was proven in spades when the DEAD SEA SCROLLS WERE DISCOVERED--ESPECIALLY WITH ISAIAH but actually with every book found.
Paul declared that he became all things to all men that by some means he might win some to the Gospel of Christ.
God also seems to disagree with the avoidant stance. God Himself provides abundant, diverse, simple-to complex; majestic to common etc.
opportunities for; foundations for faith
from the heavenly stary beauty to the complexity of the eye to fulfilled prophecies to . . .
Check out Gen. 1:3.(BTW, I agree with you that the bible code stuff is junk.)
McKay has been proven to be dishonest in his diatribe responses. His whole thing was shady and schlocky from the gitgo. And his co-hostile-to-the-supernatural cohorts joined in his charade, charlatan games.
Regardless, the criteria they used for pseudo codes in other texts
DO NOT BEGIN
to match the criteria for authentic codes in Scripture. You keep ignoring this key point. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away.
But it's not the most honest approach to the topic.
The issue of the "Bible Codes" is an interesting one but there is a great deal of misinformation as to exactly what constitutes the "codes" (thus the quotation marks). As a result, a large number of absolute statements have been made on this thread without bothering to qualify (or justify) the scope of the argument. I believe I can correctly say that most if not all of the confusion (at least on this thread) centers around the role of equidistant letter sequences (ELSs).
There are a great many people (including the author of the subject article it seems) who would assert the code takes the form of meaningful phrases, as one might read from a fortune cookie, spelled out through ELSs. In that sense, one would be left to conclude the code was the ELS (or set of all ELSs). A majority of the popular material on the Codes seems to fall in that vein. I believe it is safe to say that the "pro-code" Drosnin and most, if not all, of the popular "code debunkers" boil down to this approach, also. (See, for instance post 25, of this thread.) [I have not read Drosnin - I can assume with confidence that someone will correct me if I'm mistaken.] These approaches, either pro or con, I believe exhibit a rather naive understanding of the subject and certainly a serious lack of inquiry on the refereed research being done.
To the point, ELSs are not of themselves "The Code". If you will, ELSs are the alphabet of the code. The "code" relates to the relationship between pairings of ELSs. Thus, it is no more legitimate to debunk the codes by attacking ELSs than it is to dismiss the works of Shakespeare because he "spelled funny" or employed phraseology odd to our ear.
For those who are interested, Satinover's work presents a somewhat balanced overview of this. As to full disclosure, he was favorably impressed enough to write a book about it. On the other hand, he does go out of his way to present criticisms of it, also. I have read one otherwise unverified report that he since has changed his mind although I haven't seen him say it himself. (If anyone has any direct reference to this, I'd very much appreciate a ping.)
Another area of debate relates to the "purpose", or usefulness, of the code if it exists. Most of the supportable evidence I have seen (primarily Satinover and some of the refereed statistical papers) favors the suggestion that the code may be presented as a method for validating the Authorship of the Scriptures from which it is taken - to allow the Thomases among us to put our hand in the side of the Christ, in New Testament terms. The modern analog of this would be a digital watermark hidden within an image; no real message other than "I Am that I Am".
It also tends to suggest that the code is not particularly useful for predicting the future - which would be contrary to scriptural precepts - since the code text would have to be largely known a priori. That isn't to say it couldn't be done. It might be useful in an expedient sense to select between imminent choices, for instance. [One of the more persistent rumors about the "Code" says the ultimate reason Israel didn't jump with both feet into the middle of Desert Storm after the launch of the first few Iraqi Scuds was that there was encoded information on the attacks which convinced the Mossad that no WMDs would be involved and no Israeli citizens would killed.]
That isn't to say I'm convinced the "Code" is legitimate. What I can say is that there is a great deal of pontificating on the subject, both for and against, that is so ill informed as to be a parody of itself. As for me, I already believe Scripture to be the inspired Word of God. If the Bible Codes were discredited beyond a shadow of a doubt in the next five minutes it would not diminish my faith one iota.
ALL
the so called mathematical so called refutations are hogwash. That has been proven. That doesn't make them disappear from the net, however.
You could do better research on the topic.
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