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New Study Underscores

Hebrew’s Challenges

Continued

The Hebrew language, arguably man’s oldest, is delightful in its directness. One interesting example is the word for blood, "dahm":

The first human being to live because of blood was Adam, pronounced in Hebrew "a-DAHM":

What was Adam made of? The dust of the ground, or earth ("dust to dust, earth to earth"), pronounced "a-dahm-AH":

Our Hebrew expert, Nathan Jacobi, has always told us that, on the other hand, Hebrew is also quite subjective when being translated. Ask 10 experts to translate a string of Hebrew letters into English, for instance, and so you will get 10 different versions of what the letters say.

This issue was driven home to us recently during one phase of our Islamic Nations Experiment. A key component of the project required "blind" attempts to extend single word ELSs of the names of Islamic nations from both War and Peace and the book of Ezekiel into longer ELSs.

Born in France before World War II, Nathan survived the holocaust. He was seven years old when his parents took him to Israel after the war, so he studied Hebrew nearly all of the way through school, during a time when Israeli schools taught biblical Hebrew as well as the "every day" language. Nathan holds a Ph.D. in Physics from Weizman Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and received the M.Sc. in Physics and the B.Sc. in Mathematics from Bar-Ilan University in Ramat-Gan, Israel. He also teaches Hebrew to adult classes weekly.

Comparing Productivity

We used the results of his extensions to compare the lengthy code productivity of the two books. One surprising outcome of this experiment was the discovery of a few long codes in War and Peace. Bible code proponents, including us, had said that the longest code found in any book other than the Bible was just seven letters long. But we found codes 40 letters long from War and Peace during our research. However, not only were there no discernible clusters of codes in War and Peace.

As a test of the ambiguity of Hebrew and to double check our results, we asked another Hebrew expert to translate the same 22 ELSs that Nathan extended. Moshe Shak, a highly qualified and experienced code researcher and frequent contributor to this newsletter, agreed to take on the challenge. A mechanical engineer and now a resident of Montreal, Moshe is a Sabra, a native Israeli, so Hebrew is his native tongue. He is a graduate of Sir George Williams (now Concordia) University in Montreal.

We were expecting a difference of opinion here and there on the translations of these strings, but not the frequent differences that we saw when comparing the two expert’s translations. In some cases the differences had to do with the ways in which the letters were parsed. In others they were due to use of words of the same spelling, but with different meanings or pronunciations (homographs), like the "bow" of a ship, "bow" and arrow and "bow" and scrape. And in some cases, it was a conflict between meanings in biblical Hebrew and modern Hebrew.

Dr. Jacobi developed the rating system for Hebrew translations, or Hebrew Quality Component (HQC), which both translators applied to their translations. The ratings are based on a mix of language quality, syntax and poetic beauty. The highest is 1.0, which Nathan has used only once, for the focal code of the Isaiah 53 cluster, Gushing from Above, My Mighty Name Arose Upon Jesus, and the Clouds Rejoiced.

By the way, it should also be said that we often work with the translations we receive, trying different meanings on Nathan, especially in the case of ambiguous translations, until we have ELSs that make some sense. We did not do that in this case, because we were not that concerned with the meanings for this experiment. Moshe’s comment on the results was, "The weakest part in this research is the subjectivity of both Hebrew specialists in assigning values."

Here is the first group of ELSs with their original letter presentations, how the Hebrew experts parsed and translated them, with letter counts and quality ratings. The rest of the experiment ELSs will be in the July issue.

Comparing Productivity

Dr. Jacobi developed the rating system for Hebrew translations, or Hebrew Quality Component (HQC), which both translators applied to their translations. The ratings are based on a mix of language quality, syntax and poetic beauty. The highest is 1.0, which Nathan has used only once, for the focal code of the Isaiah 53 cluster HERE: http://www.biblecodedigest.com/page.php/9 , Gushing from Above, My Mighty Name Arose Upon Jesus, and the Clouds Rejoiced.

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COMPARING CLUSTERS:

New Evidence Overturns Skeptics' Case

Explosive 1,400+ ELS Cluster in Isaiah 53 Dwarfs Skeptics' Counter-Example

Opponents of Bible codes say that you can find meaningful clusters in any book. To support their case, they presented an example of a code cluster about Hanukah they found in Tolstoy's War and Peace.

While this example was fairly comparable to clusters Bible code researchers had presented back then, our researchers have unearthed clusters that look like mountains compared to the molehill of the Hanukah example. In this report we present a detailed side-by-side comparison of the Hanukah example and the most extensive cluster researchers have located to date-- the explosive Isaiah 53 codes. In short, what skeptics told us three years ago is now completely out of date.

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The Skeptics' Arguments Don't Hold a Hanukah Candle to Extensive Evidence of the Reality of Bible Codes

Ever since the Bible codes were introduced, skeptics have been saying, "Oh, well, you can find codes like that in books like War and Peace and Moby Dick."

In fact, skeptic Brendan McKay even went so far as to collect a fairly impressive looking cluster of codes about Hanukah in a Hebrew translation of War and Peace. His findings have been posted for some time at

HERE: http://wopr.com/biblecodes/TheCase.htm

We took the time to examine this cluster and compare it to a truly significant one—the Isaiah 53 cluster. The results, detailed below, reveal the irrelevance of the Hanukah example. The argument that you can find other supposedly meaningful code clusters in books other than the Bible—and the Hanukah cluster—have done much to reduce the credibility of Bible codes in the eyes of many. In the case of some codes presented in best-selling books this was appropriate, because it would be misleading to attach significance to clusters that are comparable to the Hanukah example. For this contribution, we owe Dr. McKay a debt of gratitude.

The Expanded Isaiah 53 Cluster Vs. the Initial Isaiah 53 ELS

In the forward to Yacov Rambsel's book, Yeshua, published in 1996, the author cites one ELS translated as "Yeshua (Jesus) is my name" from Isaiah 53. Grant Jeffrey also refers to this ELS in his 1996 book, The Signature of God. These authors cited this ELS as significant evidence that Jesus was the messianic figure prophesied in Isaiah 53. This claim was extensively criticized in a paper, Jesus Codes: Uses and Abuses, by Rabbi Daniel Mechanic, which is posted on the Aish site. We agree with most of the criticisms that Rabbi Mechanic cites in his report, which is, however, seriously out-of-date.

First, both Rambsel and Jeffrey have disclosed their finding of dozens of ELSs "relevant" to Jesus in Isaiah 53 in various subsequent books. In Jeffrey's 1998 book, The Mysterious Bible Codes, he lists 44 ELSs about Jesus in this passage, and addresses most of Rabbi Mechanic's criticisms. In Rambsel's 2001 book, The Genesis Factor, he cites 74 ELSs about Jesus he has found in Isaiah 53.

(Our Hebrew consultant, Dr. Nathan Jacobi, has reviewed all of the findings of Rambsel and Jeffrey—just as he reviews our own findings—and has rejected some of them as being incorrect or inappropriate in his opinion. We have therefore removed these ELSs from the expanded cluster presented in this report. [These ELSs were: From the Atonement Lamb, The Disciples Mourned and The Marys Wept.] He also considered The Evil Roman City to be only passable because of gender inconsistencies.)

Second, over the past two years, our own researchers have also located hundreds of additional ELSs on the same topic in this passage. We refer in this report to the "expanded Isaiah 53 cluster" as this entire collection of ELSs.

While the subject of the Isaiah 53 ELSs is the highly controversial one of Jesus Christ, the focus of this article is not to convince anyone of a particular viewpoint about who Jesus was, but to examine this cluster as potentially compelling evidence of the reality of Bible codes.

It is our general view that ELSs consisting of phrases or statements about Jesus should initially be regarded as no more than simply being ELSs relevant to the topic of Jesus. Unless their statistical significance can be demonstrated, it would be inappropriate to assert that such words or phrases are "proof" of their content. For example, the mere appearance of the ELS "true messiah" in this cluster is not, per se, proof of that belief, but is only a phrase relevant to the topic of Jesus, because it is well known that some people hold to that belief.

As noted below, the odds are 1 in 12 that the "true messiah" ELS could appear in the Isaiah 53 cluster simply by chance. Therefore, by itself, the appearance of this ELS within the cluster does not qualify as "proof" of that viewpoint.

The Comparison Says It All

Does the Hanukah example scuttle the potential validity of all Bible codes? New evidence answers with an emphatic "No." If anything, various clusters discovered in the last two years make this example look like a pile of sand next to Mt. Everest. The contrast between the Hanukah cluster and these new examples provides compelling evidence in favor of the validity of these clusters.

To illustrate this, let's look at a comparison of the Hanukah example with the most extensive and improbable code grouping discovered to date—the Isaiah 53 cluster about Christ's life, His crucifixion and the controversy over His claimed resurrection. No matter what your opinions of Jesus Christ are, the following comparison should make all skeptics reconsider their views about the reality of Bible codes.

Comparing the Clusters Charted on a Graphic Display

The first is a matrix of the Isaiah 53 ELSs in a 40-letter wide display. This is a continuous string of 720 letters from Isaiah 53:2 to 54:2, starting at the khet in upper right hand corner and ending at the heh in the bottom left corner. As in all Bible code search strings, spaces between words have been eliminated.

The focal code appears in two sections, in red with white letters. It shows up in two places because it has a skip of 20 and is laid out on this 40-column matrix. We used a 40-column matrix because it is graphically similar to the Hanukah matrix.

The letters in violet are places where the higher-rated ELSs in the tables are located in the matrix. Those in turquoise and yellow are where the letters of the rest of the ELSs appear in the text.

Keep in mind that the ELSs shown here are the most improbable of the hundreds of ELSs so far discovered in this passage. That represents less than 5% of the total number of Isaiah 53 ELSs listed below. Those in this matrix are only the ELSs shown in the tables in the Scrabble Factor section. The ELSs are not individually identified in order to keep the illustration simple. Some letters are touched by more than one ELS, and in those cases we used the code with the higher-scoring odds. ELSs with longer skips, such as "Son of Elohim" with a skip of 1,383, touch down only once in the matrix.

Matrix Showing Hanukah Cluster

Here's the War and Peace array displayed in a 47-letter wide matrix, again a continuous string of 1,128 letters. The string starts at the yod in upper right hand corner and ends at the koof at the bottom left. The colors show the positions of the seven ELSs in the cluster.

It is self-evident that these two clusters are leagues apart. Consequently, the Hanukah cluster should no longer be used as a reasonable example of how codes similar to Bible code findings can be found in any book.