Bible Code, Truth or fiction? (Vanity)

3-4-03 | Wingy

[Wingy]

First, I've been registered here for 4 or 5 years. I've made one post, but I reply a fair amount. This is my first vanity. Probably my last.

Several years ago there was a bestselling book titled, "The Bible Code". It was the story of an Israeli math genius that uncovered a "code" imbedded in the first five books of the Bible, also known as the Torah. Using this code, one could find references to contemporaneous events with remarkable accuracy. I read the book when it came out and was impressed, but never saw anything about it in the media.

I'm not a Bible scholar and I was hoping to see some discussion, pro and con, to see if those that knew more than I could help me sort this into the wheat or chaff.

Now there is a sequel, "The Bible Code II" that begins on the morning of 9-11-01. From reading the first page on Amazon.com, it seems to be explosive.

I ordered the book, but now I want to use this brain trust to find if this has been debunked, or is there anything to it?

[Quix]

You are evidently ignorant of the rigorous process Code analysis and interpretation is put through.

You do the process, the scholars, The Codes, God's creativity and your own intelligence a great disservice in your glib blackwashing which is so obviously out of touch with the latest research as described in the MARCH BIBLE CODE DIGEST.

[Quix]

If one were talking about 3 or 4 you might have a point.

When one gets up into the hundreds and hundreds of data points, examples, incidents, headlines matching Scriptures etc, your logic falls apart.

[Quix]

The recent rigorous and VERY, VERY, VERY, VERY, VERY, VERY LEVEL PLAYING FIELD EXPERIMENT DONE BETWEEN WAR AND PEACE VS THE BIBLE shows emphatically, conclusively now, that your assertions are hogwash.

The March Bible Codes Digest has a good summary of the details.

[Just mythoughts]

I won't flame you but based upon my study in the Bible anybody could take any portion of the Written Word and code it in any way one wanted.

Considering that Christ allowed himself to be killed and the miracle of the veil in the temple being rent from "top" to "bottom" tells that it is through Christ that individual go to the Heavenly Father. So a code that leaves this out is someone wanting to make a dime off of the unlearned.

[Physicist]

There were predictionis of 9/11 in the Biblical prophetic world up to 3 years prior.

Show me. Why didn't they make a bigger noise about something so manifestly more important than anything else they've ever predicted, if the date and location were clearly spelled out? They could have saved thousands of lives. Why aren't they now trumpeting their success?

[jude24]

There is an inherant flaw in the whole Bible Code idea. It is essentially a post hoc argument-- one that can only be made after the fact. It is not a prediction unless it can be tested.

I can look back at an event like 9/11, set my Pentium loose on the Torah and voila! I can find something that seems to predict the two towers would crash. Amazing! Proof that a supernatural Deity wrote that book!

Except, consider. One can find similar "predictions" if one analyzes the text of Moby Dick. (It's been done.) These codes are a figment of the imagination of religious math whizzes.

You want a prophecy, read the words in English. Daniel, Isaiah, Ezekiel -- those guys made prophecies that tell us a lot about who Jesus Christ would be, and when He would come. Codes? We don't need no stinkin' codes.

[Quix]

The Codes affirm the basic doctrines resoundingly when they speak to them at all. And, if my memory serves me right, the basic ones are all affirmed.

[BibChr]

Except for terminal closed mindedness, I cannot imagine how you could read the research in the MARCH BIBLE CODE DIGEST and still keep such a death grip on your seemingly rather rigidly narrow and overtly ignorant view

Tell me, in detail, what you knew about my background and training BEFORE you wrote that.

Then tell me: how many years have you used Biblical Hebrew and Greek? (Interlinears and concordances don't count!)

By your answers to EACH of those questions, I'll weigh the worth of your judgment of this book.

Dan

[Quix]

Date and location were not clearly spelled out.

Yet, the predictions were more specific than the generic terror warnings received since then. And after the fact, it was exceedingly easy to see a rather good to excellent fit between the predictions.

I don't have time to go chasing such down at the moment. I'll TRY and recall this thread and TRY and get back to you IF and when I run across such again.

My fuzzy memory has it that Pam Clark posted such or perhaps Elijah List. But I really don't recall for certain.

I don't think God's quite ready to be that precise ahead of time. But that day is getting closer. Many lives will be saved among those who listen.

But first, we need to weed out the authentic from the inauthentic and from the simply overzealous and misguided . . . as well as from last night's taco.

God is the best one to do that and He seems to be taking His time. But I am sure it's on the schedule.

I assume you are aware that The Bible predicts that in spite of umpteen proofs in front of their eyes in end times--of God's supremacy and super natural doings, many will STILL curse God and die a hell bound death in defiance.

[Quix]

You need to update your education and awareness with the MARCH Bible Code Digest.

Your assertions have been shown conclusively at this point, to be false depending on criteria etc.

The latest experiment was exceedingly even handed between WAR AND PEACE and The Bible. There were surprises for both proponents and skeptics but The Bible STILL won hands down.

[Quix]

I'm NOT talking about Drosnin's book. I don't think much of either one of them.

Nor of his grasp of the statistics and scholarship.

It doesn't really matter to me your level of Hebrew etc. scholarship.

If you haven't fair mindedly considered the very even-handed experiment done between WAR AND PEACE and The Bible as summarized in the MARCH issue of The Bible Code Digest, then your biases are overreaching your reason and scholarship and making of them a laughing stock.

[Just mythoughts]

Since I have not studied "Codes" but the Bible, cannot comment.

The Word written has always been played with, and we are warned that it would happen. We in this country for the most part are not taught how to find what original languages said and that some of the words used have more than one meaning, and some words should never have been used.

So since staying in the Word is a full time learning experience have not needed to go to "Code".

Even King James had a letter placed in the front of that 1611 warning the reader to beware of disagreement in translating to English.

From my perspective, while still learning what was Written not given much thought to "CODE".

[Quix]

OK, HERE'S SOME UPDATED DOCS FROM BIBLECODESDIGEST.COM

REGARDING THE CAPTURE PERHAPS PREDICTED? . . .

FROM:

HERE: http://www.biblecodedigest.com/page.php/51

The arrest and detention of top al Qaeda terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will result in a wealth of new information that will help shut down the organization, according to intelligence experts.

And they credit information gleaned from the earlier capture and interrogation of top al Qaeda operatives Abu Zubaidah and Ramzi Binalshibh for leads that resulted in finding Mohammed.

This fits nicely with lengthy ELSs we discovered soon after their captures:

Carry the Mountain. Zubaidah will Tell Something of Value as a Gift as the Monument of the Sect is Finished

You Were Harnessed. Contemplate My Might. Let Zubaidah be Kept in the Limelight. Will They Strike the Sea?

There is Quarrel in His Speeches. A Living Brother Uttered Words to Them and to Me. And Zubaidah Turned to His Sea, Without Then Lying for a Whole Week. Oh, the Mountain of Her Interior Will Bear a Testimonial to Her Name

The Beauty in Me was Quite Destroyed by Binalshibh

We are currently searching for Mohammed’s name in the Bible. Stay tuned.

I'll post next the summary of the VERY RECENT WAR AND PEACE VS BIBLE EXPERIMENT.

[Just mythoughts]

What version of the Bible are you using?

[Paulus Invictus]

It's a major work of fiction. Aluminum hats and shades are required before reading that tripe!

[george wythe]

Predicting the past, that's the job of these shysters.

There is a guy on TV who constantly revises his predictions, then he's proven wrong, and he makes new revised predictions.

He's still has a strong following. His name is Hal Linsey, IIRC.

And his followers are "true believers."

[jude24]

Hal Lindsey.

Back in the 1970's, he wrote a book entitled Late Great Planet Earth.

He now has a column with WorldNetDaily.

[Quix]

[Qx: BOLD RED AND BLUE EMPHASIS IS USUALLY MINE EXCEPT IN THE GRAPHICS]

MOST RECENT BIBLE CODE
LEVEL PLAYING FIELD EXPERIMENT
BETWEEN WAR AND PEACE AND
THE BIBLE

Introduction Challenged Preconceptions

As our investigation of code phenomena has expanded and deepened, every one of the stock opinions of most code skeptics, as well as those of most code proponents, has been contradicted by new evidence. It shouldn’t be surprising that reality can stubbornly disagree with preconceptions, yet it is often true.

The saga of Bible codes has been characterized by attempts to rush to judgment. To advance above this primitive state, we must bravely confront and listen to the realities of hard data—impartially gathered and analyzed.

The articles in this issue support various findings that are upsetting to both code critics and proponents. Here are some of those findings:

Longer ELSs in grammatically reasonable Hebrew can be found in books other than the Bible.

The rate at which such longer ELSs appear in non-Biblical texts is dramatically less than in the Bible. Consequently, there is strong support for the claim that real Bible codes do exist in abundance.

The primary claim of code critics that “codes can be found in any book” is a primitive assertion that greatly over-simplifies and distorts the real situation.

Much more relevant would be the question, “Is the discovery rate of longer ELSs in the Bible decidedly greater than that from a control text?”

Any long ELS in the Bible could be a coincidence, or it could be partly intentional and partly coincidence. The longer it is, the less likely it is to be coincidental. For example, an ELS from our Ezekiel 37 cluster that is 25 to 31 letters long is about 70% likely to be intentional. If it is 39 to 45 letters-long, it is about 95.5% likely to be intentional; if 45 to 59 letters-long, 99%; and if 60 or more letters-long, it is 99.8% likely to be intentional.

To date there is no reliable way of objectively distinguishing among these alternatives, although subjective reviews may indicate that a particular ELS is unusually “appropriate” or “descriptively accurate.”

Because of the many uncertainties inherent in the message of any single ELS, Bible codes cannot reliably be used to make predictions or to attempt to support doctrinal positions or opinions. Furthermore, even if we could be certain a code is real, we do not know for certain who is speaking, and the source could be an untruthful one. It is only natural to ask why a superior intelligence would intentionally encode messages underneath a sacred text when those messages are unreliable. A plausible answer is that the intelligence sought to provide implicit evidence within the text of its authenticity as its composition, while at the same time discouraging human attempts to derive new truths or predictions from encoded messages. This suggests an intent to emphasize the importance of the content of the literal text (as opposed to the content of any encoded messages).

[Qx: I get the point but I think they are being exceedingly something . . . cautious. I think the logic of what they are saying in this paragraph is not that robust.]

Perhaps the only real purpose of codes is analogous to that of the embedded strip in new $20 bills. It adds nothing but proof that the bill is the real thing. Alternatively, encoded material could merely be a by-product of a super-human intelligence for which the mere task of producing a literal text without such supplemental content would be too mundane.

[Qx: I do think God--either for fun or for whatever--'could not' resist putting Codes in.]

A True Head-to-Head Comparison

The great rallying cry of the Bible code skeptics has always been, “You can find codes like this is any book.” When they were talking about Drosnin’s examples, these skeptics were dead right. But what about such an assertion regarding the extensive clusters presented on our web site? And what about clusters of intermediate complexity? Where should the line be drawn?

With our Isaiah 53 cluster vs. Hanukah cluster in War and Peace study we compared the extensive cluster about the last days of Christ with the Hanukah codes in War and Peace to show that while it may be possible to find codes like the ones presented by Drosnin in his two books, the skeptic’s counter-example does nothing to call into question the reality of many of the codes in clusters like those in Isaiah 53 (as well as Ezekiel 37).

While Drosnin did much to introduce the public to Bible codes, he simultaneously did code researchers a great disservice by giving skeptics an entire book of trivial examples that skeptics could easily discredit.

Although code research has come a long way since his first book in 1997 , there has been a lingering question mark over the whole phenomenon because of skeptical opinions that continue to appear on the internet even though they are long out of date.

So while code research has moved on dramatically, it is also fighting a rear guard action against these old, outdated statements from critics of the codes. It is a rare week when we don’t get at least one e-mail asking us about the codes in Moby Dick or War and Peace.

Most likely, code skeptics would take exception to our comparison of the Hanukah cluster from War and Peace with the Ezekiel 37 cluster. It is not a fair comparison, they would say, because we searched for many more ELSs in Ezekiel 37 than they did in War and Peace. And they are right. However, our purpose in making such a comparison was to show that the Hanukah cluster is no longer a relevant counter-example. It has been hopelessly outclassed.

There has been a great need for a level playing field on which some kind of head-to-head comparison would be made of Bible codes with those “discovered” in an admittedly ordinary book. A natural way to do this would be to conduct an experiment in which a Hebrew expert would be handed a sizeable collection of pre-defined initial ELSs, equally drawn from the Hebrew Bible and from War & Peace (or some other control text). The Hebrew expert would then search for extended ELSs around each initial ELS. The two collections of extended ELSs would be compared and analyzed. For the past six months the BCD research team has been conducting such a study—the Islamic Nations ELS Extension Experiment.

Using the Hebrew spellings of a group of Islamic nations, we located ELSs of them in a 78,064-letter portion of War and Peace that is provided with Codefinder software. We also found them in the 781083-letter book of Ezekiel using the same software. (Actually, in order to have enough letters to match the size of the War and Peace text, we had to use part of Jeremiah as well as the beginning of Hosea. So the text actually runs from Jeremiah 51:52 through Ezekiel to Hosea 1:9.)

The nations we searched for as ELSs appear in the following table, along with their Hebrew spellings:

[Qx: To be continued in the next post]

[PFKEY]

If the Bible had some code for every mundane event it would be a bit larger than it is.

Do you mean to suggest that just because we find Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to be of great importance that this person is also of great importance in the end-times or the God finds this individual of importance to include him in his secret code?

People should devote there time and energy to studying the will of God as revealed in his word, the written word, the visible word.

[BullDog108]