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Non-Random Equidistant Letter Sequence Extensions in the Hebrew BibleBy Richard E. Sherman, FCAS, MAAA, and Nathan Jacobi, Ph.D. Summary Bible codes are equidistant letter sequences (ELSs) that appear in the Hebrew Bible. Extended Bible codes are found by first locating a single word ELS with a given skip and then by searching for extensions in good Hebrew on both sides, continuing at the same skip. The longer an extended ELS is, the more improbable it is. A Markov chain model was developed for estimating the probability of chance occurrence of extended ELSs of a variety of different lengths. Monte Carlo...

<p>Last month, Francis Beckwith--president of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS), noted evangelical philosopher, "God-blogger" and professor of church-state relations at Baylor University--was received into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. Shortly after, he resigned his presidency and membership in ETS, sending shock waves through the religious blogosphere and parts of the evangelical community.</p>

Did you know the Augsburg Confession has its 475th anniversary in June? by Dr. Mary Jane Haemig WordAlone Board member Professor, Luther Seminary St. Paul, Minn. Why not mark the 475th anniversary of the Augsburg Confession in your congregation or WordAlone group? On June 25, 1530, seven Lutheran princes and two municipal governments presented the confession to the emperor at Augsburg. To this day, Lutheran churches around the world are identified by their adherence to the Augsburg Confession. The ELCA Constitution states: 2.05. This church accepts the Unaltered Augsburg Confession as a true witness to the Gospel, acknowledging as one...

Decoding Bible's 'cryptogram' Will Saddam Hussein be overthrown? Where is Osama bin Laden hiding? For answers, see the Good Book Ron Csillag National Post Monday, March 31, 2003 Among the hundreds of meetings and briefings that took place in the Pentagons bowels in the months leading up to Operation Iraqi Freedom, one earned the fleeting disdain of The New York Times, whose columnist, Bill Keller, sniffed that "several man-hours of valuable intelligence-crunching time" had been "consumed [by a writer] who claims -- I am not making this up -- that messages encoded in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament...

[Q NOTE: Many bolds within paragraphs emphasis added. Red text at the end was in the original] Rebutting the Skeptics' Likely Criticisms Let's look at some of the skeptic's likely responses to what we have presented, and consider their validity. The Hanukah Example Wasn't Intended to be the Result of Exhaustive Searching While this is true in a strict sense, such a response belies the fact that there is a very serious limit to how many relatively improbable ELSs you can find about one topic in any text if the author of the text wasn't trying to embed them. If...