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Apologetics: Bible Code
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**Mathematics bombshell: God ‘confirmed in Bible’ (WorldNetDaily, 041212)
The Signature of God CHAPTER 12
Mathematician critical of ‘Bible Code’ bestseller (970605)
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Skeptical statistician IDs hidden messages that ‘prove’ Scripture’s divine authorship
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.
In 1997, Michael Drosnin, a reporter, wrote “The Bible Codes” a book based on the work of Israeli mathematician Eli Rips that attained popularity, in part, from Drosnin’s claim that future events, such as the Holocaust, Yitzak Rabin’s assassination and the Gulf War were encoded in the Bible.
Such claims invited attacks from skeptics like mathematician and physicist Dave Thomas, who wrote in 1997, “Hidden messages can be found anywhere provided you’re willing to invest time and effort to harvest the vast field of probability. He, Drosnin, underestimates the power of chance combined with the brute force of computers. He says these messages are beyond the power of chance, and I’ve proven they are not.”
Another skeptic who was convinced he could prove Drosnin’s messages to be fakes or statistical artifacts was Edwin Sherman.
Sherman says he found most of Drosnin’s examples trivial. “They were the simple kinds of words and phrases you might find if you searched for encoded messages in the Jerusalem phone book,” he tells the Southern Oregon News. But he was intrigued enough to develop his own software and begin analyzing the Masoretic text of the Old Testament. “I was very skeptical about the whole thing,” he says. “I started a project to try and show the whole thing was bogus.”
Instead, he says he found many examples of messages that went beyond simple words and phrases – and they often were contextually similar to the Biblical passage in which they were found.
“Finding dozens of lengthy encoded messages on the same topic in one short section of text is about as likely as winning a one-in-a-million jackpot ten times in a row,” he says. “Basically, it cannot happen by chance.”
The process of searching for encoded messages involves analysis of the Biblical Hebrew text in digital form. The Scriptures are encoded by removing all spaces between words and creating long strings of letters. According to Sherman, vowels are inserted in the strings of letters – the Hebrew alphabet lacks vowels – according to standard rules based on the sequence of consonants. Software then analyzes the strings in search of patterns based on equidistant letter sequences.
“The shorter an expression, the easier it is to find,” Sherman notes, “but when we find longer statements that have a connection to the actual biblical passage, and we find those longer statements with frequency, it leads us to believe that those statements were purposely implanted in the Bible by God.”
Some of the most compelling evidence of a mathematical pattern in the Hebrew text comes from the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, a passage most Bible scholars see as messianic and which Christians have traditionally seen as prophecy about Jesus.
Sherman developed a baseline using non-encoded Hebrew texts as his standard of comparison for determining whether the number of messages he found in a Biblical passage were statistically significant. Isaiah 53 proved to be a rich cluster of hidden messages, containing 42 encoded statements relating to Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension, far more than his baseline predicted.
As evidence, Sherman points to statements such as “Gushing from above, my mighty name arose upon Jesus, and the clouds rejoiced,” “Dreadful day for Mary,” “In his name as he commanded, Jesus is the way,” “Resurrection of Jesus, he is risen indeed,” and others that echo Isaiah’s prophecy.
It is the coherence between the hidden messages and the Hebrew text from which they are drawn that excites Sherman, who has no interest in predicting the future or looking for new “truths.” The messages plucked from the text are more like divine fingerprints.
“The Bible itself claims to be written by God, and when the subject of the encoded messages ties in so closely with the subject of the literal text, it has to make you take notice,” says Sherman. “I just want ... to capture the curiosity of skeptics and cause them to consider the possibility that the Bible is not written by men, but by God, and should therefore be taken very seriously.”
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By Grant R Jeffery
The Book has many chapters of impressive study and research including photos from Sinai Peninsula re Moses’ led crossing at the EXODUS etc. I encourage people to buy and read the whole book. It’s well worth the time. NOTE: Jeffrey uses Hebrew Letters in the text. I’ve forgotten my Hebrew alphabet and certainly don’t know how to post them. If someone can clue me in (listing the Hebrew alphabet with the letter’s names in English letters—as well as how to post the Hebrew), I’ll see what I can do, later.
The Mathematical Signature of God in the Words of Scripture
The Scriptures reveal God as the great mathematician who knows the smallest detail of His creation, and measures and numbers all things. This character of God is consistent with the revealed phenomenon of staggering complexity involving mathematical patterns within the text of the Scriptures. The Bible declares that God is so concerned with the details of His children’s lives that He has numbered the hairs on our head. “But the very hairs of your head are all numbered” (Matthew 10:30). The prophet Isaiah speaks of His majesty and His concern for numbering and measuring all things [paragraphing added by Quix]:
“Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, measured heaven with a span and calculated the dust of the earth in a measure? Weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?” (Isaiah 40:12, NKjv). When you consider the Bible’s declaration that God “measured the waters,” “measured heaven with a span,” and “calculated the dust of the earth in a measure,” it does not seem unusual or out of character that this same Almighty God would inspire His writers to record His precise message to mankind in the Scriptures with a mathematical precision within the original text that surpasses our ability to understand fully.
Evidence of Divine Authorship of the Old Testament
Ivan Panin was one of the most remarkable Christians to live in this century. Almost one hundred years ago, this fascinating and famous mathematician left Russia to settle eventually in Canada in the town of Aldershot, Ontario, not far from where I live. Although he was a committed atheist in his early years, he discovered the reality of Jesus Christ later. In 1890, Panin embarked on an exciting journey of scientific exploration of the text of the Bible that would prove that the Bible is truly the inspired Word of God. This century has witnessed a progressive abandonment of the doctrine of verbal inspiration of the Scriptures by many biblical scholars and religious leaders. As the leaders of many mainline churches succumbed to the continuous assaults on fundamental doctrines and the authority of Scripture, many Christian laymen began to lose their confidence that they could absolutely trust that the Bible was truly the inspired Word of God. As Ivan Panin wrote, “In the early centuries Christianity suffered most from its avowed enemies; in the last, from its professed friends.”
Panin completed an astonishing study during the ^•’course of fifty years that revealed the most amazing mathematical pattern beneath the surface layer of the text of the Bible. He worked diligently up to eighteen hours a day for half a century to illustrate the divine inspiration and authority of Scripture. As one small example, Panin discovered that the first verse of the Book of Genesis contains an astonishing number of mathematical patterns that illustrate divine inspiration. “ In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth (Genesis 1:1).
The phenomenon of these mathematical patterns cannot be understood until we realize that the Bible was composed in alpha-numeric languages—Hebrew and Greek. These ancient languages did not possess Arabic numbers to express numeric data. Therefore, these languages used various letters of their alphabet to express numbers such as “ 1,2,3,” etc. In addition, a small portion of the Bible was written in Aramaic, which is also alpha-numeric. Each letter in these languages stood for a number. -In other words, each of the letters expressed both a letter and a number. When they wished to express a number, such as 22, they would choose two Hebrew letters—one letter [HEBREW LTR] stood for 20 and the second letter [HEBREW LTR] stood for 2.
The first letter of the Hebrew alphabet stood for 1, the second for 2, the third for 3, etc. When we come to the eleventh letter, it represented 20, the twelfth stood for 30, etc., all the way through to 800. Because each letter had a numeric value, every word can be given a numeric value by adding up the total value of each of the individual letters. In addition, every one of the Hebrew and Greek letters was given a place value as well. To help illustrate this phenomenon let’s apply this system to the English language. It would look like this:
An Example Illustrated in the English Language
PLACE VALUE
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 20 30 40 50 60
NUMERIC VALUE
The Hebrew Language
PLACE VALUE
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
[FIRST 15 HEBREW LETTERS]
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 20 30 40 50 60
NUMERIC VALUE
Note that in the above example using the English alphabet the first ten letters have the same place values and numeric values. However, when we get to the eleventh letter K, the numeric value begins to increase by ten with each additional letter until we reach the value of 100. From that point in the alphabet forward the numeric value of each letter will increase by 100.
Every single word in Hebrew contains a series of letters with individual numeric values. For example, the word B’raisheet, “beginning,” is expressed in Genesis 1:1 in Hebrew as [HEBREW LETTERS]. If you add up the total value of the individual letters in B’raisheet the numeric value of the word is 913. Since each word has a numeric value, we can add up the value of each of the words in a biblical verse to determine the numerical value of the sentence.
The Astonishing Pattern of SEVENS in Genesis 1:1
Let us begin by examining the first verse of the Bible to explore Panin’s discovery.
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1)
[Genesis 1:1 in Hebrew]
Ivan Panin carefully examined the Hebrew text of Genesis 1:1 and discovered an incredible phenomenon of multiples of 7 that could not be explained by chance. Genesis 1:1 was composed of 7 Hebrew words containing a 28 letters. Throughout the Bible, the number 7 appears repeatedly as a symbol of divine perfection—the 7 days of creation. God rested on the 7th day, the 7 churches, the 7 seals, the 7 trumpets, etc. In total, Panin discovered 30 separate codes involving the number 7 in this first verse of the Bible.
A Listing of the Phenomenal Features of Sevens Found in Genesis 1:
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1. The number of Hebrew words |
Seven |
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2. The number of letters equals 28 (28-4= 7) |
Seven |
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3. The first three Hebrew words translated “In the beginning God created” contain 14 letters (14 / 2 = 7) |
Seven |
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4. The last four Hebrew words “the heavens and the earth” have 14 letters (14-2=7) . . . . . . . .Seven |
|
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5. The fourth and fifth words have 7 letters |
Seven |
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6. The sixth and seventh words have 7 letters |
Seven |
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7. The three key words: God, heaven, and earth have 14 letters (14 / 2 = 7) |
Seven |
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8. The number of letters in the four remaining words is also 14 (14 / 2 = 7) |
Seven |
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9. The middle word is the shortest with 2 letters. However, in combination with the word to the Right or left it totals 7 letters |
Seven |
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10. The numeric value of the first, middle, (and last letters is 133 (133 / 19 = 7) |
Seven |
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11. The numeric value of the first and last letters of all seven words is 1,393 (1,393 - 199 = 7) |
Seven |
When professors on the mathematics faculty at Harvard University were presented with this biblical phenomenon, they naturally attempted to disprove its significance as a proof of divine authorship. However, after valiant efforts these professors were unable to duplicate this incredible mathematical phenomenon. [QX PARAGRAPHING ADDED HERE]
The Harvard scientists used the English language and artificially assigned numeric values to the English alphabet. They had a potential vocabulary of over 400,000 available English words to choose from to construct a sentence about any topic they chose. [QX paragraphing added here]
Compare this to the limitations of word choices in the biblical Hebrew language, which has only forty-five hundred available word choices that the writers of the Old Testament could use. Despite their advanced mathematical abilities and access to computers the mathematicians were unable to come close to incorporating 30 mathematical multiples of 7 as found in the Hebrew words of Genesis 1:1.
If anyone doubts the difficulty of producing a passage following such an intricate pattern of sevens, I challenge you to try it yourself. I have tried, and it is impossible to complete a paragraph on any topic and remain true to the system of interlocking sevens. I doubt that anyone could complete a paragraph of over one hundred and fifty words following such a pattern of sevens, as found in Genesis 1:1 and Matthew, chapter 1, even if they were to devote several years to the effort. [QX added paragraphing, here].
The problem is that with the addition of every I fit single word and sentence the magnitude of the challenge to integrate the new phrase into the existing pattern grows geometrically. Each word and sentence must fit into the pattern existing within me preceding sentences. [Qx added paragraphing here].
In light of this virtual impossibility we need to remember that the writers of the Bible were forty-four mostly common men who wrote their individual texts separated from one another over a period of sixteen centuries. How could these ordinary men contribute to this hidden pattern without consultation when most of them never met their fellow authors? The only logical explanation is that God directed their minds through supernatural INSPIRATION TO WRITE His precise inspired words.
The number “seven” permeates the totality of Scripture because the number speaks of God’s divine perfection and perfect order. The actual number 7 appears 287 times in the Old Testament (287 - 41 = 7) while the word seventh occurs 98 times (98 - 14 = 7). The word seven-fold appearst seven times. In addition, the word seventy is used 56 times • (56 / 8 = 7).
Panin discovered literally thousands of such mathematical patterns underlying all of the books of the Old Testament before his death in 1942. I refer the interested reader to Panin’s book. The Inspiration of the Scriptures Scientifically Demonstrated,
which discusses these phenomena extensively. Panin and others have examined other Hebrew literature and have attempted to find such mathematical patterns, but they are not found anywhere outside the Bible.
Matthew 1:1-17—Evidence of Divine Authorship of the New Testament
Panin also examined the New Testament to discover whether or not the pattern continued. There were four hundred years of silence between the completion of the Old Testament ft around 396 B.C., and the writing of the New Testament following the resurrection of Jesus Christ. However, when God inspired the New Testament authors, including Matthew, to begin writing the Gospels, He again manifested His signature on the pages of Scripture by creating a marvelously complex pattern of sevens beneath the text of Matthew’s Gospel.
The first section in Matthew’s account consists of seventeen verses from Matthew 1:1 to 1:17 that describe in•detail one particular subject, the genealogy of Jesus Christ. This seventeen-verse text contains 72 Greek Vocabulary words. A Vocabulary word is a particular word different from any other word that was used in a passage. In other words, a Greek word that appears 6 times in the passage would only be counted as 1 Vocabulary word. Obviously, the number of Vocabulary words will differ from the number of total words appearing in the passage. The same system of numeric and place values for letters exists in the Greek language used in the New Testament as we found in Hebrew of the Old Testament.
A Listing of the Phenomenal Features of Sevens Found in Matthew 1:1-17
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1 The total numeric value of the 72 Vocabulary words is 43,364 (42,364 - 6,052 = 7) |
Seven |
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2 The number of Greek nouns in the passage IS 56 (56 / 8 = 7) |
Seven |
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3 The Greek article for “the” occurs 56 times (56 / 8 = 7) |
Seven |
In the first eleven verses of Matthew 1:1-11 we find these additional features:
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4 The number of Greek vocabulary words is 49 (49 / 7 = 7) |
Seven |
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5 Of these 49 words, 28 words begin with a vowel (28 / 4 = 7) Seven |
|
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6 Of these 49 words, 21 begin with a consonant (21 / 3 = 7) |
Seven |
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7 The number of letters in these 49 words equals 266 (266 / 38 = 7) |
Seven |
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8 Of these 49 words, 35 words occur more than one time (35 / 5 = 7) |
Seven |
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9 Of these 49 words, 14 words occur only one time (14 / 2 = 7) |
Seven |
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10 The number of proper nouns is 35 (35/5=7) |
Seven |
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11 The number of times these proper nouns occur is 63 (63 / 9 = 7) |
Seven |
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12 Of the 35 proper nouns, the number of male names is 28 (28 / 4 = 7) |
Seven |
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13 Three women, Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth, are named in this section. The number of Greek letters in these three names is 7 (14 / 2 = 7) |
Seven |
Only a few of the numerical features that are found in this passage are listed in this analysis by Ivan Panin.
However, these features reveal an underlying profound mathematical design that reveals the signature of the true author of both the New Testament and the Old Testament— God Himself. However, to illustrate that this is not an unusual phenomenon occurring only in this one isolated passage, I will list some additional mathematical features that occur in the balance of Matthew 1:18-25 and describe the birth of Jesus Christ. In this seven-verse section God has placed an astonishing pattern of SEVENS that verify the signature of the original author.
The Pattern of SEVENS in Matthew 1:18-25—The History of Christ’s Birth
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1. The number of letters in the seven word passage is 161 (161 – 23 = 7) |
Seven |
|
2. The number of Vocabulary words is 77 (77 - 11 = 7) |
Seven |
|
3. Six Greek words occur only in this passage and never again in Matthew. These six Greek words contain precisely 56 letters (56 - 8 = 7) |
Seven |
|
4. The number of distinct proper nouns in the passage is 7 |
Seven |
|
5. The number of Greek letters in these seen proper nouns is 42 (42 - 6 = 7) |
Seven |
|
6. The number of words spoken by the angel to Joseph is 28 (28 - 4 = 7) |
Seven |
|
7. The number of Greek forms of words used in this passage is 161 (161 - 23 = 7) |
Seven |
|
8. The number of Greek forms of words in the angel’s speech is 35 (35 / 5 = 7) |
Seven |
|
9. The number of letters in the angel’s 35 forms of words is 168 (168 / 24 = 7) |
Seven |
This phenomenal discovery by Panin has been examined by numerous authorities and the figures have been verified. In total, Panin accumulated over forty thousand pages of detailed calculations covering most of the text of the Bible before his death. [Qx added paragraphing here]
These incredible, mathematical patterns are not limited to the number seven. There are numerous other patterns. These amazing patterns appear in the vocabulary, grammatical forms, parts of speech, and particular forms of words. They occur throughout the whole text of the Bible containing 31,173 verses. When you consider the amazing details of this mathematical phenomenon you realize that the change of a single letter or word in the original languages of Hebrew or Greek would destroy the pattern. Now we can understand why Jesus Christ declared that the smallest letter and grammatical mark of the Scriptures were preserved by God’s hand: “For verily I say unto you. Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled” Matthew 5:18)
Naturally, the religious skeptics did not abandon their atheism in response to these incredible discoveries by Ivan Panin that revealed a staggering pattern of complexity hidden beneath the text of Scripture. After many skeptics had dismissed his research, Ivan Panin issued a public challenge through one of the major newspapers of the day, the New York Sun, in a letter to the editor on November 20, 1899, offering his detractors an opportunity to prove his research wrong if they could. [Qx added paragraphing here].
Panin issued his public challenge to some of the greatest atheist scholars of the day. “I herewith respectfully invite any or all of the following to prove that my facts are not facts: namely Messrs. Lyman Abbott, Washington Gladden, Herber Newton, Minot J. Savage, Presidents Eliot of Harvard, White of Cornell, and Harper of the University of Chicago, Professor J. Henry Thayer of Harvard, and Dr. Briggs, and any other prominent higher critic so called. They may associate with themselves, if they choose, all the contributors to the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, who wrote its articles on Biblical subjects, together with a dozen mathematicians of the caliber of Professor Simon Newcomb. [Qx added paragraphing here]
The heavier the calibre of either scholar or mathematician, the more satisfactory to ft me. They will find that my facts are facts. And since they are facts, I am ready to take them to any three prominent lawyers, or, better still, to any judge of the superior or supreme court, and abide by his decision as to whether the conclusion is not necessary that Inspiration alone can account for the facts, if they are facts. All I should ask would be that the judge treat the case as he would any other case that comes before him.”
Despite his public challenge in the New York Sun, not one of these prominent men attempted to refute Mr. Panin’s undeniable facts or to deal with the unavoidable conclusion that the evidence produced by Panin proved that the Bible was truly inspired by a divine intelligence. The critics could not refute these facts. The only thing they could do was to ignore them. [Qx added paragraphing here]
Were Mr. Panin’s research and calculations wrong? If so, where? If they were correct, and if they are, then the evidence exists for all to see that God did truly inspire the words of Scripture. One of Panin’s last challenges consisted of this argument. He wrote to his “detractors: “Lastly, my argument can also be refuted by showing that even though my facts be true, my arithmetic faultless, and my collocation of numerics honest, that men could have written thus without inspiration from above.”
However, any honest attempt to create a paragraph on any subject that will contain this astonishing pattern of mathematical features within the surface text will utterly fail. I doubt that even a modern Cray super-computer could produce a passage containing the “wheels within wheels” pattern of sevens as revealed in Genesis 1:1 or Matthew 1:1-25.
To date, no one has succeeded in duplicating the phenomenon produced by the biblical writers in ancient times.
What was Panin’s own view of the Scriptures after a lifetime of diligent study? He wrote the following statement in one of his essays after warning of the limitations of wisdom found in secular philosophy. “Not so, however, with The Book. For it tells of One who spake as men never spake, who was the true bread of life, that which cometh down from the heavens, of which if a man eat he shall never hunger.” Ivan Panin’s conclusion of the matter was the following challlenge.
“My friend of the world, whoso you are: Either Jesus Christ is mistaken or you are. The answer that neither might be is only evading the issue, not settling it. But the ages have decided that Jesus Christ was not mistaken. It is for you to decide whether you shall continue to be.”
QX: AMEN! AMEN! AMEN! AMEN! AMEN! AMEN! AMEN!
PTL!
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(CNN) —Michael Drosnin’s new book “The Bible Code” offers the thesis that the Old Testament correctly predicted —via a hidden code —several events in history, including the assassination of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the Holocaust.
The book soared onto bestseller lists in the United States by attracting legions of readers with its provocative prophecies, such as a “cataclysmic” earthquake in Los Angeles in 2010.
But some of the book’s conclusions are being challenged by the Israeli mathematician who led a research team that discovered what he says is the hidden code in the Hebrew Bible, or Torah, on which the book is based.
Orthodox Jews call the first five books of the Bible the Torah.
Eliyahu Rips of Hebrew University says it is true that the Bible has predicted various historical events that have come to pass. But he disagrees that the code can be used to predict future events.
“The central claim that you will find in Michael Drosnin’s book, and really the whole basis for the book, is ... the idea of him predicting Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination and the implication is that you can use this idea, the hidden code in the Torah, to make predictions of the future,” Rips said Wednesday through a translator.
“It is literally impossible to make future predictions based on codes. Mr. Drosnin’s book does have some examples of codes that are statistically significant, and some that aren’t, and the problem is that any layman reading that book will have no way of making a distinction.”
Drosnin, speaking on CNN, defended his work.
“I am not saying that ‘The Bible Code’ is a crystal ball. You can not say ‘Bible, please tell me the future’ and find out anything. You have to know what you are looking for to find anything at all.
“And none of us, neither Dr. Rips nor his colleagues, would claim to know the code well enough, to understand it completely enough, that we can be certain about what it says about the future.”
Drosnin, a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, met with Rips after he heard about his work and did some of his own analysis of the code before completing his book, which is published by Simon & Schuster.
To find the code, Rips first eliminated all spaces between words and turned the original version of the Bible into one continuous strand, 304,805 letters long.
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The Holy Bible, the best-selling book of all time, was not written by man, but by God himself.
Such is the conclusion not of some overzealous sky pilot, but a mathematics expert who sought to disprove the existence of any hidden messages concealed in Scripture.
Now, the book that uses science to help prove the Bible’s divine authorship is back, in a new edition packed with even more material than the original version.
“Bible Code Bombshell: Compelling Scientific Evidence that God Authored the Bible,” is written by Edwin Sherman, an internationally recognized mathematician and statistical expert who was a skeptic of Bible codes, and, in fact, set out to nullify theories connecting them to ancient verses.
But after studying the subject himself, Sherman, founder of the Isaac Newton Bible Code Research Society, is now convinced the Hebrew Bible contains coded messages that are evidence of God’s authorship of the Bible.
As WorldNetDaily previously reported, reporter Michael Drosnin wrote 1997’s “The Bible Code,” a book based on the work of Israeli mathematician Eli Rips that attained popularity, in part, from Drosnin’s claim that future events, such as the Holocaust, Yitzak Rabin’s assassination and the Gulf War were encoded in the Bible.
Such claims invited attacks from skeptics like mathematician and physicist Dave Thomas, who wrote in 1997, “Hidden messages can be found anywhere provided you’re willing to invest time and effort to harvest the vast field of probability. He, Drosnin, underestimates the power of chance combined with the brute force of computers. He says these messages are beyond the power of chance, and I’ve proven they are not.”
Another skeptic who was convinced he could prove Drosnin’s messages to be fakes or statistical artifacts was Sherman.
Sherman says he found most of Drosnin’s examples trivial.
“They were the simple kinds of words and phrases you might find if you searched for encoded messages in the Jerusalem phone book,” he told the Southern Oregon News.
But he was intrigued enough to use code software and begin analyzing the Masoretic text of the Old Testament.
“I was very skeptical about the whole thing,” he says. “I started a project to try and show the whole thing was bogus.”
Instead, he says he found many examples of messages that went beyond simple words and phrases – and they often were contextually similar to the Biblical passage in which they were found.
“Finding dozens of lengthy encoded messages on the same topic in one short section of text is about as likely as winning a one-in-a-million jackpot ten times in a row,” he said. “Basically, it cannot happen by chance.”
The process of searching for encoded messages involves analysis of the biblical Hebrew text in digital form. The Scriptures are encoded by removing all spaces between words and creating long strings of letters. According to Sherman, vowels are inserted in the strings of letters – the Hebrew alphabet lacks vowels – following standard rules based on the sequence of consonants. Software then analyzes the strings in search of patterns based on equidistant letter sequences.
“The shorter an expression, the easier it is to find,” Sherman noted, “but when we find longer statements that have a connection to the actual biblical passage, and we find those longer statements with frequency, it leads us to believe that those statements were purposely implanted in the Bible by God.”
Some of the most compelling evidence of a mathematical pattern in the Hebrew text comes from the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, a passage most Bible scholars see as messianic and which Christians have traditionally seen as prophecy about Jesus.
Sherman developed a baseline using non-encoded Hebrew texts as his standard of comparison for determining whether the number of messages he found in a Biblical passage were statistically significant. Isaiah 53 proved to be a rich cluster of hidden messages, containing 42 encoded statements relating to Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension, far more than his baseline predicted.
As evidence, Sherman points to statements such as “Gushing from above, my mighty name arose upon Jesus, and the clouds rejoiced,” “Dreadful day for Mary,” “In his name as he commanded, Jesus is the way,” “Resurrection of Jesus, he is risen indeed,” and others that echo Isaiah’s prophecy.
It is the coherence between the hidden messages and the Hebrew text from which they are drawn that excites Sherman, who has no interest in predicting the future or looking for new “truths.” The messages plucked from the text are more like divine fingerprints.
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