Codes in the Bibl

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HIDDEN BIBLICAL CODES: HOAX OR PROPHECY?

Overview:
From medieval times, the belief that the Bible contains some type of secret code has fascinated many people, including the great scientist Sir Isaac Newton. In 1958, Rabbi Weissmandel found some interesting patterns in the Hebrew Pentateuch (also known as the Books of Moses, the Torah, and the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures/Old Testament). Unfortunately, he had no access to computers, and so was not able to develop his findings.

A team at Hebrew University in Jerusalem reported remarkable findings of codes buried in the book of Genesis in 1988. Other researchers followed, claiming to find predictions in the ancient text of "the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 to a Los Angeles earthquake in 2010." 1 Some authors capitalized on these findings and published a series of best-selling religious books. Michael Drosnin's book "The Bible Code" reached the #3 spot on the New York Times best-seller list. 2  By 1999-OCT, 12 books had been written on the topic; all but two promoted the idea of hidden codes.

The actual truth about the Bible codes was finally revealed by statistical analysis: they do not just exist in the Pentateuch; they are found everywhere. ELS codes are found with approximately equal frequency in the Book of Genesis, the Qur'an, Tolstoy's "War and Peace," or in any sufficiently long text written in any language -- probably even in this web site which totals over 30 megabytes of text.  Even though Drosin's claims were exposed as meaningless, he published a subsequent book "Bible Code II: The Countdown" in 2002-DEC. 3 By late 2003-FEB, it had risen to achieve a sales rank of 1,091 at Amazon.com -- an impressive rating since Amazon.com lists millions of books in their web site. By 2004-JUL, its rating has sunk to 39,335.



Topics covered in this section:
 
E.L.S. Codes
 
 Theomatics and other Bible codes
 
 Are the codes real?

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HIDDEN "E.L.S." CODES IN THE BIBLE:
ARE THEY A HOAX OR PROPHECY?

"E.L.S." means "Equidistant Letter Sequence," a term that is explained below.

Study by Eliyahu Rips et al:
Part of the Pentateuch has been searched on an organized basis for hidden Bible Codes by a team at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Eliyahu Rips of formed a team with Doron Witztum and Yoav Rosenberg. They used a Equidistant Letter Sequence (ELS) analysis method, on just the Book of Genesis as published in the textus receptus version. The technique that they used to search for the codes is relatively straightforward (at least to a computer): The text of part or all of the Pentateuch in its ancient Hebrew form is stripped of all of its spaces and entered into a computer as a long string of characters. The entire Book of Genesis, for example, becomes a string of 78,064 characters.

A computer was programmed to:

 Write down the "Nth" character; 
 Skip to the "D" character that follows the previous character;
 Write down that character; 
 Continue with the next skip.

For example, if N was 100 and D was 50, then the 100th, 150th, 200th, 250th... character would be selected. Mathematically, the characters selected were defined as: N, N+D, N+2D, ... , N+(K-1)D where

N is the location of start character;
D is the skip; and
K is the length of the ELS (i.e. the number of characters in the string that the program creates.

The resulting string is then searched for pairs of meaningful entries in close proximity to each other. The entries that they searched for were the names of individuals and their date of birth or death as listed in the "Encyclopedia of Great Men in Israel." The dates were specified by the Hebrew day and month. A list was drawn up of all 34 men mentioned in the encyclopedia, whose date of birth or death was given and whose lives were significant enough to cover at least three columns of text. Later, a second list was prepared; it consisted of 32 men whose descriptions took between 1.5 and 3 columns of text. It is important to remember that, all 66 men were born many centuries after Genesis was written.

The entire process was repeated many times, using different values of "N" and "D". They found many matches. And when they compared the name/date matches, then found that they were closer together than one would expect on the basis of chance. The results were very highly significant. (p = 0.000016). A "p" value of 0.01 is normally considered quite significant; it indicates that the result would only happen by chance once in 100 experiments. Smaller numbers are even more significant.

Their remarkable findings were submitted to Statistical Science magazine. This is a peer-reviewed journal which requires that every article be scanned by a number of experts in the field before it is accepted for publishing. 1 Because of the incredible nature of the discoveries, the review process took 6 years to complete!

They did a control study using a section of the Hebrew translation of Tolstoy's War and Peace. They selected the first 78,064 characters in the novel, in order to match the length of the Book of Genesis. They did a second control study using the Book of Isaiah. Matches were found but the proximity of a name and its corresponding date were what one would expect from pure chance.

Robert Kass, editor of Statistical Science wrote:

"Our referees were baffled: their prior beliefs made them think the Book of Genesis could not possibly contain meaningful references to modern-day individuals, yet when the authors carried out additional analyses and checks the effect persisted. The paper is thus offered to Statistical Science readers as a challenging puzzle." 2

Harold Gans, a former cryptologist at the US Defense Department replicated the work of the Jerusalem team. He was able to corroborate their results. He further expanded the original study by finding the names of important Jewish individuals and the cities of their birth and death. His "p" value was even more significant. 
Reactions to the Study of Dr. Rips et al:
 Liberal and many mainline Christian theologians believe that Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch were written by many different authors or groups of writers over a period of many centuries. It was then edited by one or more redactors to mold it into its present form. Since they believe that the books had very human authors and editors, it is difficult for them to see how such complex codes could be buried in the text.
 Most theologians are not impressed by the findings of these codes. They note that the oldest surviving manuscripts of the Pentateuch contain many variations. Even a single difference would throw off the analysis procedure.
 Dror Bar-Natan, Alec Gindis, Aryeh Levitan, Brendan McKay performed two experiments similar to the Jerusalem team. 3 They used the Koren version of the Book of Genesis. In the first study, they attempted to match the names of famous rabbis against the names of the books that they wrote. The second study attempted to match their names against the years of their birth or death. They reported that "In each case, the result was unambiguously negative. No indication of any extraordinary phenomenon was found." 
 Aish HaTorah, a fundamentalist Jewish group, looks upon the findings as a likely proof that God exists and that the Torah is of divine origin.
 Rabbi Shlomo Sternberg, a Harvard mathematics professor argues that there is no way that the text of Genesis that was used in the study could be identical to that which tradition states was passed from God to Moses. 4
 Brendan McKay, a computer-science professor at Australian National University, has stated that after replicating the study, "failed to find any trace of the claimed phenomena." He went further and applied the ELS technique to the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. He found a number of "hidden" statements, including "Hear the law of the sea." He computed that the chance of these words turning up by random chance was only about 1 in 10,500.
 Ronald S. Hendel, the Hebrew Bible book review editor for BR (Bible Review), commented: "Respect for the biblical text means that Rips and Drosnin are wrong. The Bible in their computer is not the original text and is not in God's own handwriting. Their sensational claims are undermined by false assumptions. In short, they have perpetrated a hoax." 5
 Three professors at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, (Dror Bar-Natan, Maya Bar-Hillel and Gil Kalai) and one from the Australian National University (Brendan McKay) have been able to disprove the Bible code theory. They prepared a paper for publishing in a late 1999 edition of Statistical Science. They performed hundreds of analyses on the book of Genesis and other biblical books and "have been unable to detect the codes." They found that codes can be found at the same rate in Tolstoy's "War and Peace" or in any long text. But they are not found any more frequently than random chance would predict. Bar-Natan said that the methods used in the original 1994 project had "enough wiggle room to produce whatever [results] you want." 6



Book by Michael Drosnin:
Drosnin was impressed by the work done in Jerusalem and developed an analysis method of his own. The result was his book "The Bible Code", Unfortunately, he does not fully explain in his book the statistical technique that he used. 5 He worked on the entire Pentateuch. By removing the spaces he formed with a string of precisely 304,805 characters. It seems that he uses the computer to transform the string of characters into something that resembles a standard crossword puzzle. A large grid with 552 columns and 553 lines, in which the final line was of partial length is one possibility. One source states that there are more than 150,000 possible grids that can be created. 7 One of his grids is known to have 64 rows, in which each row (except the last) contains 4,772 letters. This was followed up by numerous other grids of different dimensions. These grids are then scanned for meaningful words - reading forwards or backwards along a line; reading down or up along a column; or reading both diagonals downwards and upwards. He even skipped characters in his searches. Any find is considered valid as long as the letters form a straight line. Once he has found a word or name, he searches in the vicinity of the find for other information: dates, words, etc.

He wrote in his book that he uncovered information about the Rabin assassination one year before it occurred. He found mention of the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi, and John F. Kennedy. References to the Gulf war, the collision of a comet with the planet Jupiter, the Oklahoma City bombing, Richard Nixon's resignation, World War II, the Holocaust and the fall of Communism were also decoded. The book predicted a cataclysmic earthquake in Los Angeles in 2010, and a nuclear war in Israel before 2001. 8 The latter prediction was a failure; we must wait in order to find out whether the former will happen.

Drosnin apparently used the textus receptus version of the Pentateuch, as did the Jerusalem team earlier. He stated in a CNN interview  that "There is one accepted Hebrew text of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, that religious people believe God dictated to Moses on Mount Sinai." 9 He states in his book "all Bibles in the original Hebrew language that now exist are the same, letter for letter...The Bible code computer program uses the universally accepted original Hebrew text." All of these statements appear to be false. D.A. Akenson  states that there are "myriad versions of the Torah. The first good quality Hebrew Bible, the Venice edition, was printed in 1524-5. The variant versions of the Hebrew Scriptures run into the hundreds of thousands and the Pentateuch has at least 10,000 versions." 7 R.S. Hendel, writes:  "In fact, we do not have the original Hebrew version of the Old Testament, and all ancient manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible that we do have differ in the number of letters." With such a variety of versions, it is extremely unlikely that any currently available version is precisely identical to the original. 5



Reactions to Drosnin's "The Bible Code" Book:
Michael Drosnin's book received a rocky reception from those working in the Bible code field:

 Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips and Yoav Rosenberg issued a press release on 1997-JUN-4. (
"[They] categorically rejected attempts to predict the future based on these codes. They warned against being taken in by the sensational claims in Michael Drosnin's controversial book, 'The Bible Code'... 'Codes don't reveal any secret messages or prophecies about whom to marry or who will win the NBA championship,' said Witztum. 'I was the first one to investigate the possibility of divining the future through these codes. Following logical and empirical tests, I found incontrovertible evidence proving its impossible to predict the future with the hidden codes'... 'All attempts to extract messages from Torah Codes or to make predictions based on them are futile and of no value," said the world-renowned Hebrew University Professor of Mathematics, Eliyahu Rips at a press conference in Jerusalem today. 'The only conclusion that can be drawn from the scientific research regarding the Torah Codes is that they exist and that they are not a mere coincidence.'" 10
 
 Doron Witztum said in a public statement:
"Mr. Drosnin's work employs no scientific methodology. No distinction is made between statistically valid codes, and accidental appearances, which can be found in any book. For example, Drosnin's "code" of the comet Shoemaker Levy crashing into Jupiter is statistically meaningless. Such a code can be found by accident in 1 out of any 3 ** books checked!...In general, we always have difficulty understanding a text where we don't have any syntax or punctuation. In the plain Hebrew text of the Torah, without punctuation, I could easily read the ten commandments as telling me to steal and murder. There's a verse that describes Moses being commanded to bring incense. I could easily read it as a commandment to use drugs. All we have is a few isolated encoded words of a hidden text. Maybe we're missing some very critical words. It's literally impossible to learn a coherent story out of the juxtaposition of a few words that may be somehow related. Additionally, just like there is a code that Rabin will be assassinated, I also found a code saying that Churchill will be assassinated!" 11
** Dr. Witztum presumably means any 3 books of equivalent length to the Pentateuch.
 
 Harold Gans issued a public statement on 1997-JUN-3. He stated in part:
"The book [The Bible Code] states that the codes in the Torah can be used to predict future events. This is absolutely unfounded. There is no scientific or mathematical basis for such a statement, and the reasoning used to come to such a conclusion in the book is logically flawed. While it is true that some historical events have been shown to be encoded in the Book of Genesis in certain configurations, it is absolutely not true that every similar configuration of 'encoded' words necessarily represents a potential historical event. In fact, quite the opposite is true: most such configurations will be quite random and are expected to occur in any text of sufficient length. Mr. Drosnin states that his 'prediction' of the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin is 'proof' that the 'Bible Code' can be used to predict the future. A single success, regardless of how spectacular, or even several such 'successful' predictions proves absolutely nothing unless the predictions are made and evaluated under carefully controlled conditions. Any respectable scientist knows that 'anecdotal' evidence never proves anything." 12,13
 
 A Time Magazine article quotes Rabbi Shlomo Sternberg, a Harvard mathematics professor, as calling the book "complete nonsense." 14
 Ronald S. Hendel, commented: "If this book were sold only in supermarket checkout lines, it would be seen for what it is - a journalistic hoax." 15
 On the other hand, Oprah Winfrey devoted a full half-hour segment of her show to this topic. Warner Brothers has bought up the movie rights. Topics like this one can clearly excite a lot of people.
 J.W. Moore pointed out that most Drosnin's future prophecies were in error. 16    Drosnin did predict Rabin's assassination in advance. But that is not much of an accomplishment; the chances of such a high Israeli official being killed is quite high.
 He predicted a nuclear disaster circa 1995, which never happened.
 He predicted the assassination of Benjamin Netanyahu during a trip to Syria that he was supposed to have taken early in his term of office. Neither the trip nor the assassination actually happened. 
 After the failure of the latter two predictions, Drosnin re-examined the Biblical text and found the encoded word "delayed" nearby.
 



References used:
The following information sources were used to prepare and update the above essay. The hyperlinks are not necessarily still active today.

Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips and Yoav Rosenberg, "Equidistant Letter Sequences in the Book of Genesis", Statistical Science, 1994, Vol. 9, No. 3, Pages 429-438. It is available in abridged form at http://www.fortunecity.com/tattooine/delany/11/genesis.html
The comments of Robert Kass, editor of Statistical Science, are at http://www.fortunecity.com/tattooine/delany/11/
Dror Bar-Natan, Alec Gindis, Aryeh Levitan, Brendan McKay, "Report on new ELS tests of Torah", published at: http://www.math.gatech.edu/~jkatz/Religions/Numerics/report.html
David van Biema, "Deciphering God's Plan", Time Magazine, 1997-JUN-9
R.S. Hendel, "The Secret Code Hoax", BR, Vol. XIII, No. 4, 1997-AUG, Page 23 - 24.
"Controversial 'Bible Code' debunked by team of scholars," APonline, 1999-SEP-10.
D.H. Akenson, "The biblical X-files", The Globe and Mail Newspaper, 1997-AUG-2.
Evan Solomon, "Hacking god's code", Shift Magazine, 1997-SEP, P. 16
A CNN Interview "Meet Michael Drosnin" is at: http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9706/04/israel.bible/drosninlog.html
Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips and Yoav Rosenberg, "Hidden Bible Codes Researchers Condemn Michael Drosnin", Press release issued 1997-JUN-4. Available at: http://www.discoveryseminar.org/cgibin/var/aishdisc/press.html
Doron Witztum issued a public statement which is available at: http://www.discoveryseminar.org/cgibin/var/aishdisc/witztum.html
Harold Glans, "Back to the Future" statement is : http://www.discoveryseminar.org/cgibin/var/aishdisc/goc.htm
Harold Gans, "Public statement", 1997-JUN-3. Available at: http://www.fortunecity.com/tattooine/delany/11/public2.html
David van Biema, "Deciphering God's Plan", Time Magazine, 1997-JUN-9
R.S. Hendel, "The Secret Code Hoax", BR, Vol. XIII, No. 4, 1997-AUG, Page 23 - 24.
J.W. Moore, "Bible codes, or matrix of deception, Part II," SCP Newsletter, 1998-Winter. Online at http://www.scp-inc.org 

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THEOMATICS AND OTHER BIBLE CODES
HOAXES OR GOD'S FINGERPRINT?

Overview:
For thousands of years, humanity has searched for proof of the existence of God. Some have tried to prove that God exists; others have tried the opposite. Neither group has succeeded. But many Christians and other theists have held fast to the belief that a proof is out there somewhere. They have searched for some fact(s) in the universe that proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that God exists.

From medieval times until today, many people have believed that the Bible contains some type of secret, hidden code. The great scientist Sir Isaac Newton was perhaps the most famous of these believers. 

 Some believe that the Bible text contains a complex mathematical design that would have been beyond the mental ability of humans to create. It has been variously described as:  A type of watermark that proves God's authorship. 
 The footprint left by the Holy Spirit.
 The fingerprint of God.

Theomatics, described below, is an analysis technique that searches for evidence of such a design.
 
 Others have believed that the letters in the Bible can be scanned mathematically, in order to extract hidden names, dates and messages. The Equidistant Letter Sequence (ELS) analysis method is an example of this approach. ELS is doomed to failure because it depends upon the Bible text having been transmitted down to the present day without error. In fact, there are thousands of differences among the surviving ancient Bible manuscripts, and there is no method by which the original wording can be determined. The addition or subtraction of even a single letter by a copyist two millennia ago will derail an ELS analysis.

"A.B. Leever" who has analyzed Theomatics concluded that if the technique "were valid then it would possible to demonstrate mathematically that God supernaturally intervened in the writing of the Bible. This would be a very important advancement in the field of Christian apologetics, perhaps the most profound discovery of recent times." However, if the technique is worthless, then "there is potential for great damage to the glorious name of our Lord Jesus Christ... and an open door for the enemy to molest the Body of Christ with profound confusion and shame." 11

Opinions differ greatly on the validity and appropriateness of these studies:

 Many Agnostics, Atheists, Humanists, etc. reject the belief that the authors of the Bible were inspired by God. Most regard the Bible as a collection of historical documents, each intended to promote its authors' own religious and spiritual beliefs. It is useless to hunt for any deeper content. 
 Many religious liberals consider these studies to be without validity; they are grounded in wishful thinking.
 Some skeptics, who have long searched for a proof of the existence of God, seize upon Bible codes as confirmation that God exists, and wants to communicate to humans.
 Many conservative Christians eagerly study them in order to gain greater insights into the meaning of the Bible, which they interpret as God's Word.
 Some conservative Christians and Jews avoid numeric studies of the Bible. For example, Rabbi Asher Lopatin of Anshe Shalom B'nai Israel Congregation in Chicago is concerned that it could lead to a form of idolatry -- the worship of numbers. 
 Some Fundamentalist Christians reject the search for internal codes as being part of the Occult. Some believe that when a person experiments with Bible numerology or decoding, that "doorways" will open into their life. Evil spirits can use these to possess or oppress the individual.

Decades ago, Rabbi Weissmand found some interesting patterns in the Hebrew Pentateuch (a.k.a. the Books of Moses, the Torah, and the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures / Old Testament). These patterns are called "ELS codes" (a.k.a. Torah codes, Skip codes, and Equidistant Letter Sequences).  Some authors capitalized on these findings, and rushed into print a series of best-selling religious books. The most financially successful was probably Michael Drosnin's book "The Bible Code." 1 It once achieved the #3 spot on a New York Times best-seller list. Countless individuals accepted the ELS codes as proof that God was the actual author of the Pentateuch. Many skeptics became believers. But, the euphoria did not last. Further statistical analysis revealed the truth about the Bible codes: that they do not just exist in the Pentateuch; they are everywhere. Codes are found with equal frequency in the Book of Genesis, the Qur'an, Tolstoy's "War and Peace," Melville's "Moby Dick," or in any sufficiently long text. 2,3,4,5 By the time that the ELS codes were exposed as meaningless, the authors of Torah code books had pocketed some rather heavy profits.

Many Christians and Jews continued to have faith in the codes, even a year after scholars debunked the concept. Michael Drosin's book "The Bible Code" was still rated in the top 7,500 titles at Amazon.com. Since that online bookstore lists millions of books in its inventory, it would appear that the book is still among their most popular sellers. 1

Other types of hidden biblical codes are discussed in this essay: the findings of E.W. Bullinger, and the discovery of "Theomatics" by Theomatic Research." 8



Terminology:
 Numerics: The study of numbers.
 Bible Numerics: The study of numbers in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures (a.k.a. Old and New Testaments). 
 Numerology: the practice of assigning numerical values to different letters of the alphabet. One system, using the English alphabet for example, is to set A = 1; B = 2...Z = 26, etc. This is then used to compute the hidden numerical values of letters, words, phrases -- even complete thoughts and sentences. Each letter is converted to its corresponding value; the values are then added up. A common method for the Hebrew alphabet assigns values 1 to 9 to the first 9 letters, 10 to 90 for the next 9 letters, and 100 to 400 for the final 4 letters. Greek is often interpreted with the same format. However, it has more characters, so that the final 8 letters are numbered 100 to 800.
Findings of E.W. Bullinger:
English theologian Ethelbert W. Bullinger (1837-1913) was a prolific writer. His most popular book is the Companion Bible, a study Bible in the King James Version. 6 He also wrote "Number in Scripture: Its supernatural design and spiritual significance," which was reprinted in 1993. 7 In the latter book, he describes the sources of some of today's frequently used numbers. (e.g. the 12 signs of the zodiac, 360 degrees in a circle.) But his deep study of the text of the Bible revealed to him the spiritual and symbolic meaning associated with various numeric values, as they appear in the scriptures. Some examples are:

 3 represents God.
 9 represents judgment.
 15 refers to acts brought about by God's grace.
 40 represents probation, trial and chastisement.
 1290 represents desolation.
 1335 represents blessing.

He then detected patterns of occurrences of these numbers in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. He concluded that these repetitions could not have come about naturally, inserted by dozens of authors who independently wrote the 66 books of the Bible. He concluded that God must have been responsible for creating the Bible text. He concluded that Bible numerical patterns prove the existence of God.



Theomatics:
Theomatics Research, a Portland, OR-based company states that "the foundational basis for theomatics has been known for thousands of years, ever since the time before Christ. It is commonly referred to by the term 'gematria.' It was in 1975 that this original code in the Bible ~ known for thousands of years but never deciphered ~ began to reveal itself in a major way." 8 Del Washburn believes that he has found a mathematical design within the Bible that proves that God was its ultimate author. God "assigned each letter and in turn each word of the Bible with a number or theomatic value. Everything in the Bible was composed and written mathematically...God the Creator, sometime in eternity past, orchestrated and planned every event mentioned in the Bible ~ right down to the most minute detail...and what every word in the Bible would ultimately be. Each and every word had to be spelled precisely so it would come out to its exact and pre-determined numerical value, and then be placed into the text in a precise location."

Two typical types matches found by Theomatics are:

 Numbers that appear in the Bible -- for example  Jesus chose 12 disciples, 
 His disciples caught 153 fish, 
 Adam became a father at the age of 800, 
 Noah's ark was 300 cubits long, 
 The Israelites wept for thirty days after the death of Moses.

These values are each matched with the numerical values for words, groups of words, phrases, or sentences that are located nearby. For example: John 21:11 mentions a catch of 153 fish. Some words and phrases found in close proximity to the number are:

 "Fishes" has a Theomatic values of 1,224 which is equal to 153 x 8
 "The net" also has a value of 1,224 which is equal to 153 x 8
 "Multitude of fishes" has a value of 2,448 which is equal to 153 x 16
 "Fishers of men" has a value of 2,142 which is equal to 153 x 14
 
 Names also have a numerical value. Jesus, in Greek, has the value of 888, which is 111 x 2 x 2 x 2. i.e. equal to the prime number 111 times 8. Searches are made in the Greek text for phrases whose Theomatic value is 111, or a multiple of 111. Many are found:Verse Text Theomatic Value Breakdown
Matthew 1:16 "And Jacob begat Joseph.... called Christ" 7,326 111 X 66
Matthew 1:18 "Now the birth of Jesus Christ ..... Holy Spirit" 5,439 111 x 49
Matthew 1:23 "...and she will bear a son..." 1,221 111 x 11
 

They selected the term "Theomatics" to describe God's design: "Theo" means God and "matics" from the word mathematics. God's mathematical design is described in three books: "Theomatics" (now out of print), "Theomatics II 9 and "The Original Code in the Bible." 10   

Findings: Theomatic Research asserts that:

 In the case of "Jesus" whose root Theomatic number is 111, if one analyzes the text in the vicinity of Jesus' name looking for phrases, complete ideas or sentences that have the value 111 or a multiple of 111:  There is a "very short segment or phrase" that matches. 
 Matches appear much more frequently than one would expect on the basis of chance.
 Matches appear "only on references to do specifically with the birth of Jesus."
 
 This relationship holds in the case of other names and actual numbers in the biblical text. The examples cited are not specially chosen. Similar matches appear throughout the Bible.

They stress that these observations could not have happened by chance. They state with confidence that: "It is absolutely, completely, and totally impossible to mathematically disprove theomatics. The overall validity of this discovery ~ the fact that God did it ~ is unimpeachable." They feel that they are sitting on an amazing discovery. Unfortunately, "statisticians and theologians in major universities...are generally not interested in having the Bible proven to them."

Attempts at Falsification: They have tried to disprove the validity of theomatics by scrambling all the values associated with each letter. For example, instead of the first three numbers of the Greek alphabet (alpha, beta, gamma) being assigned the values 1, 2, 3, they might be given the values 6, 5, 3; the last three letters (chi, psi, omega) which normally are given values of 600, 700, 800 might be assigned 100, 300, 600. Then the biblical text was analyzed with their computer program, using these random value allocations. Relatively few matches were found. Repeat runs with other random values assigned to the letters produced similarly dismal results. It appears that only the values traditionally assigned to the letters produce large numbers of matches. It is their belief that these values were picked by God.

Further investigations: Before Theomatics could be accepted as a proven fact, the findings of Theomatics Research would have to be replicated independently by other investigators. This might include an analysis of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, as well as other texts of a similar length. [On 2003-SEP-28, we received an Email from a visitor who vaguely recalls an article in Skeptical Inquirer about a person who ran a theomatic study of the Qu'ran; he found these patterns in that book also, thus proving that God had written it as well.] If matches are found in all texts, as they were with the ELS Bible code, then there would be nothing unique about the Bible from a Theomatic point of view. Attempts at falsification by randomly scrambling the weighting factors for each letter in the Greek and Hebrew alphabet would also be useful. If multiple observers find that:

 Theomatic matches occur with great frequency in the Bible, and
 Matches occur much less often in similarly-length non-biblical texts, and
 Attempts at falsification fail, then

evidence for Theomatics would be greatly strengthened. The possibility that an intelligent mind once inserted very complex codes into the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures would be likely. The next step would be to evaluate the difficulty of actually creating these codes in text. If it is beyond the mental capacity of humans, then one must speculate that a super-human intelligence exists, of some type, somewhere in the universe.

"A.B. Leever" attempted to validate Theomatics, but was unsuccessful. She/he concluded "that his [Del Washburn's] claims are indeed false, and that the supposedly scientific methodology used to validate his claims is invalid. At times, we find his work to be simply absurd." 11

A possible problem: One complexity that has apparently not been evaluated yet is the choice of which Hebrew and Greek texts to use in the studies. There are many versions of both in existence. Each is based on thousands of ancient documents that disagree in thousands of places. No original copy of any book in the Bible has survived. The most ancient surviving copies of the Hebrew Scriptures are currently the Dead Sea Scrolls. But they had been copied by untold generations of scribes for over a millennia. Mistakes have been made; letters have been left out; words have been changed. In the case of the Christian Scriptures, margin notes of some books in the Bible appear to have ended up being incorporated in the text. The error rate of our "standard" Greek and Hebrew texts may throw great suspicion on Theomatics. Much more work remains to be done to confirm its validity.

Another applications for Theomatics: If Theomatics is proven to extract meaningful patterns out of the biblical text, then it might be possible to use it in the reverse direction. Theologians continually argue over which ancient manuscript of a given passage in the Bible reflects the original wording of the author. By testing the passage as it appears in all of the ancient manuscripts, the correct copy -- the one with the greatest number of matches -- might be the correct one.

References
Michael Drosnin, "The Bible Code", Simon & Schuster, (1998). Read reviews or order this book safely from Amazon.com online book store
R.S. Hendel, "The Secret Code Hoax", BR, Vol. XIII, No. 4, 1997-AUG, Page 23 - 24.
Shlomo Sternberg, "Snake Oil for Sale", BR, Vol. XIII, No. 4, 1997-AUG, Page 24 - 25.
"Controversial 'Bible Code' debunked by team of scholars," APonline, 1999-SEP-10.
J.W. Moore, "Bible codes, or matrix of deception, Part II," SCP Newsletter, 1998-Winter. Online at http://www.scp-inc.org 
E.W. Bullinger, "Companion Bible," Kregel Publ, (Reprinted 1993) Read reviews or order this book 
E.W. Bullinger, "Number in Scripture: Its supernatural design and spiritual significance," Kregel Publications, Read reviews or order this book 
"Theomatics" has a web site at: http://www.theomatics.com/ 
Del Washburn, "Theomatics II: God's best kept secret revealed," Scarborough House, (1994) Read reviews or order this book 
Del Washburn, "The original code in the Bible: Using science and mathematics to reveal God's fingerprints," Madison Books, (1998). It is intended for the general public. Read reviews or order this book 
"A.B. Leever," "Theomatics, at: http://www.ableever.net/Apologetics/

[TRca]

HIDDEN CODES IN THE BIBLE:
ARE THEY REAL?
Concerning the nature of Hebrew writing:
Ancient Hebrew writing usually consists of consonants only; vowels are rarely used. The language consists only of nouns, verbs and small, one letter participles. The verbs were originally derived from nouns. Thus, almost every word in Hebrew can be interpreted as either a noun or a verb, depending on the surrounding context or as indicated by any prefixes, suffixes or modifiers used. This means that innumerable passages can be read in different ways. While the ancient Hebrew written language is very efficient, it leads to massive amounts of misunderstanding. For example, Leviticus 18:22 appears in the New International Version (NIV) of the Bible as:

"Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable"

But another translator renders the same version as literally reading:

"And with a male thou shalt not lie down in beds of a woman; it is an abomination."

In modern day English this could be translated as:

"Men may not engage in homosexual sex while on a woman's bed; it is an abomination"

The former translation would appear to forbid all gay sexual activity. The second translation seems to regulate only where it is done.

One additional factor of interest to Bible coding is that, the original word roots consisted of three consonants. According to one commentator: "...to make a sentence may require only SIX letters, for example: 'He ate bread' would be 'A-K-L L-H-M'. Which, by the way, can be read as 'food-bread' because the word for 'food' and 'to eat' are the same root."

Since many words are only three letters long it makes it relatively easy to find hidden words using a skip code. There would be far more word matches in an ancient Hebrew text than in an English text with the same number of pages. Also, since words were usually written without vowels, and nouns and verbs were often identical, Drosnin's interpretation of any nearby letter combinations could take many forms.

Are the Codes Real? What do They Mean?
We will somewhat arbitrarily divide theologians, Bible students, pastors etc. into two groups: "code believers" and "skeptics":

 Some Jewish and Christian code believers feel that encoding of the names of famous Jews (closely paired with their dates of birth or death) into the Book of Genesis proves that God wrote the book and dictated it to Moses. Jews and Christians had believed this on faith for many centuries. Now they have proof that Genesis could not have had a human author. There are at least two reasons that have been given for this conclusion:  Some commentators have suggested that the task of arranging the letters in the Book of Genesis to contain an ELS code for cities, dates, and people, is so difficult, that it would have needed a digital computer to do the job. Since programmable computers were not invented until the 1940's CE., the codes could not have been set up by ancient humans. This is an incorrect assumption.  A human could have picked a number, say 41, and a message. Then, it would only have been necessary to make every 41st character in the text equal to the next letter in the message. The chances would be that it would not initially match. But by using synonyms and adjusting punctuation, and other methods to alter the text over the preceding 41 characters, a match could be made. In the above text, the author's first name "Bruce" has been encoded manually with an ELS code using a separation of 41 characters; it took only a few minutes to set up. [Although "Bruce" appears properly in the original FrontPage editor, it may be distorted on your screen. Browsers do not treat text in the same way; they insert line breaks and delete spaces in different places.] 
 Genesis is believed by many conservative Christians to have been written by Moses circa 1450 BCE. Liberals believe that the final version of Genesis was not edited until many centuries later. Either way, it would be a miracle if it included the encoding of dozens of men's names, birth dates, death dates and cities of birth and death. None of these data were known until many centuries later. Thus Genesis was written by a mind with the ability to foretell the future with precise accuracy. This is beyond human ability; God is the only possible author.
 
 Some conservative Christians and Jews reject the ELS analysis of the Hebrew Scriptures. For example, Rabbi Asher Lopatin of Anshe Shalom B'nai Israel Congregation in Chicago is concerned that this type of study could lead to a worship of numbers. Others might point to Deuteronomy 18:10-11 which prohibits the use of various methods to predict the future. They specifically ban qosem q'samim, a Hebrew phrase which means to foretell the future by using lots or a similar system. Also m'onen is prohibited; it means to predict the future by interpreting signs in nature. Many religious conservatives consider ELS studies to be a form of the occult. Some Fundamentalists and other Evangelicals believe that the many occultic activities are forms of Satanism.
 Some skeptics, both Jewish and Christian, have no theological concerns about the use of the ELS techniques or forms of numerology with the goal of predicting the future. But they question the interpretation given to the findings. They might point to lack of statistical data associated with the ELS phrases discovered by Michael Drosnin, and tentatively conclude that all of his findings might be due to pure chance. That is, if Drosnin were to repeat his scans using 78,064 characters from the Hebrew translation of "War and Peace" then he would probably find similar, remarkable messages apparently encoded in Tolstoy's writings. This has since been confirmed with War and Peace, Moby Dick, and other long texts.
 Other skeptics might concentrate on the precise version of the book of Genesis or of the Hebrew Pentateuch that is being used in the ELS studies. There appear to be "at least 10,000 versions" that have existed. 1 If there were once a "true" original copy of the Pentateuch dictated letter-by-letter by God to Moses, then it is very probable that none of the versions available today are perfect replicas of that original. There are a number of reasons for this:  Copying Errors: The Dead Sea Scrolls contain segments of all 5 books of the Pentateuch. Comparing the scrolls with versions dated many centuries later shows that a few errors had crept in over the few hundred year period. By extrapolation, the total number of errors from the "original" text to modern versions would be much greater
 Spelling Formats: Hebrew spelling practices are not totally rigid. Although most ancient Hebrew is spelled with consonants only, vowels are occasionally used. Some manuscripts might have a vowel inserted in a word in one sentence, and show the same word without the vowel in the next sentence.

Ronald S. Hendel states: "Every known ancient Hebrew manuscript of the Bible...has a different number of letters." 2 These differences do not change the meaning of the books significantly; but such errors are devastating to an ELS analysis. If one were to assume that:

 There were only 100 copying and format differences between the original text and the modern version of the Pentateuch which resulted in the dropping of a letter, adding of a letter, changing a word to another word of another length, dropping a word, adding a word, etc.
 These differences were more or less evenly distributed throughout the Pentateuch.
 That God had encoded messages in the original text.

then a pass of the ELS computer program that started at some point in the Pentateuch would stumble after it had gone only about 1% further into the text. For example, if the pass began with the first character of Genesis 1:1 then it would stumble at about Genesis 3, when the "fall" of humanity is discussed. All analysis after that point would be meaningless, because the ELS would initially be out of synchronization by one or more characters. It is conceivable that a second, compensating error might be encountered later in the text which would bring the computer back into proper synchronization. But it is more likely that the next error would force the scan even further away from where it should be. It would seem that when the ELS method is used on modern versions of the Bible, it is incapable of detecting any significant percentage of encoded messages inserted by the author into the original text.
 
 Other skeptics might concentrate on the origins of the Book of Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch. Many accept the JEDP theory: that most of the Pentateuch was written by four authors or groups of authors: "J" (who used Jehovah as the name for God). "E" (who used Elohim); "D", the author of the book of Deuteronomy and "P" who wrote the "priestly" sections which deal with ritual, liturgy and the dates and genealogical passages. To this was added additional material obtained from other Mid-Eastern sources. The two creation stories in the Book of Genesis is one example. The interleaving of two flood stories into the Noachian flood account is another. The 5 books were assembled circa 950 BCE by "J", 750 BCE for "E" and 539 BCE for the P source. However, these were the dates that final "editing" occurred; the authors sometimes used much older material, from both Hebrew and Pagan sources. A large number of individuals each contributed their part to various portions of the Pentateuch. It seems unlikely that some sort of overall coordination occurred during this process to insert ELS codes precisely in place.
 Drosnin may by now have recognized that he has perpetrated a hoax on the public. He stated to a reporter "When my critics find a message about the assassination of a prime minister encrypted in 'Moby Dick', I will believe them." 3 Shlomo Sternberg took him up on his offer. He arranged to have Moby Dick analyzed. 4 They found "13 'predicted' assassinations of public figures, several of them prime ministers or presidents or their equivalents." One "predicted" the death of President Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua, which happened on 1956-SEP-21. Five closely spaced segments said: "PRES" "SOMOZA" "DIES" "HEWASSHOT" "GUN." Two intersecting sequences were found stating "IGANDHI" "THEBLOODYDEED", thus "predicting" the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi which happened on 1984-OCT-31. Sternberg concludes: "...the ELS method can produce any desired 'hidden message' in any sufficiently long text." 
 A subscriber from an Internet discussion group searched for the phrase "Yeshua Moshiach Sheker" which means "Jesus is the False Messiah". She/he found more than three occurrences. 5 
 References 6 and 7 contain indexes of WWW sites which contain discussions on hidden codes in the Torah, Greek New Testament, Qur'an, the Book of Mormon, War and Peace, and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. They show that mysterious Bible-type codes appear in all large books and texts which are sufficiently long.
 In spite of Drosnin's initial book 8 having been exposed as meaningless, he wrote a second book on the same theme. 9 which starts with the 9/11 terrorist attack and counts down to the War of Armageddon, and TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it). People appear to be catching on. Although Drosnin's first book received a rating of 3 out of 5 on the Amazon.com web site, his second book has a rating of 2.5 out of 5. Mark Perakh's review of the second book is particuarly biting: "The new book by Drosnin is what could be expected if you knew his previous despicable output. I was especially amused by the appendix to Drosnin's new opus wherein he painted a picture which is blatantly untrue, being a fantastic concoction about noble and highly qualified code defenders fighting against a few malicious attackers of low intelligence who, in Drosnin's learned opinion, either do not understand the codes (while he does) or intentionally try to discredit a high quality research allegedly proving the reality of the code. In fact the opposite is true. Contrary to Drosnin's assertion, the overwhelming majority of experts in mathematical statistics decisively rejected the claims by the code proponents. As to Drosnin's own contribution to the code lore, even professor Rips himself, to whom Drosnin refers with admiration and who (actually together with Witztum, whose name Drosnin does not seem to deem worth mentioning) is the originator of the code affair, has expressed his disapproval of Drosnin's atempts to predict the future by means of the alleged code sequences. In an interview to Newsweek a few years ago Drosnin claimed that he would admit his error if somebody found the "prediction" of a prime minister assasination "encoded" in a non-biblical text. A number of such "codes" was demonstrated. McKay found a whole bunch of them in Moby Dick. I found a set of "codes" spelling "Amir Will Kill Prime MInister Hero Rabin" in a Hebrew book by an Israeli writer Dahn Ben Amotz, published in 1979, this "code" being much better than Drosnin's acclaimed "prediction" of Rabin's assassination in the Bible. Drosnin never aknowledged this finding although it has been widely known and invoked multiple responses. That much about Drosnin's integrity. ...Overall, his new book is a piece of arrogant nonsense which of course will find thousands of gullible readers on whose ignorance and eagerness to believe in miracles journalist of Drosnin's type can always rely so he can laugh all the way to the bank." 
 In reference 11, Brendan McKay took up Michael Drosin's comment: "When my critics find a message about the assassination of a prime minister encrypted in Moby Dick, I'll believe them." 10 McKAy writes: "Note that English with the vowels included is far less flexible than Hebrew when it comes to making letters into words." However, he scanned the book and found references to the assassinations of two prime minister: Indira Gandhi and Yitzhak Rabin. He continued and found codes for President Rene Moawad, Leon Trotsky, Reverend Martin Luther King, Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss, President J.F. Kennedy, President Abraham Lincoln. and assassin Sirhan Sirhan.
References used:
D.H. Akenson, "The biblical X-files", The Globe and Mail Newspaper, 1997-AUG-2.
R.S. Hendel, "The Secret Code Hoax", BR, Vol. XIII, No. 4, 1997-AUG, Page 23 - 24.
Interview, Newsweek, 1997-JUN-9
Shlomo Sternberg, "Snake Oil for Sale", BR, Vol. XIII, No. 4, 1997-AUG, Page 24 - 25.
A subscriber from an Internet discussion group reported findings at: http://www.best.com This is no longer online.
Mathematical Miracles in the Qur'an or the Bible? is an impressive list of many Internet resources on secret codes, both in the Qur'an and the Bible. See: http://www.math.gatech.edu/~jkatz/Religions/Numerics/
In Search of Mathematical Miracles contains links to various sites that discuss codes in the Torah, Greek New Testament and Qur'an. See: http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/
Michael Drosin , "The Bible Code," Touchstone Books, (1998). Read reviews or order this book safely from Amazon.com online book store
Michael Drosin , "Bible Code II: The Coundown," Viking Press, (2002). Read reviews or order this book
Newsweek, 1997-JUN-9.
Bendan McKay, "Assassinations Foretold in Moby Dick!," (1997) at: http://cs.anu.edu.au/