Paradise Cafe Discussions - A Place For Bible Research And Christian Encouragement

Dear friends, as some of you know I first published information on Bible Codes  on the old discussion board of e-watchman. There was quite a bit of interest, but also concerns and questions. I was willing to address these but the board owner was not prepared to allow a fair debate and locked the thread before I could reply to any concerns or accusations. I did however copy the thread and provided answers to all the questions and concerns. At the bottom of this post I provide the link to this so that if you have concerns you may read if I have already addressed them.

The information below is taken from an article on my website. If you want to see the article with the proper formatting and the color coding of the Hebrew words, you should click here. But for convenience sake and because the article does not display well in some browsers such as Firefox I present a simplified version here:

Bible Code Matrices

- A look at a code about "Jehovah's Witnesses"

Some time ago I wrote a first article about Bible codes. Since then some Witnesses have asked whether the Bible codes say anything more about Jehovah's witnesses. While I had looked into this a long while ago, I didn't want to say to much about it because I wanted some confirmation of what I deciphered. One Jewish code researcher told me he had found a lot about Jehovah's witnesses, but he has never honoured my request to look at his findings. He also did not help me with what I found, so I had shelved this project for a while. However I am now ready to present what I discovered.

Please note that the original search for the term "Jehovah's Witnesses" was done soon after I started my code research some ten years ago. It was only some years ago that I discovered that the Hebrew code for "Jehovah's Witnesses" could be extended on either side. Please also note that I had little choice in how to translate the code string, without violating common sense or Hebrew grammar. For those who are new to the subject of codes I will briefly explain how it works.

How does one find codes in the Hebrew text?

When we type a search word into a program that can search for codes, it removes all spaces and starts searching at different intervals of letters. First it skips one letter at a time, than two letters than three and so on.

For example 'Alexander' (the Great, king of Greece,) is found when letters are skipped at an interval of 6378. (This is the shortest skip value for this term over the entire Hebrew text.) When it is found the program displays the findings and the surrounding text in a 'matrix' where the length of each line is equal to the number of the skip value. See below a cropped version of the matrix in a diagram. Thus, in the diagram each letter that lies on top of another is 6378 letters away from that one. Therefore the term 'Alexander' runs vertically:



Obviously I cannot show the entire Bible text at this skip value of 6378 because that would take a matrix that is 6378 letters wide and 188 letters high. But you may understand that in the vast array of the entire text of the Hebrew Scriptures it would be a very small chance to find the shortest skip of a 7 letter word like Alexander anywhere near the relevant text of Daniel 8:21. And yet instead of merely being near this text it even intersects with it so that the vertical term 'Alexander' cuts right through the part of the verse that speaks of the first king of Greece. That's what I meant in the first "Bible Code" article when I said that 'Alexander' crosses verse 21 of Daniel 8. This is just one example but I've seen it time and time again, that the search term intersects with the related scripture that speaks about the same theme as the search term. Although the term Alexander is only seven letters, critics would have a hard time to replicate this context effect in a secular text. And yet this is nothing compared to what you are about to see.

The "Jehovah's Witnesses" Matrix

In the matrix below you can see a long string of letters running down. Near the centre you can find the expression 'Edim LeYHWH' or "Witnesses of Jehovah" at the spot where it intersects with the last letter of the phrase in Isaiah 43:12 where God says 'You are my witnesses and I am God'. I've highlighted 'You are my witnesses' so that you'll quickly find the verse. The lamed of 'El' or "God" intersects with 'Edim LeYHWH'. At the top the last three letters of the green string spell out the Hebrew abbreviation for the UN. The complete vertical string is actually still a bit longer than is show in the matrix below.



The brief horizontal terms are not very significant statistically. But the vertical string is so long that my Bible code program can't calculate the odds. Below is the complete 99-letter Hebrew string that I have divided into words and translated underneath:


מינ הנל ליי ואבמ בתאמ הדק זת שאומ אוי לכ היונק עדימ ליהוה לשכינ אוי אוי מכה דאות נא נעל לי קא נא הנוגיו יחנ מר יה אכ ומי שרטת דהה


My translation:

A heretic is the above-mentioned to Jehovah and their father in joining the veil that is United Nations. Woe to you, the sprout of witnesses of Jehovah! To the knife! Woe, woe, a plague, just vultures! Do lock up for me 101. Will Lord Jah defend his afflicted ones? Certainly! And who is a faded tattoo?

This is certainly a very interesting code. Firstly note the exceeding length of this string of words. To have found the term "Witnesses of Jehovah" intersecting with Isaiah 43:12 would in itself have been extraordinary. To then be able to extend the intitial search term on either side so that a string of 99 letters forms a comprehensible mini-story is just absolutely awesome.

Although we can't be dogmatic about the exact meaning of this code and I am not a prophet, the code seems obviously to be a prophetic statement and I would like to share a few thoughts on its possible implications.

As far as I can see this code shows that Jehovah has foreseen the existence of the UN and that at least one of his people would in some way join it. It indicates that the UN hides its true face [veil] and that joining it means becoming an apostate in Jehovah's and Jesus' eyes. As a result woe is pronounced over the modern day Witnesses [sprout of JW], war [to the knife], and imprisonment. Finally Jehovah stands up to deliver his people and apparently mocks the failed efforts of the UN to put their mark on everyone.

It looks therefore like the Society's NGO affair will have grave consequences for God's people and will cause the removal of Jehovah's protection for a while, which will then enable the UN to persecute His people and as the wild beast wage war with them (Revelation 13:7). I think that these events are nearer than even discerning witnesses suspect. Although we can't prevent these calamities from happening to us, I belief that more than at any time, now we need to build up a strong faith and reliance on Jehovah that in his due time he will deliver us.

APPENDIX

Below is an explanation of the separate Hebrew words with references to the three Hebrew dictionaries / lexicons at the bottom of the page.

מינ - B. Kind, variety, genus, species; sex, gender; sectarian; heretic.

הנל - B. The above-mentioned.

ליי - To Jehovah.

ואבמ - And their father.

בתאמ - B. In joining.

הדק - A. The veil. C. The dust.

זאת = זת ? - This.

אומ - A. UN, United Nations.

אוי לכ - A, B, C. Woe to you. [Nu 21:29]

היונק - A. 1. Infant, child; 2. Shoot, stripling. B. Suckling, baby; sapling, sprout. C. Sucking child; young twig, shoot. [Is 53:2]

עדימ - A, B. Witnesses. C. Witnesses; proofs, testimonies; rulers. [Is 43:10]

ליהוה - to/of Jehovah.

לשכינ - A, B, C. To the knife. [Pr 23:2]

מכה - A. 1. Blow, stroke; 2. Wound; 3. Plague, misery; 4. Defeat. B. Blow, stroke; slaughter; plague; wound. C. Blow, stroke, beating, wound, defeat. [De 28:61]

דאות - A. Unclean birds of prey, kites. C. Birds of prey, vultures or kites. [Le 11:14]

נא - A. Please, do; just. B. Please; pray! C. Pray! Now! Oh!

נעל - A. To tie, lock. B, C. To bar, bolt, lock (up). [Ju 3:23]

לי - A, B, C. For me.

קא - 101

הנוגיו - A. His afflicted ones. [La 1:4]

×™×—×  - A. Will encamp in protection. B. Will encamp; incline; settle down. C. Will bend down, incline; encamp, settle, dwell; besiege, defend. [Ze 9:8]

מר - Lord.

×™×” - Jah.

אכ - A. Surely. B. Indeed. C. Certainly.

ומי - And who.

שרטת - A. Incision, tattoo. [Lev 19:28]

דהה - B. Faded.


A. A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon, William L. Holladay
B. Ben-Yedudah's Hebrew-English Dictionary, Ehud Ben-Yehudah / David Weinstein.
C. Langenscheidt's Pocket Hebrew Dictionary (of OT).


To go to the article "The Truth About Bible Codes" click here.

Dear i-witness

Well I do applaud your research.
I don't believe OR disbelieve!!
I just don't understand the need for anything to be dressed up in a code. The Bible, to me, offers enough of a challenge as it is :D

It'll be interesting what others think!!

Nick

Dear I-witness,

It is obvious that this is an area that interests you and once that you have researched well. What you have posted is certainly interesting. For myself, an inspired text of God will surely contain more than we fully grasp, be it prophey-wise, codes, language, etc... But at the same time, everything we need to know is stated in clear terms so everyone can 'get it' and understand.

Salam,Lou

Hi Newsong, my guess is that it's saying that 101 witnesses with high positions will be put in jail.

About the tattoo bit: Some people in antiquity had the names of their master or their god on their forehead. This was a visible sign that showed which master they belonged to or which god they worshipped. In this context I would say that it refers to the mark of the wild beast.

Hello brothers, thanks for your input:

As Loyalty remarks the plain text of the Bible is there for everyone to understand God's will and purpose. I have always supported that position. Why then the need for codes?

Firstly I would like to point out that wether we understand the need for them or not has no bearing on their existence. They either exist or they don't. I think that nobody who has looked at the evidence can deny that the 99-letter long code was encoded by a superior intelligence who can see the future. That can only mean that God put it there.

The real question therefore is: Why did Jehovah put such codes in  there? I can think of several reasons:

1. Because he can. It demonstrates his unlimited power and foreknowledge.

2. It shows that God was in control of the writing of all the books of the Bible. This shows up imitation "holy books" or translations of Bible texts that pose as originals.
For years code researchers were unable to find codes in the Greek NT. But research has now shown that they do exist in the Aramaic Peshitta NT. It is also to be expected that long codes such as this 99-letter code do not appear in the Samaritan Pentateuch or in Aramaic targums of the Hebrew OT, since these are not originals.

3. If God "dresses" up a message in codes that can now be found in a generation that has developed fast computers that are up to the task, that would show that they were meant to be found by us who live in the end time. The content of the JW-code seems to confirm this.

The fact that God encoded the Bible in itself shows that these codes are important. How important only time will tell...

Hi i-witness

Great stuff! :ok::thumbsup::thumbup:

I enjoyed our discussions over at E-W until Robert locked the thread. Are you still involved in research over at biblecodedigest.com?

Incidentally, it might be a good idea getting a second and third opinion of the Hebrew translation. Others might notice something that you didn't. (Sadly, my knowledge of Hebrew boils down to being able to spell Hebrew - in English!)

Hi Folks

First off, in defense of the concept of Bible Codes in general, did you know that even the WTS acknowledge the existence of hidden codes in the Bible?

If you have a large edition "New World Translation - With References" (1984 Revision), turn to page 631, and read the footnote for Esther 1:20.

The footnote reads in part ('cos I can't type the Hebrew letters):

"It... and all the wives themselves will give." Hi' Wekhol-Han.na.shim' Yit.tenu' (Heb.) appears to be a reverse acrostic of the Tetragrammaton, (YHWH). Three ancient Heb. mss [manuscripts] are known that give the letters of the divine name here in acrostic in majuscule letters... This is the first of four such acrostics of the name "Jehovah," and the Masorah in a rubric, or in red letters, calls attention to this."

In other words, God's name is encoded in a simple acrostic form at least 4 times in Esther!

Another example can be found in the footnote of Isaiah 51:1:

"'Leb-kamai.' Heb., Lev qa.mai', meaning 'The Heart of Those Rising Up Against Me.' This appears to be a cryptographic name for Chaldea (Kas.dim'), by the device called 'ath.bash'."

So here we have two simple examples of the use of codes in the Bible.

Long before the existence of computers, people had noticed intriguing patterns in the Bible:

"The basis for both Newton’s work and modern Torah Code research is ELS or equidistant letter sequences. Newton first discovered the phenomenon in Genesis and followed the pattern through Leviticus. The word he discovered was the title of the book itself, TORAH. As you could verify yourself (if you read Hebrew), the letters spelling TORAH occur every fiftieth letter beginning in Genesis. The word is repeated in this steady 50 skip ELS pattern through the middle of Leviticus where it seemed to stop. It wasn’t long before Newton’s astounding mind realized the pattern reversed at this point. At the point he left off in Leviticus TORAH is spelled in reverse through Deuteronomy. In conclusion, TORAH is spelled out every 50th letter whether you start at the beginning of the Torah or the end."

(Source: http://www.augustmystery.com/MysteryFile...ecode.html )

Now, whether Isaac Newton was the discoverer, or whether someone before him had found this, the point is that this pattern can be verified by anyone with access to the Torah in Hebrew.

The invention of computers allowed this search for patterns to continue, faster than anyone could ever do on paper.

The WTS did an article on Bible codes, but unfortunately it was very biased - and is now highly outdated.

Certain statistical arguments have been refuted by a Bible code critic called Brendan Mackay, who found "codes" in Moby Dick - in an attempt to claim that these things can be found anywhere if you look hard enough.

However, the Bible codes have outshined anything the critics have been able to produce - massive clusters of codes have been discovered, often in a small portion of text, way beyond chance or coincidence. And they are discovering massively long codes - for example, a 296 letter long Shimon Peres code - this is 30 sentences long!

Naturally Christians might have concerns about Bible codes: is it necessary, is it divination? etc.

Personally, I think Bible codes exist to demonstrate the infinite Power and Wisdom of God.

If God can cause a human being to emerge from a single miniscule cell - yes, we were all squiggly little cells once - then it is no difficult feat for Him to encode Bible codes and stuff.

If a Christian already has faith that the Bible is God's word, that's great! But many people do not. Bible codes could be a way of God bearing witness to His word.

Is it divination? Personally, I believe it is not. You need to know what you're looking for, to find a word - so in order to use Bible codes to predict the future, you kinda already need to know what's happened, so you can plug the relevant words in - a built-in safety device.

Besides, some codes have been shown to display points of view. So, for instance, in the case of codes clustered around Isaiah 53 to do with the Messiah, codes have been found expressing the Jewish, Christian, Catholic and even the skeptical point of view!

Anyway, if you'd like to do more research, an excellent site is:
http://www.biblecodedigest.com/

:thumbup:

Interesting.

I have a question. How do two Hebrew letters equal United Nations? Can you clarify? Does Hebrew even have vowels?

Also, if you'll forgive me, this translation reads like a stream of nonsense, easily open to any number of interpretions:

"A heretic is the above-mentioned to Jehovah and their father in joining the veil that is United Nations. Woe to you, the sprout of witnesses of Jehovah! To the knife! Woe, woe, a plague, just vultures! Do lock up for me 101. Will Lord Jah defend his afflicted ones? Certainly! And who is a faded tattoo?"

I'm not opposed to the concept of "Bible Codes" but this looks to be reaching ...

Hi Interpretum,

I haven't contributed to that site recently. I did however inform them about finding the term "Jehovah's Witnesses" intersecting Isaiah 43. This was when they had started to look for extensions of code terms. My request to them was to look for extensions of the JW-term. Strangely they later couldn't find the email that I sent. Hmm... I asked them again, but their Jewish Hebrew expert had had an eye operation and had to rest his eyes... I asked somebody I knew from the old PC board but [s]he was a messianic Jew who was afraid that their orthodox uncle might see it and be offended. I contacted another Jewish contributor to biblecodedigest.com [Moshe Shak] and he told me he had found loads about JW's, which got me quite excited. Unfortunately he never honoured my request to see his research or his offer to verify the extension of my code.

So you see it's not as if I haven't tried to get a second opinion. Also a second opinion is only worth as much as the confidence we have in the person giving it. In the end I have decided that the best way forward is to provide in an Appendix the entries of the dictionaries where one can verify the translation of the Hebrew words.

About your quote of the codes found by Newton, I think that the writer of the article made a few errors. The example in itself however is a good one and below I will show some snapshots of the passages that are involved. [These snapshots I made while visiting the relevant chapters of the Hebrew OT at Mechon-Mamre.org; the red highlights are mine.]

In this first example the term TORAH, the Jewish designation for the Pentateuch is found at the start of Genesis when skipping forwards 50 letters starting from the last letter of the first word:



The same happens in Exodus when we start skipping 50 letters from the last letter of the second word:



In Numbers as mentioned in your quote the order is reversed and we start with a letter Taw in verse 3 and skip 50 letters backwards.



Deuteronomy also has a backwards skip but this time of 49 letters.



So what happens in Leviticus? If before Leviticus the skips run forward and the ones after it run backward, they seem to be pointing to what's in the middle, which is the book Leviticus. A skip of zero however doesn't exist for that would mean neither forward or backward. So we don't expect to find the word TORAH encoded at the beginning of Leviticus.

Instead, when we start skipping 8 letters from the first Yod of the first word we find encoded God's name YHWH or 'Jehovah'.


So these related codes seem to be pointing out that the real author of the Pentateuch was not Moses but his God Jehovah, who inspired him.

  
Hello Anthony,

The answer to your question is quite simple: the three letters Aleph Waw Mem in Hebrew stand for the United Nations in the same way as the abbreviations UN or UNO do in English. In Hebrew AWM is the standard abbreviation for the United Nations as can be seen in such respected works as Ben-Yehuda's English-Hebrew dictionary. [Ben-Yehudah being the father of modern Hebrew].

Strange how what to one person makes perfect sense is nonsense to another! It may be a challenge to understand this code, but one could hardly call it a "stream of nonsense." To me it seems that at first sight the code is bewildering because there is a lot of information packed into a small space here.

However, most of the strange expressions that appear in the code are actually also in the plain text of the Bible! Maybe your just not familiar enough with the quaint language that some Bible writers used.

Let's see:

"The veil that is the United Nations." In Luke 2:32 the man Simeon is moved to prophesy that Jesus will be "a light for removing the veil from the nations and a glory of your people Israel."

This text indicates that the nations cannot see clearly because of a "veil", something that blocks their view. Who would be responsible for this veil so that they cannot see the light properly? 2 Corinthians 4:3, 4 gives the answer:

"3 If, now, the good news we declare is in fact veiled, it is veiled among those who are perishing, 4 among whom the god of this system of things has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, that the illumination of the glorious good news about the Christ, who is the image of God, might not shine through."

There is good reason then to believe that expression "the veil that is UN" refers to Satan's schemes to blind the mind of unbelievers via the hollow promises of the UN so that they may not look up to the salvation that God offers through his Christ and his kingdom.

"A heretic/apostate" It should also not come as a shock that the same God who condemned the Israelites as apostates when they turned for help to the nations, would also consider joining the UN as a heresy or apostasy.

"The sprout of witnesses of Jehovah" This expression should not sound that strange, since similar expressions are used in at least five different Bible books:

-Isaiah 11:1 "And there must go forth a twig out of the stump of Jes´se; and out of his roots a sprout will be fruitful."
-Jeremiah 23:5 5 “Look! There are days coming,” is the utterance of Jehovah, “and I will raise up to David a righteous sprout. And a king will certainly reign and act with discretion and execute justice and righteousness in the land."
-Jeremiah 33:15 "In those days and at that time I shall make sprout for David a righteous sprout, and he will certainly execute justice and righteousness in the land."
- Daniel 11:7 7 "And one from the sprout of her roots will certainly stand up in his position, and he will come to the military force and come against the fortress of the king of the north and will certainly act against them and prevail."
- Zechariah 3:8,9 "8 “‘Hear, please, O Joshua the high priest, you and your companions who are sitting before you, for they are men [serving] as portents; for here I am bringing in my servant Sprout! 9 For, look! the stone that I have put before Joshua! Upon the one stone there are seven eyes. Here I am engraving its engraving,’ is the utterance of Jehovah of armies, ‘and I will take away the error of that land in one day.’

Hmm, a servant called sprout and a stone with seven eyes... If I had announced that I had found a code that said: "Here I am bringing in my servant Sprout! For, look! the stone that I have put before Joshua! Upon the one stone there are seven eyes. Here I am engraving its engraving." What would people's reaction have been then? Probably something like: "Sounds like gibberish to me." And yet here we've seen it, the Bible does use some weird and wonderful language for which we have to make a special effort to understand its meaning.

The footnote to Matthes 2:23 in the "Reference"-bible shows that as Jesus lived in Nazareth, the "Sprout-town", and was called the Nazarene it linked him to the prophecies about the servant called "Sprout." It also notes that the expression "sprout" is figurative speech for offspring. The sprout of Jesse and David therefore simply refers to Jesus.

Please note that the "sprout of JW's" does not have to refer to the literal offspring of ancient Israel. As John the baptist said: "God has power to raise up children to Abraham from these stones." In view of this it is not so far-fetched to conclude that the "sprout of JW's" are the people that Jehovah uses in latter days to represent him as his witnesses.

The pronouncement of "woes" on people who have sought help from worldly powers instead of from God is almost self-explanatory and echoes the words of Isaiah 31:1,2 "1 Woe to those going down to Egypt for assistance, those who rely on mere horses, and who put their trust in war chariots, because they are numerous, and in steeds, because they are very mighty, but who have not looked to the Holy One of Israel and have not searched for Jehovah himself. 2 And he is also wise and will bring in what is calamitous, and he has not called back his own words; and he will certainly rise up against the house of evildoers and against the assistance of those practicing what is hurtful."

The threefold pronouncement of woe and a plague reminds me of Revelation 8:13 and the plague of the locusts that is mentioned in Rev.9

The vultures or birds of prey also belong in the context of the last days. Jesus mentions them in Matthew 24:28. "Wherever the carcass is, there the eagles will be gathered together." It should not come as a surprise that powers that attack God's people are described as wild beasts and vultures.

"Do lock up for me 101. Will Lord Jah defend his afflicted ones? Certainly!". Has Jehovah allowed his people to be locked up in the past by the powers of this world because of their transgressions? We all know the answer. And has he later come to their rescue and defended them when they were in sore straights? Of course! So why would it be any different when the UN begins its totalitarian regime?

And if Jehovah will defeat the schemes of Satan to have everyone worship his wild beast, isn't it clear that the challenge "Who is a faded tattoo?" holds out a promise that Satan will never succeed to have everyone accept the "mark of the beast."

Personally I believe that this code is a warning of the calamities that are going to come over us. Moreover it indicates the reason why Jehovah will allow it to happen. And most importantly it gives hope that Jehovah will not totally abandon but will in the end save us.

Now unless Jehovah is not going to bring any calamities over us, and is actually quite happy with our association with the UN, I think that the story in this code makes an awful lot of sense!

Dear i-Witness,

I read Biblical Hebrew, and I just feel obliged to comment that the Hebrew sentence you have constructed does not conform to the rules of Hebrew grammar.

Dear i-witness,

I believe the purpose that the Bible was written under inspiration of the Holy Spirit was to witness to the Lord Jesus Christ and show how God's purpose would/is to be fullfilled in him.

Are these codes replete with Yeshua Messiah (whatever the Hebrew is?) and also the details of his sacrificial death?

I read the Bible codes book some years ago and just have this feeling, in my 'water', that this Bible Codes concept is all distinctly, 'redolent of rodent'!! (I am an old sceptic!:D )

It seems, IMHO, to be a misuse of God's Word and seems to be treating the Bible (OT Hebrew) as a mathematical 'rotating drum' ouija board.:D

shalom
Derek

Should I change the name of the Paltalk room Discussion 101?:confused::shocked::eek:

Hello brother i-witness, sure nice to have you aboard  :yes:

Thanks for sharing your research with us, and I can certainly appreciate the timing of these findings being brought to the surface.

In all honesty, when I first heard of this just a couple of years ago, I myself was very skeptical.... I was reminded of the rabbinical teachings concerning all the codes to be found not only in the text of the Torah but in the vowel and pronunciation markings as well ( or was it the Talmud ?....) ....sorry, been I while.

Any way I dismissed it as simply more of the same.....
however it has become most apparent that you and your colleagues have a very sophisticated and advanced scientific program that just may help augment and validate Gods written 'Word' not unlike the findings 'dug' up by archeology.... all of this to the greater glory of our Most High God Jehovah, the Grand Creator / Architect of the Universe.

Good Job - Well Done !...and Carry On, as you continue to Praise Jah , not only by your words but thru your works as well !!

Most Sincerely, your brother.... ```man of dust

Hi i-witness,
I came across this debunking article, what you make of it?
Derek


Scientific Refutation of the Bible Codes



by

Brendan McKay and Friends


This is the main web site which examines the Bible Codes (also called Torah Codes) from the point of view of the mathematicians and other experts who have examined them critically.

A brief summary of the codes claims is that the Hebrew text of the Bible (especially of the Torah, the first five books) contain intentional coincidences of words or phrases that appear as letters with equal spacing. More details of the claims from the Jewish point of view can be found here, and from the Christian point of view here. Both those sites present a pro-codes viewpoint.

A brief summary of the result of our very extensive investigation is that all the alleged scientific evidence for the codes is bunk. This page presents much of the evidence for that assertion.

The famous rabbis experiment
The most serious claim of scientific evidence for the Codes was made by three Israelis: Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips, and Yoav Rosenberg (WRR). They claim that biographical information about medieval rabbis is "encoded" in the Hebrew text of Genesis. Specifically, the rabbis' names and other appellations are claimed to be encoded closer to their dates of birth and death than should be expected by chance. WRR's "experiment" appeared in the respectable journal Statistical Science in 1994.

WRR's paper (abridged)
The first serious attack on WRR's paper was published by mathematicians Dror Bar-Natan and Brendan McKay. They found that a small change in the choice of appellations for the famous rabbis can lead to War and Peace performing just as well as Genesis. The final edition of this work is accompanied by an extremely detailed disproof of Witztum's alleged refutation.
In May 1998, a semi-technical presentation of the case against the famous rabbis experiment was published in Chance, a magazine of the American Statistical Association. The authors are Maya Bar-Hillel, Dror Bar-Natan, and Brendan McKay. The paper is available here in Postscript or PDF format.
The discovery of a recording of a lecture given by Eliyahu Rips about 1985 cast doubt on the official history of the famous rabbis experiment. A transcript and some analysis are available.

Finally, an extensive refutation of the famous rabbis experiment, and of many other alleged experiments, was published by the same journal that published WRR's paper. The paper, by Brendan McKay, Dror Bar-Natan, Maya Bar-Hillel, and Gil Kalai, appeared in the May 1999 issue of Statistical Science (printed in September). It is available here together with frequently updated discussion.
An amusing look at the flexibility of Hebrew spelling.
Other claims by WRR or Gans, and our replies
Several other papers of WRR exist, though none have been published in journals. More claims continue to appear regularly (especially here). Given our demolition of all of WRR's early work, we do not feel obliged to answer every new claim. Nevertheless, some of the claims have been answered by us in detail.

One of the earliest codes "experiments" claiming a tiny probability was the "25 trees" experiment of Eliyahu Rips. Read what our analysis discovered.
A major unpublished experiment of Witztum et al concerns the 70 nations of the world listed in Genesis 10. Dror Bar-Natan, Brendan McKay, and Shlomo Sternberg studied the experiment exhaustively and concluded that the very strong result is primarily due to illicit data manipulation. Our evidence is presented in a paper available from Australia or Canada. WRR's original paper is included in the interests of fairness. A brief summary of the refutation is also available.
An apparently objective experiment was described by Doron Witztum on Israeli television, but when we tried it, it didn't work. Our report, available here also explains how such experiments can be constructed by trickery.
The holiday of Chanukah has been a favourite topic of Witztum for a long time. We have shown a very large cluster of Chanukah-related words in War and Peace. Witztum's reply and our rejoinder are available here.
Harold Gans, a retired employee of the National Security Agency, has an unpublished report of an experiment using the cities of birth or death of the famous rabbis. The most important part of the experiment (the data) was given to him by an Israeli associate of Doron Witztum. We tried repeating this experiment ourselves, taking the data exactly as it appears in the two encyclopedias Gans claims to use, and it failed completely.
Even more seriously, two careful replications attempted by a committee of supporters and skeptics, using data compiled by independent experts, could not find the slightest trace of codes.
One of our favourite reactions to WRR's "experiments" is to produce similar-looking "experiments" in War and Peace. Examples are
Brendan McKay in War and Peace.
(Also see Doron Witztum's reply and our rejoinder.)
Chanukah candles in War and Peace.
Jesus the Messiah in War and Peace.
Rosh Hashana in War and Peace.
Independent experiments
We have performed many independent scientific tests of the Bible Codes claims. All of them failed to detect anything not easily explained by random chance. These experiments are not to be confused with the demonstrations of trickery that we have constructed in War and Peace.

A summary of our major experiments can be found in our paper in Statistical Science.

These experiments include:
The famous rabbis experiment, replacing the day and month of birth or death (all that WRR used) by the year, or by the day and month written in other legal manners. Similarly, the dates can be replaced by the names of famous books or by the cities of birth or death.
The famous rabbis experiment, with the data prepared by an independent expert. Several variations were performed, including a detailed re-enactment of WRR's experiment in the manner they claim it was performed.
An experiment with the names and dates of birth or death of Israeli presidents, prime-ministers, and Knesset speakers.
All of those experiments, and all the other experiments we have conducted, failed to find any "codes" above chance levels.

Expert Opinions
Our opinions page presents a selection of opinion articles by noted experts. For example, mathematician Professor Barry Simon gives convincing reasons for rejecting the claims of the codes proponents and even designed a serious experiment to be sure. Noted Bible scholars Professor Menachem Cohen and Professor Jeffery Tigay explain why the history of the Bible text makes it implausible that codes exist today even if they existed in the original text. Also, there is a public statement of more than 50 professional mathematicians and statisticians who have studied the evidence and found it lacking.

We now have the first part of a new article by Professor Menachem Cohen about the codes business and the people who support it.

Michael Drosnin's books
The book "The Bible Code" by Michael Drosnin has been the most successful mass-market book about the Torah Codes. Alas, all semblence of scientific method is missing, and all of the important codes proponents have disowned him. By repeated examples, we prove that Drosnin did not find anything that can't be found in any book, even in English.
The center-piece of the book is a "prediction" of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Famous assassinations foretold in Moby Dick.
Princess Diana in Moby Dick.
Drosnin's own murder predicted.
Bill Gates in the Book of Revelation (more information) [This is offline; we will reconstruct it.].
The comet collision: a failed prediction.
About minimal skip - a reply to Drosnin.
Moby Dick versus Genesis.
Dave Thomas finds aliens and more. There is also a follow-up article.
Moby Dick predicted the "War on Terrorism". (Oct 13)
We also have brief comments on Drosnin's second book. (Dec 29)

Miscellaneous
Ever since the work of Witztum and Rips became known, claims have been made that messages of Christian theological relevance can be also found in the Hebrew text. Most of these claims have little merit due to lack of any scientific discipline. The only scientific experiment we are aware of, by Jim Ober, Guy Cramer, and Lori Eldridge, failed to find any statistical evidence that the name of Jesus is encoded in the passages of the Hebrew Bible regarded as messianic prophesies. Their report can be found at http://www.prophezine.com/tcode/obj14.html.
Some of the Hebrew and English texts used for codes experiments and demonstrations, plus some information about programs, can be found here.
Some photos and brief biographies of codes people can be found here.
A film Secrets of the Bible Code Revealed, by Grizzly Adams Productions, is reviewed here.
If humans really wanted to encode messages as ELSs, they could do much better than anyone has yet claimed for the Bible.
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Creator: Brendan McKay, bdm@cs.anu.edu.au.