The Bible Code Story

Part 1

Are bible codes real? It is question that has bugged me for a long time now, my opinion sways toward yes, even though i am not religious!

I have spent most of my time here on ATS debating skeptics, and it has got me know where. Im just searching for the truth and i have now realised i have been going about things the wrong way.

So here it is, im going to attempt to put all the knowledge i have here pro and skeptic, and hopefully you guys can add on, help out and leave your views.

To understand bible codes its best to start with what they are. Codes are found using Equidisant Letter Sequencing (ELS). The method of ELS is to ommit all spaces and full stops etc. from a text then use every Nth letter from the text and put these in order on to a table.

For example if you take the third letter of the sentence below you get?

a L l o f O u r a V e n u E s a r e w i d e.

LOVE is an equidistant letter sequence (ELS). Such codes can have a skip of any length and can either be forward or backward.

www.biblecodedigest.com...
As you can see such a process over the whole of the Torah by hand, with all the different Nths possible (e.g. every fourth letter, every tenth letter and so on.) makes its an arduous task without the processing capability of a computer.

So How Does This Apply to the Bible?

The first ELSs discovered were found in the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, which were ostensibly written by Moses, the prophet who led his people out of Egypt.

More than 50 years ago, a Jewish rabbi (H.M.D. Weissmandel) noted that if you start with a T (tav) in the first verse of the book of Genesis, skip 50 letters, pick up a V (vav), skip another 50 letters, pick up an R (resh), skip another 50 letters, and pick up an H (heh), you have TVRH, or Torah as it is spelled in Hebrew.

Now this occurs, mind you, not only in the first book of the Torah, but also in the first verses of the books of Exodus and Numbers. It also appears in the first chapter of the book of Deuteronomy. In each case there is also a skip of exactly 50 letters.

www.biblecodedigest.com...
Although codes have been found in history by hand, it wasn't long before Eliyahu Ripps a Jewish mathematician put the technique of using ELS on a computer.

Eli Ripps used the Torah as the text to search through as it has long been thought to be encoded through out history as there is a strict rule that scribes of the torah are told. And that is " to change one single letter of the torah could bring about the end of the world".

Even Sir Isaac Newton thought there was something to it!!

Ripps after his discovery begins to investigate what he finds using ELS on the torah, with Michael Drosnin an American Journalist who published the books Bible Codes 1 & 2.

In Michael Drosnins first book he explains how he found a code that seemed to predict the death of Yitzak Rabin, the then Israeli Prime Minister. Michael Drosnin tried to warn the prime minister twice with this knowledge with no response. And it happened.

Alot of other codes were found as well:

Drosnin doesn't stop with the Rabin codes, however. He goes on to present numerous clusters of codes that would be astounding if only they were not coincidental.

Here is a sampler of codes that are displayed in crossword clusters:


Economic collapse, the depression, 1929 and stocks.

Atomic holocaust and 1945.

Watergate and "Who is he? President, but he was kicked out."

World War and atomic holocaust.

While all of these are bad events, Drosnin also presents a few positive clusters:


Wright brothers and airplane.

Shakespeare, presented on stage, Macbeth and Hamlet.

Newton and gravity.

Edison, electricity and light bulb.

Fall of, communism, Russian, in China next.

www.biblecodedigest.com...
Michael Drosnins book blew people away and became a best seller making bible codes world renound.

My conclusion is that Bible Codes are real, but they are much like the Bible itself and can be interpreted in different ways.

There is a lot more evidence that the Torah has been encoded systematically over a more contemporarily written book like Moby Dick or even the latest edition of Time magazine. But this is only like saying a Volvo is engineered better for safety than a Yugo. It is obvious, but yet it is also relative to the observer as to its meaning.

The codes have been shown that both the one doing the decoding and the message itself doesn't have an absolute bearing on what actually happens. My conclusion is that it is like biting into a chocolate chip cookie and finding a lot of chocolate chips. It doesn't make the cookie not what it is, but it adds to the fact that it is what it is.

I think the truth of the codes lies within our ability to interpret them aligned with the authors meaning, just like the Bible was meant to.

Part 2

The next step in this story was for the famous rabbi's experiment:

Rips and Witztum invented the ELS letter array and used a computer to find many examples. About 1985, they decided to carry out a formal test and the Great rabbis experiment was born. This experiment tested the hypothesis that ELSs for the names of famous rabbis could be found closer to ELSs of their dates of birth and death than chance alone could explain. The definition of "close" was complex but, roughly, two ELSs are close if they can be displayed together in a small rectangle. The experiment succeeded in finding sequences which fit these definitions, and they were interpreted as indicating the phenomenon was real.

The great rabbis experiment went through several iterations but was eventually published (1994) in the peer-reviewed journal Statistical Science. Although neither the Editor nor the referees were convinced by it, nor could they find much formally wrong with it, so the paper was published as a "challenging puzzle". Statistical Science, it should be noted, does not publish original research, but concentrates on surveys, interviews and interesting statistical puzzles.

Witztum and Rips also performed other experiments, most of them successful, though none were published in journals. Another experiment, in which the names of the famous rabbis were matched against the places of their births and deaths (rather than the dates), was conducted by Harold Gans, an employee of the United States National Security Agency [1]. Again, the results were interpreted as being meaningful and thus suggestive of a more than chance result.

en.wikipedia.org...
So the experiments results were positive twice by two different sets of researchers, and three independent referees could find nothing wrong with the math used or the results.
Recently though there has been some evidence to suggest the results could be flawed Brendan McKay published a paper that produced the results in the novel War and Peace.

The McKay paper did not go so far as to accuse Witzum and Rips of falsifying their experiment, instead it argues that the ELS experiment is extraordinarily sensitive to very small changes in the spellings of appellations. This fact, when combined with available wiggle room, was exploited by McKay et al. to duplicate the Genesis result in a Hebrew translation of War and Peace.

There has been a continuing debate on these claims.

en.wikipedia.org...
So McKay claims there was enough 'wiggle room' in the Ripps experiment for it to of worked, so many variables that the experiment authours can chop and choose to a certain extent till they get the desired results.

There has been an ongoing debate as to whether this wiggle room variable is significant or not i guess you have to make your own mind up.

The main sketpics argument is that you can find codes in any text the webiste below shows viewers codes found in Moby Dick:

cs.anu.edu.au...

Very damning for bible codes that codes can be found in any text but bible code researchers hit back by comparing the codes found in other texts with code cluster found in the Torah:

Opponents of Bible codes say that you can find meaningful clusters in any book. To support their case, they presented an example of a code cluster about Hanukah they found in Tolstoy's War and Peace.

While this example was fairly comparable to clusters Bible code researchers had presented back then, our researchers have unearthed clusters that look like mountains compared to the molehill of the Hanukah example. In this report we present a detailed side-by-side comparison of the Hanukah example and the most extensive cluster researchers have located to date-- the explosive Isaiah 53 codes. In short, what skeptics told us three years ago is now completely out of date.

www.biblecodedigest.com...
When comparing the different types of cluster found in other texts compared to the torah the researchers took these factors into account: Comparing Clusters, Comparing ELS's, Odds, Compactness, Hebrew Spelling, Curiosities and Meanings of the code clusters found.

Full report of this study by bible code researchers here:

www.biblecodedigest.com...

The main believers argument is:

Are the skeptics right?
Definitely not. All the skeptics showed was that very simple clusters of short codes can be found in any book. The examples they provided from Moby Dick and War and Peace were fairly comparable to many of the simpler published examples, but they are seriously out of date. Some proponents’ recently discovered clusters of Bible codes are so complex and extensive that they really couldn’t be a coincidence. The most extensive cluster of Bible codes found to date (the Isaiah 53 cluster) is vastly more complex and improbable than the most extensive cluster found in any book other than the Bible. There really is no comparison. Click here for details.

www.biblecodedigest.com...

So the story so far is that codes have been discovered against very high odds in some circumstances about are history, even some predicitions have been found.

The experiment that supposedly validates bible codes has come under some scrutinisation and people are uncertain of the experiment s validity due to 'wiggle room'.

Skeptics and believers are locked in a battle of wills everytime one side comes up with one argument it is knocked down by the other now know one is sure.

Part 3

What sways me at this moment is the size and complexity of the codes found in the Torah especially compared to codes found in other texts and also whilst day by day bible codes research is turning up something new the skeptics seem to be stumped at the moment to find code clusters like the ones found in the torah.

Here is an example of a code cluster found by researchers:

There is no doubt that Ezekiel 40 is encoded. The probability that chance is the explanation for what has been discovered to date in (and close by) that chapter is essentially zero. We base this firm conclusion on three sets of observations:

The actual number of War ELSs in Ezekiel 40:1-41:1 is 19 (as compared with 6.27 expected by chance). Odds: One in 96 million.

Ten of the War ELSs in Ezekiel 40 are part of a much longer ELS that is itself about war.

Odds: less than one in 60,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

Prior investigations discovered an exceptional number of lengthy ELSs that cross the text of Ezekiel 40 that deal with current and End Times events.

www.biblecodedigest.com...
And this is only one example of recent research a whole page of similar reports can be found here:

www.biblecodedigest.com...

So as i say i lean towards there validity but to try and remain impartial here is a good skeptics website:

skepdic.com...

One valid claim this page points out that is who is to say what religion is right is it fair that these codes can only be found in the Torah?

What does this all mean? To some it means that the patterns in Genesis are intentional and that God is the ultimate author of the code. If so, should the Book of Isaiah, and any other book in the Bible that fails the ELS test, be dumped? Should we conclude that these statistics verify the claim that the Jews are the chosen people of God, or that no more names should be added to list of Great Men in Israel unless they pass the ELS test? Unless other religions can duplicate such statistically improbable results, the mathematically minded supernaturalist might well consider them to be imposters. Should we translate all the sacred books of all the religions of the world into Hebrew and see how many great men of Israel are encoded there?

Its a good argument but for me who is non religious i would like to think if they are real that they were encoded by a higher power what eva that maybe not necessarily God.

Wikipedia also does a good job of presenting criticisms about bible codes:

en.wikipedia.org...

There is also a petition signed by upto 55 mathematicians who questioned bible code validity. There is a report below that show why alot of there thinking was flawed. But you should make your own mind up after reading:

www.biblecodedigest.com...

Can bible codes predict the future?

If the bible codes are real then the details of our future are encoded but there is a difficulty seperating coincidental code from real encodings because of random codes caused by using ELS.

Bible Code Digest explains this well:

Can Bible codes be used to predict the future or to discover new truths?
No. Here are six reasons: 1) Codes are typically open to multiple interpretations since the text used has no vowels or syntax markings and Hebrew is a very terse language. 2) We often can’t be sure where spaces between words should be. 3) There is no assurance that the code(s) comprise the whole message. 4) It might just be a coincidence. 5) Clusters about different events could simply overlap, so how could we be certain that just because two codes were close to one another, they must be related. 6) Finally, copying errors by ancient scribes, or changes in spelling conventions, may have changed the spacing a bit, creating some unintended ELSs. If codes provided a message that contradicted the literal text, it would be foolish to accept its content as preferable—given all of the uncertainties just cited.

www.biblecodedigest.com...
So this is the majority of information i have learned about bible codes, i know i haven't laid it out extensively but most of the current criticisms and believers theories are incorporated so now i just want to know, have i missed anything? what does this information mean to you? do you believe?

Let the debate begin - Are the bible codes valid?

[edit on 21-9-2006 by Argos]

Nobody wanna bite :-( took me long time to write all of this!!!

I know my competence isnt very high but i cant be the only person on ATS to feel strongly about finding the truth out about bible codes. Can i?

I've never believed in the "bible codes". However, a bit more than a week ago, I decided, for FUN (and curiosity), to write a program that allows me to view "codes" in the KJV. I don't read Hebrew, and don't plan to learn it, so I figured, why not have some fun, and check for "codes" in english. To my amazement, it's almost become an obsession, as I have found some rather "NEAT" codes in Ezekiel, between chapters 21 and 27. Such as:

Using a Skip of 777 (7 Seals, 7 trumpets, 7 plagues) I found
"Head of State Gorge Bush" RIGHT NEXT TO "Ruler", "Leader", "Eagle", "Flags", "City", "States", and "Heap"

A few columns off there is also "Beast Seat", "Sodom", "Death", "Fire", "TenTevet" (will explain this one below!!!)

A few hudred columns off, and using the same Skip value, there is also "Fiery Hell", "Secret Name", "Apple"

"Manhattan" is found in one place, starting in Eze 20, with a skip of 5755 (I wonder if that's a Jewish year for something significant that happened in the US, 1994/1995)

I found 7 and 8 letters words as well, in the same Grid: Disrated, Stentors, Intraday, Linesman, Igniter, Suttees, Tootsie, Toasted, Entente, Delimit, Sheathe, Feinted, Hilloas, Hallo, Hilloed, Besmuts, and Radiate.

Ok, at first, this was just for entertainment, but then I found what I call, "the anomaly". Ezekiel 24 is a prophecy about something happening to "the Bloody City". This something involves Awesome Heat, and occurs on the tenth day of the tenth Jewish month (Tevet). Now, here's where the "anomaly" occurs. "TEN-TEVET" is found using a skip value of 776, only 1 row down, and 7 letters to the right of the straight bible text "THE TENTH MONTH IN THE TENTH DAY". That day happens to be the Tenth of Tevet, which, this year, falls on December 31.

I am now working on statistics of 9, 8, and 7 letter words found in the OT. I want to come up with the probabilty of all these words found in the same Grid.

In other ATS threads, there's been much talk about an imminent attack on US Soil, possibly nuclear. From my studies of Revelation 19, I do believe that a fiery attack will occur on the United Nations building in NYC, killing Annan and the Pres of the US. Perhaps the Pres will be in NY on Dec 31, or perhaps DC will be attacked at the same time as NY.

Originally posted by Argos

As you can see such a process over the whole of the Torah by hand, with all the different Nths possible (e.g. every fourth letter, every tenth letter and so on.) makes its an arduous task without the processing capability of a computer.

Daniel 12: 1-4 (King James Version)

1 And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.
2 And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
3 And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.
4 But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.


In this "end time" prophecy, Daniel is told to seal the book to the time of the end. Many Bible prophecy scholars believe that the "many shall run to and fro" depicts todays ease of modern travel. Needing a computer to unscramble Bible codes would point to the phrase "knowledge shall be increased." Just my 2cp.

how do we account for all this pre knowledge of wolrd history embedded in the text of a book thousands of years before it actually took place? divine inspiration.

psalms 139:6 such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, i cannot attain it.

[edit on 23-9-2006 by Funkydung]

Originally posted by Funkydung
how do we account for all this pre knowledge of wolrd history embedded in the text of a book thousands of years before it actually took place? divine inspiration.

psalms 139:6 such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, i cannot attain it.

[edit on 23-9-2006 by Funkydung]

Is it pre knowledge when a plan is in place? How often do we read that He thinks, and He purposes, and He performs, and He brings it to pass? There is no power to disannul, turn back, or deliver from His Plan; why, BECAUSE IT IS HIS PLAN, and NOT just random events in a timeline that are merely foretold by Him.

I don't believe them. I read a few books and they left me unconvinced.

If you look carefully and hard enough at any given set of data, with the will to see what you want to see, you begin to do such. He who pays the piper selects the tune, and so on. If I was absolutely hellbent on proving something I'm sure I could. there is just such a mass of data in the bible, I'm sure if I arranged it in whichever way I felt I could come up with whatever I wanted to prove.

suppose you are asked to construct a genealogy of real people, but there are certain constraints. the number of words in this genealogy must:

beenly divisible by seven (with no remainders)
the number of letters must be divisible by seven
the number of vowels and consonants must be divisible by seven
the number of words that begin with a vowel must be divisible by seven
the number of words that begin with a consonant must be divisible by seven
the number of words that occur more than once, must be divisible by seven
the number of words that occur in more than one form must be divisible by seven
the number of words that occur only in one form must be divisible by seven
the number of names in the genealogy must be divisible by seven
the number of male names must be divisible by seven
and the number of generations in the genealogy must be divisible by seven
would it not be next to impossible to draw up such a genealogy? yet this describes exactly the genealogy of the messiah as given in the gospel of matthew 1 :2-17.

and also


External Source

a hidden code encrypted in the hebrew lettering of the pentateuch, which is the name for the first five books of the old testament.

these are written originally in hebrew. if you take the first hebrew letter in genesis, skip 49 and take the next letter, and repeat the skip sequence, then every four letters spells torh (the Hebrew word pronounced 'torah', meaning 'the law of god').

this holds all the way through the first two books of the bible, genesis and exodus. when you get to the middle book of the five, leviticus, it stops. however, when you do the same skip sequence for deuteronomy and the book of numbers, it spells hrot, which is torh backwards.

go back now to the middle book of the five, leviticus, use the skip sequence again this time skipping every SEVEN letters, and it spells YHWH (pronounced YAWEH). which is the hebrew name for god!

so we have every 49 letters in genesis and exodus spelling 'the law of god' and pointing to leviticus, and every 49 letters of deuteronomy and numbers spelling 'the law of god' backwards and pointing to leviticus. every seven letters in this book spells YAWH; god himself.

Genesis Leviticus Deuterony
Torh->Torh->Torh-> YAWH

Originally posted by ben91069
My conclusion is that Bible Codes are real, but they are much like the Bible itself and can be interpreted in different ways.

There is a lot more evidence that the Torah has been encoded systematically over a more contemporarily written book like Moby Dick or even the latest edition of Time magazine. But this is only like saying a Volvo is engineered better for safety than a Yugo. It is obvious, but yet it is also relative to the observer as to its meaning.

The codes have been shown that both the one doing the decoding and the message itself doesn't have an absolute bearing on what actually happens. My conclusion is that it is like biting into a chocolate chip cookie and finding a lot of chocolate chips. It doesn't make the cookie not what it is, but it adds to the fact that it is what it is.

I think the truth of the codes lies within our ability to interpret them aligned with the authors meaning, just like the Bible was meant to.

I have to say i do agree with you, how you interpret the bible is key to what you will find within it for yourself. And bible codes are no different. And i dont believe in god.

Originally posted by JustMy2Cents
I've never believed in the "bible codes". However, a bit more than a week ago, I decided, for FUN (and curiosity), to write a program that allows me to view "codes" in the KJV. I don't read Hebrew, and don't plan to learn it, so I figured, why not have some fun, and check for "codes" in english. To my amazement, it's almost become an obsession, as I have found some rather "NEAT" codes in Ezekiel, between chapters 21 and 27. Such as:

Using a Skip of 777 (7 Seals, 7 trumpets, 7 plagues) I found
"Head of State Gorge Bush" RIGHT NEXT TO "Ruler", "Leader", "Eagle", "Flags", "City", "States", and "Heap"

A few columns off there is also "Beast Seat", "Sodom", "Death", "Fire", "TenTevet" (will explain this one below!!!)

A few hudred columns off, and using the same Skip value, there is also "Fiery Hell", "Secret Name", "Apple"

"Manhattan" is found in one place, starting in Eze 20, with a skip of 5755 (I wonder if that's a Jewish year for something significant that happened in the US, 1994/1995)

I found 7 and 8 letters words as well, in the same Grid: Disrated, Stentors, Intraday, Linesman, Igniter, Suttees, Tootsie, Toasted, Entente, Delimit, Sheathe, Feinted, Hilloas, Hallo, Hilloed, Besmuts, and Radiate.

Ok, at first, this was just for entertainment, but then I found what I call, "the anomaly". Ezekiel 24 is a prophecy about something happening to "the Bloody City". This something involves Awesome Heat, and occurs on the tenth day of the tenth Jewish month (Tevet). Now, here's where the "anomaly" occurs. "TEN-TEVET" is found using a skip value of 776, only 1 row down, and 7 letters to the right of the straight bible text "THE TENTH MONTH IN THE TENTH DAY". That day happens to be the Tenth of Tevet, which, this year, falls on December 31.

I am now working on statistics of 9, 8, and 7 letter words found in the OT. I want to come up with the probabilty of all these words found in the same Grid.

In other ATS threads, there's been much talk about an imminent attack on US Soil, possibly nuclear. From my studies of Revelation 19, I do believe that a fiery attack will occur on the United Nations building in NYC, killing Annan and the Pres of the US. Perhaps the Pres will be in NY on Dec 31, or perhaps DC will be attacked at the same time as NY.

I can appreciate what your doing i too was very excited first time i found codes, its quite a power rush thinking you can read the future but it is very difficult with bible codes.

The chances are that you haven't found a real encoding. But if you genuinely believe you could be on to something, then get in touch with some bible code researchers. There experience and probable ability to read hebrew will make sense of what ever information you have and the odds etc. much quicker than you presumably could, and keep us posted it would be interesting to hear back on any progress.

Originally posted by City_sea
I don't believe them. I read a few books and they left me unconvinced.

If you look carefully and hard enough at any given set of data, with the will to see what you want to see, you begin to do such. He who pays the piper selects the tune, and so on. If I was absolutely hellbent on proving something I'm sure I could. there is just such a mass of data in the bible, I'm sure if I arranged it in whichever way I felt I could come up with whatever I wanted to prove.

Its an interesting observation and the most key one at that. Can you find what your looking for in any large sets of data?? I ponder this question the most, it seems to be the key to unlocking or debunking the bible codes.

Skeptics have been trying for years to find information in other texts that can compare to the Torah. And to start off with they had some success. Finding codes in Moby Dick etc. The thing is since then the skeptics haven't been able to come up with anything better, where as bible code researchers are finding codes more complex and brilliant all the time. The odds and statistics found on some of the code clusters are huge.

Skeptics have nothing that can compare at the moment!! Thats why my opinion at the moment is they will probably turn out to be real.

Funkydung its funny that you brought that up actually as that encoding you just brought up was actually one of the first encodings found at it was done by hand also.

torah torah Yaweh harot harot
----> -----> God

Funkydung, I was intrigued by what you presented, regarding the genealogy of Messiah, however, after actually going through the motions, it appears your external source is too fantastic to believe. I do agree though that the other anomaly, regarding Torah, Torah, YHWH, harot, harot is likely NOT by chance. I just wish I could read Hebrew to prove it for myself. For now, I guess I just have to take their word for it. Sadly, taking someone elses word has led SO MANY to believe in myths, urban legends, and downright falsehoods.

[Edited some mispelled words]

[edit on 23-9-2006 by JustMy2Cents]

Originally posted by JustMy2Cents
Funkydung, I was intrigued by what you presented, regarding the genealogy of Messiah, however, after actually going through the motions, it appears your external source is too fantastic to believe. I do agree though that the other anomaly, regarding Torah, Torah, YHWH, harot, harot is likely NOT by chance. I just wish I could read Hebrew to prove it for myself. For now, I guess I just have to take their word for it. Sadly, taking someone elses word has led SO MANY to believe in myths, urban legends, and downright falsehoods.

[Edited some mispelled words]

[edit on 23-9-2006 by JustMy2Cents]

I can refer you to a documentary that shows you letter by letter with english translation about it if you want.

video.google.co.uk...

Watch from 30 mins to 37 mins.

Just too add aswell the chances of that encoding happening by chance is less than 1 in 3000000.