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HIDDEN BIBLICAL CODES: HOAX OR PROPHECY?

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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:

Related essays on this web site:

Reference:

1. "Controversial 'Bible Code' debunked by team of scholars," Associated Press Online, 1999-SEP-10.
2. Michael Drosin , "The Bible Code," Touchstone Books, (1998). Read reviews or order this book safely from Amazon.com online book store
3. Michael Drosin , "Bible Code II: The Coundown," Viking Press, (2002). Read reviews or order this book
4. "Assassination foretold in Moby Dick," at: http://cs.anu.edu.au/

Copyright ©1998 to 2004 by Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
Latest update: 2004-OCT-1
Author: B.A. Robinson