Hidden Bible codes:

Theomatics analysis technique, (Concluded)

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Theomatics analysis (Cont'd):

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 is said to have became a father at the age of 800,   Noah's ark was 300 cubits long,   The Hebrews 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. When 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" is taken from the word mathematics. God's mathematical design is described in three books: "Theomatics" (now out of print), "Theomatics II ₁ and "The Original Code in the Bible." ₂

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: One will often find 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.

Investigators 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 arbitrarily selected 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 should include an analysis of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures using Theomatics, as well as secular texts of a similar length.

If matches are found in all long texts, as in the case of the ELS technique, then there would be nothing unique about the Bible from a Theomatic point of view. If multiple observers find that:

	Theomatic matches occur with great frequency in the Bible, and
	Matches occur rarely in non-biblical texts of similar length to the Bible, and
	Attempts at falsification fail, then

evidence for Theomatics would be greatly strengthened.

There exists the possibility that an intelligent human mind inserted very complex codes into the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. 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." ₃

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 autograph 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 are based on copies 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. Certain passages appear to have been inserted by authors other than the original author. The error rate of our "standard" Greek and Hebrew texts may throw great suspicion on Theomatics. There seems to be little merit in either this technique or ELS codes.

Another applications for Theomatics: If Theomatics could be 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.

Related essays on this web site:

	Hidden "ELS" codes in the Bible: prophecy or hoax?
	Who wrote the 5 books of Moses, the Pentateuch?
	Who wrote the book of Genesis?
	A description of over a dozen "Christian urban legends"

This topic continues in the next essay

References

1. Del Washburn, "Theomatics II: God's best kept secret revealed," Scarborough House, (1994) Read reviews or order this book 
2. 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 
3. "A.B. Leever," "Theomatics, at: http://www.ableever.net/Apologetics/

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