The “Bible Code”
A big Hoax
September 10, 1999
NEW YORK, Sept. 10 - An international team of statisticians is debunking the controversial Bible code, which claims the Old Testament has hidden references to 20th century events that can be revealed by a computer. Searching for further meanings in the Bible has spurred some popular books. Proponents of the code claim that names and events were hidden in the Bible as written thousands of years ago and can be found through computer searches of the Hebrew text. Television documentaries, fast-selling books and numerous articles have popularized the theory, first published in the academic journal Statistical Science.
Now the same journal, published by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics based in Hayward, Calif., is offering an article challenging the technique it reported in 1994. The article published in the quarterly next week:
Stringing Through the Hebrew
Believers in the Bible code theory treat the Hebrew Bible as a string of letters without spaces, looking for words formed by equidistant letter sequences. For instance, computers might select every ninth Hebrew letter and register a hit when a coded word intersects with a Bible verse containing related words. Five years ago, three Israeli scholars published the results of their search in the journal. As they explained, they took names of famous rabbis from a reference dictionary, applied letter sequences and found the names near the rabbi’s dates of birth or death. Using the same technique, others have claimed the Bible contains secret predictions, including everything from the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 to a Los Angeles earthquake in 2010.
No Real Original Bible Anyhow
Major Bible scholars ignore the code because, they note, no one has a letter-by-letter version of the Bible as originally written. The oldest surviving manuscripts include slight variations, any of which would throw off computer test results.
In the upcoming edition of Statistical Science, the new studies authors Dror Bar-Natan, Maya Bar-Hillel and Gil Kalai, professors at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, and Brendan McKay of the Australian National University combine expertise in mathematics and computer science to debunk the theory.
Using other spellings and assumptions, they ran hundreds of tests that repeated the experiment with different variations and applied it to more books that are biblical. Despite a considerable amount of effort, they write, “we have been unable to detect the codes”.
More Tests Needed
This is significant, Bar-Natan said in a Thursday interview, because truth in science is never based on the results of a single experiment. A significant requirement is repeatability.
Their results were no more successful with the Hebrew translation of Tolstoys War and Peace. Such letter configurations can be found in any long text, they say. The trick is to find letters in close proximity that form significant words more often than by chance.
But Eliyahu Rips, an Israeli mathematics professor who was co-author of the 1994 article, said in a statement that evidence for the code is stronger than ever and said a detailed reply to the new criticism would appear soon.
His ally Michael Drosnin, author of The Bible Code, said the critics told a lie.
Expected to Remain a Puzzle
Robert Kass, head of the statistics department at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, edited the journal when it published the first article and said other experts reviewed it. He is disturbed that people perceived publication as a stamp of scientific approval. That first article, he said, merely presented a puzzle one that has now been explained. The new study shows there were many, many choices, particularly for things like the names of the rabbis that involved a lot of latitude. It was only for special sources that the results appeared, he said Thursday.
He said such studies must avoid statistical tuning, just as medical research projects follow strict protocol. Bar-Natan says that procedures in the 1994 project had enough wiggle room to produce whatever you want.
Authors of the earlier article could not be reached for comment.
Statistics scholars renew debate over "Bible code"
September 13, 1999
NEW YORK (AP) - An international team of statisticians is attacking "Bible code" theory, which claims the Old Testament contains secret references to 20th century events. Television documentaries, fast-selling books and numerous articles have popularized the idea, which originated with a 1994 article in the academic journal Statistical Science.
Next week the same journal, published by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics based in Hayward California, will publish a study by three researchers challenging the theory.
"Despite a considerable amount of effort, we have been unable to detect the codes," the study stated.
According to Bible code proponents, the Hebrew text of the Old Testament refers to events that were thousands of years away when the text was written. The hidden references are revealed by turning the text into a string of letters without spaces and looking for words formed by equidistant letter sequences. For instance, computers might select every ninth Hebrew letter and register a "hit" when a "coded" word intersects with a Bible verse containing related words.
The technique has been used to claim encoded biblical predictions of everything from the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 to a Los Angeles earthquake in 2010. Major Bible scholars have ignored the code, noting that no one has a letter-by-letter version of the Bible as originally written. The oldest surviving manuscripts include slight variations. The new article makes the same point.
The theory was put forward in a 1994 article in the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, in which three Israeli scholars reported on tests using the Book of Genesis that produced intersections between names of famous rabbis and their birth or death dates.
That experiment is re-tested in a new article in the same journal written by Dror Bar-Natan and Gil Kalai, who teach mathematics at Jerusalem's Hebrew University; Maya Bar-Hillel, a psychology professor at the same school; and Brendan McKay, a computer scientist at Australian National University.
Such letter configurations can be found in any long text, the article says.
They repeated the 1994 experiment, using other spellings and assumptions and applying the rabbis' names to other biblical books. Comparison tests using the Hebrew translation of Tolstoy's "War and Peace" were just as successful as those with the Bible.
Bar-Natan said the 1994 article was based on research that offered, "Enough wiggle room to produce whatever you want."
But Michael Drosnin, author of "The Bible Code," stood by the theory. He said a retired code-breaker for the U.S. National Security Agency has proven the code works.
Eliyahu Rips, a co-author of the 1994 article and professor in the same department as Bar-Natan and Kalai, issued a statement promising a "detailed reply" soon. He called the new article's examples "mathematically meaningless."
Robert Kass, head of the statistics department at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, edited Statistical Science when it published the 1994 article. In a recent interview he said that the 1994 data "involved a lot of latitude" and skewed the findings.
From a Christian point of view
The following is an article from a Christian web site, called “Christian Media Research”. It shows you the viewpoint of certain groups within the Christian religion, how divided the Christians are and how much fighting and bickering is going on. It also shows how certain Christians are “using” the ‘Bible Codes’ to their own advantage and to take advantage of others. At least the author of the article, James Lloyd, is speaking out against the Falseness he encounters. Good for you James!
Bible Codes – Predictions Bomb again (2000/2001)
By: James Lloyd
As I write these words, several Bible Code promoters are remarkably silent. They are 'laying low' because they issued predictions and cautionary notes just before the 4th of July holiday concerning terrorist attacks on specific US cities. The first prediction, offered on the Internet by a Bible Code enthusiast named Tom Gaston, claimed that Chicago would be dealt a significant destruction. Gaston even emailed the print out of the "codes" with the now familiar "matrix" where the "interpreter" scribbles the various words in English showing where the secret messages supposedly intersect.
Since his email address includes the word rapture, we can presume that Gaston's scriptural knowledge is as deficient as his discernment of the obvious occultism involved in the Bible Codes. His alarmist emails claimed the "codes" included the words radiation, poisoning, terrorist, city, Chicago, etc.
Because this individual has claimed to run up to 250 codes in a single day as he's being "carried about with every wind of doctrine" (Ephesians 4:14), it is unlikely he will actually abandon this foolish manifestation of Satanic high-tech soothsaying. No doubt he is now on to his next project as he continues, "deceiving and being deceived" (II Timothy 3:13).
While the Rapture Cult has obviously been caught up in the silicon stupidity of the Bible Codes through better-known false prophets such as best selling author Grant Jeffrey, the Catholics were not to be outdone during this tense time of potential terrorism. At the same time Tom Gaston was promoting his Chicago predictions of massive death and destruction based on his read of the "codes," Catholic mystic Kathleen Keating was warning that the codes said Boston would be the recipient of a terrorist hit over the just elapsed holiday.
Keating issued a Bible Code based warning that claimed the words Boston, Terror, Target, July Fourth, etc. were in the codes that she ran. This was only the latest miss from this false prophet as she has already issued code-based prophecies that have clearly failed. A promoter of the goddess worship known as Mariolatry, Keating's website also includes information from Veronica Lueken, a leader in the worship of that certain spiritual being masquerading as the goddess via the so-called apparitions of Mary.
Bible Code babbler Tom Mack is another false prophet that has issued relatively high profile predictions based on the codes and then quietly retreated when they failed. For instance, prior to the US Presidential election, he repeatedly predicted that Al Gore would be placed in the White House. After the election, the Gore "codes", were quickly pulled from his website and replaced with hastily produced codes that showed the winner would be George Bush.
Posing as a "professor" in an apparent gambit to shroud his occult prognostications with a scholarly legitimacy, Mr. Mack is a frequent on air guest of radio quack Steve Quayle of the Q Files program. Indeed, less than 2 weeks before the election, in a national radio interview with false prophet Quayle, Mack stated that Gore's name showed up in the "codes" so many times it was "all over the Bible." Mack stated there was no doubt that the Bible Codes referred to Gore as he confidently stated, "he's going to be running things."
It is instructive to note that the so-called "professor" has taken the codes even further than the others have. For instance, during his interview with "slippery" Steve Quayle, Tom Mack claimed that Al Gore's name connected 9 times to the name Lucifer in the Bible codes. While he is not the only false prophet pointing at the former Veep as a prime suspect for the office of Antichrist, Tom Mack has been manipulating the Bible Codes in a far more sinister fashion.
Mack has determined that personal flattery is the most effective way to manipulate people into doing his will (see Daniel 11:34), so he has adapted the Bible Codes to provide the equivalent of personal palm reading for any Christian that is foolish enough to listen to him. By telling various Christian leaders in the media that he has located their name in the codes that depict them in a flattering role during the last days, Mack has been able to build in a dependency upon his continued research on his hapless subject's behalf. This is, of course, the classic definition of witchcraft. One writer had this to say about witchcraft:
"Witchcraft develops a dependency relationship between the teachers, gurus, and other instructors, and the initiates or laity. True Christianity disdains dependency relationships and works to make its laity dependent on God alone."
Ironically, Tom Mack himself wrote these words. Using the Bible Codes in a fashion that is not dissimilar to a tarot card "reader," by our count, Mack's interpretive abilities have now ingratiated him with no less than six nationally known "Christian" leaders. This is an extremely serious matter as this disguised form of witchcraft is spreading like wildfire under the facade of a scripturally sound version of secret knowledge.
The Bible Codes are essentially a modern reversion to the ancient heresy known as Gnosticism. For the benefit of those that are unaware of various aspects of early Christian history, the Gnostics (from the Greek word gnosis, for knowledge) were acknowledged occultists (from the Latin word occultus, for secret) that taught God favoured those that held secretive knowledge based on ancient mystical understanding. Gnosticism has roots in Freemasonry and other secret societies, as well as Egyptian black magic that the early Alexandrian Christians imported into their version of "Christianity."
During a radio interview with another of his occult code converts named Chris Blodgett, radio host Blodgett and Mack openly admitted the Gnostic connection to the Bible Codes.
Chris Blodgett: "So it's more of the Gnostic thought process then?"
Tom Mack: "Exactly"
These statements are simply astonishing, for Biblically centred Christians have long known of the occult nature of Gnosticism. Although others like Keating, Jeffrey, Gaston, TBN and other blind guides are utilizing the Bible Codes in a misguided effort to predict last day's events; their buffoonery is self-evident, as their public prognostications have consistently failed.
"Professor" Tom Mack is much more dangerous as he has learned how to use the codes as a tool to manipulate people secretly behind the scenes in order to further a commercial agenda. He has now gone into completely uncharted territory with these tactics.
Not only has Mack used the "codes" as a way to recruit allies, he has now begun to attack enemies utilizing the codes as a weapon. In my case, I apparently have the dubious distinction of being the first Christian leader to be publicly maligned by the instrumentality of the Bible Codes.
Some months ago, the Christian Media ministry began to examine "professor" Mack and the various Christian leaders in the media that he has quietly assembled into a secretive cabal. After Tom Mack learned that Christian Media was scrutinizing his talk show host allies Steve Quayle and Chris Blodgett, he sought to provide validation for their side of the conflict using the codes. In every other case we have been aware of, Mack has told his "associates" that their names are in the Bible Codes in a flattering light. However, in order to buttress the ministry efficacy of Blodgett and Quayle, Mack needed to find my name in the codes in an unflattering light.
On a nationally broadcast interview on Quayle's show the ‘Q Files’, Steve Quayle brought on Tom Mack and he did just that. On national radio, Quayle and Mack proceeded to claim that the Bible Codes overwhelmingly demonstrate that I am in league with Lucifer. Indeed, they poured it on and claimed that the evidence was so conclusive that the "Bible Codes" prove that I am functioning in the power of the Devil.
The very idea that inside information concerning spiritual and prophetic matters exists for the select few that are privy to the codes is obviously occultic. Again, the very term occult means, "secret." However, the Bible itself declares that prophetic understanding and discernment of the times in which we live are spiritual gifts.
This "will of man" is itself the catalyst to the codes. Modern men decide they must have a prophecy NOW — and demand it of the Lord via the codes based on their own timetable of convenience. However, the Bible makes no provision for such things as the Word of God declares such behaviour — clothed in malicious spirituality as it is — to be an outgrowth of the natural man's carnal mind.
The practice of high-tech Gnosticism would have been immediately rebuked by the church at large if the church were not already near drowning in apostasy. Very few truly understand that the Bible flatly informs us that "certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation...." (Jude 1:4). This must occur that the scriptures be fulfilled.
Although many believe as long as they avoid such controversies and maintain a simple faith they will fare just fine, the scriptures instead tell us we must renounce "the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully." (II Corinthians 4:2). This word renounce has a decidedly combative connotation to it. This means conflict will be the inevitable result as the light clashes with the darkness. Jesus plainly taught
"Think not that I am come to send peace on Earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household." (Matthew 10:34-36).
The battle is definitely raging here at the Christian Media ministry. We'd like to tell everyone a great deal more about this spiritual war (particularly the occult threat of the Bible Codes), and the forces that have been arrayed against us as we've sought to tell the truth to any that will listen. To further that mission, this website (Christianmediaresearch.com) was designed to provide archival data on doctrines, individuals, and various ministries that are affecting the Remnant Christians. We hope you will explore the articles that are online (the majority are presently under newsletters).
From a Scientific point of view
The Bible Code is numerological nonsense masquerading as science – 2003
By: Michael Shermer
In the epilogue of In Memoriam A.H.H., Alfred, Lord Tennyson captured the essence of the quest for a single unifying principle and purpose in nature: "One God, one law, one element, and one far-off divine event, to which the whole creation moves."
The noble dream of finding teleological succour in the march of time has become big business, as demonstrated by works from Hal Lindsey's 1970s blockbuster The Late Great Planet Earth to today's Left Behind series, by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. (Both are said to have sold in the tens of millions.) Moreover, if you can sprinkle your homiletics with scientific jargon, so much the better. The latest and most egregious example of the (mis)use of science in the (dis)service of religion is Michael Drosnin's Bible Code II, enjoying a lucrative ride on the New York Times best-seller list, as did the 1997 original.
Just like the prophecies of soothsayers past and present, all such predictions are actually postdictions.
According to proponents of the Bible Code, itself a subset of the genre of biblical numerology and Kabbalistic mysticism popular since the Middle Ages, the Hebrew Pentateuch can be decoded through an equidistant-letter-sequencing software program. The idea is to take every nth letter, where n equals whatever number you wish: 7, 19, and 3,027. Print out that string of letters in a block of type, then search left to right, right to left, top to bottom, bottom to top, and diagonally in any direction for any interesting patterns. Seek and ye shall find.
Predictably, in 1997 Drosnin "discovered" such current events as Yitzhak Rabin's assassination, Benjamin Netanyahu's election, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9's collision with Jupiter, Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing, and, of course, the end of the world in 2000. Because the world did not end and current events dated his first book, Drosnin continued the search and learned, lo and behold, that the Bible predicted the Bill and Monica tryst, the Bush-Gore election debacle and, of course, the World Trade Centre cataclysm.
Just like the prophecies of soothsayers past and present, all such predictions are actually postdictions (note that not one psychic or astrologer forewarned us about 9/11). To be tested scientifically, Bible codes would need to predict events before they happen. They won't, because they can't, as Danish physicist Niels Bohr averred, predictions are difficult, especially about the future. Instead, in 1997 Drosnin proposed this test of his thesis, "When my critics find a message about the assassination of a prime minister encrypted in Moby Dick, I'll believe them."
Australian mathematician Brendan McKay did just that, locating no fewer than nine political assassinations secreted in the great novel, along with additional discoveries in War and Peace and other tomes (see http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/moby.html). American physicist David E. Thomas predicted the Chicago Bulls's NBA championship in 1998 from his code search of Leo Tolstoy's novel. He also recently unearthed "the Bible code is a silly, dumb, fake, false, evil, nasty, dismal fraud and snake-oil hoax" from Bible Code II (see www.nmsr.org/biblecod.htm).
If there is an encrypted message in all this numerological poppycock, it is this: there is a deep connection between how the mind works and how we perceive the world works. We are pattern-seeking animals, the descendants of hominids who were especially dexterous at making causal links between events in nature. The associations were real often enough that the ability became engrained in our neural architecture. Unfortunately, the belief engine sputters occasionally, identifying false patterns as real. The habit of faltering may not be enough to prevent you from passing on your genes for detecting false positives to the next generation, but it does create superstitious and magical thinking. This process is coupled to the law of large numbers that accompanies our complex world, where, as it is said, million-to-one odds happen eight times a day in New York City.
Given our propensity to look for patterns in a superfluity of data, is it any wonder that so many are taken in by such codified claptrap? The problem is pervasive and a permanent part of our cognitive machinery. The solution is science, our pre-eminent pattern-discriminating method and our best hope for detecting a genuine signal within the noise of nature's cacophony.
