The Bible Code (on the History Channel)

[tracer]

The History Channel just ran (re-ran?) their History's Mysteries piece on the Bible Code.

As could be expected, they spent about 2 minutes on the guy who found assassinations "hidden" in Moby Dick and the rest of the show showing people claiming up and down that "the chances against these specific words all showing up together in a cluster in the Torah are astronomical!".

No one, not even the Moby Dick guy, was shown making the obvious point that the Bible Code believers don't look for clusters of the specific words they tout as being statistically impossible. They instead look for one word, and then make a matrix out of the surrounding text and circle every word they can find that seems to have even a remote connection to the one word they actually searched for. And best of all, since it's in Hebrew, they don't have to worry about any pesky vowels getting in the way of their fun, which the Moby Dick guy did have to worry about since Moby Dick is in English. I wonder how many good arguments against the Bible Code's validity ended up on the cutting room floor.

[Dogwood]

all of them?

[Aoidoi]

Yeah, I was pretty amused when the rabbi guy accused the Moby Dick guy of using "parlor tricks." Cause when you find something in the Bible it's obviously divine, when you find it in Moby Dick it's coincidence. :rolleyes:

I also liked it that they immediately went from the guy saying it's a crock to debating whether it was God or Aliens that put the "code" there. Like saying there's nothing to debate and then debating anyway.

Not quite the Fox Moon Hoax level of a hatchet job, but close.

btw, what the heck is the word for airplane in ancient Hebrew??? :D

[SRW]

This sounded like it would be worth watching, but after reading the above I think is may be a waist of time. Was it at least entertaining. I'm on the west coast so it will not be on for an hour.

[Tony]

I watched it last week, it sucked!! The whole time I was thinking "why don’t they try to unlock the "code" concerning future events". Really, what use is bible code if it just tells us things we already know?

[tracer]

Originally posted by Aoidoi
btw, what the heck is the word for airplane in ancient Hebrew??? :D
Not to mention the ancient Hebrew word for "atomic". Or "spaceship".

[tracer]

Originally posted by Tony
The whole time I was thinking "why don’t they try to unlock the "code" concerning future events". Really, what use is bible code if it just tells us things we already know?
The show even did a small segment about using the Bible Code to predict the future. Before the November 2000 election, one of the Bible Code "experts" found Al Gore (presumably the Hebrew name for Al Gore) and words meaning something like "Next Leader" close together -- so, he concluded that Al Gore would win the 2000 election and become President.

Now, if Gore had become President, you just know the Bible Code believers would have held this up as an example of the Code's divine power. However, Al Gore didn't become President. So, the "expert" went back and looked at the grid where he'd found Al Gore and Next Leader, and lo and behold, he also found a couple of words that meant "maybe." :rolleyes:

[athon]

Originally posted by Aoidoi

I also liked it that they immediately went from the guy saying it's a crock to debating whether it was God or Aliens that put the "code" there. Like saying there's nothing to debate and then debating anyway.


What is it with these nutcases introducing debates 'debunking' claims that these things might be written by 'aliens'? Anybody remember good ol' Ican and his demon photo's? And that they were definately not aliens?

It's like saying 'These footprints are definately the toothfairy's, and not just an ordinary pixie's.'

Athon

[SRW]

Well now that was silly. What got me were the convoluted explanations that the believers had.

The codes can predict the future but you have to wait until the future becomes the past to know if your interpretation of the past was correct, you simply do not know what questions to ask until you have events to use the right words to enter into the matrix.

The only question is why if these codes are real who would qualify to pick up the JREF Million? Would anyone who could read the codes or would it have to be the original author?

[scribble]

Originally posted by SRW
The only question is why if these codes are real who would qualify to pick up the JREF Million? Would anyone who could read the codes or would it have to be the original author? [/B]

No one would. It doesn't fit the qualifications. I know you're just being funny, but it's comments like this that confuse people like that guy who thinks he can see demons in pictures. Don't encourage him.

[SRW]

Originally posted by scribble


No one would. It doesn't fit the qualifications. I know you're just being funny, but it's comments like this that confuse people like that guy who thinks he can see demons in pictures. Don't encourage him.

So your suggesting that these people are not confused already? I would not be surprised if someone has not already contacted JREF about this.

[Iamme]

"The Bible Code' is old news. When I first heard about it, several years ago, on tv., I went to the library and checked out the book (took it home). There are pages upon pages of actual illustrations that show past events that have happened. The words of importance are circled; either straight across, diagonally, or up/down. The letter spacings are always equal.

What indeed is fascinating about it is that more than just one word on the subject comes up on a page that doesn't contain all THAT many letters.

For example: Take the Kennedy assassination. On that one page, it will not only say Kennedy, but will include words like assassinated, and Oswald (from my recollection). Or it might say Dallas. That's pretty weird, no matter how you slice it.

I never did check out the validity of the Moby Dick book claim, so I can't comment on that. It just does indeed seem pretty haunting that there can be the NUMBER of words, relating to one past event, that are sequenced, on only one page of letters.

I would recommend you check the book out yourself, and then try to come to some conclusion (if you can).

The part that most troubles ME, is how they are able to translate words like Kennedy and Oswald, from ancient Hebrew (the original Torah...the Torah, being the first 5 books of the old testament which are credited to Moses, for authoring). We have to take the authors word for it, that the words they are sequencing from Hebrew letters, are actual English words when spelled out. You would think that the Hebrew alphabet would be different than the English alphabet. And if it is...how was he (Drosnin) able to get a name like Kennedy out of it. Maybe someone HERE could explain this.

Are there any knowledgable Jews amongst us?

Oh...and do you know what makes this Bible Code business even MORE creepy? It actually says in the Bible's Book of Daniel, ...something to the affect that some knowledge that the Bible holds can only become known at 'the end times'...when knowledge will greatly increase...and all that jazz. Drosnin explains this very thing, and says, that if it weren't for the computer (developed near 'the end times'?), said knowledge would still be 'locked up'. (Another tidbit I will throw in about Daniels prophecy: In the times of the end...men's hearts willl fail them out of fear. Back in the times of the prophecies, and centuries thereafter, life really didn't change much. I would presume that the dispositions of people remained about the same in regards to how much their hearts could take. TODAY though, we are on stress overload...the population increase, the hustle bustle, the worry over money, terrorist attacks, and more. What would have made Daniel think that in the future, things would get WORSE, such that men's hearts woyuld fail them?!

[teddygrahams]

Originally posted by Iamme
[B What would have made Daniel think that in the future, things would get WORSE, such that men's hearts woyuld fail them?! [/B]

Until a few hundred years ago, people thought their hearts would fail if they fell from a great height. The first parachute jump disproved that.



Are you saying that the "bible" code is all torah code and there is no English bible code ? Shouldn't there be one ?

I saw part of the show and I could not figure out why it was only the hebrew version... except maybe the lack of most people being able to check it, and looser rules.

[Iamme]

Hi Teddy. Yes...it is all "Torah' code. The Hebrew letters are used. Drosnin simply translates these for us. We have to take his word for the translating!

What I found strange, also, about the Bible Code, is this claim that you can only 'find' events that have occured. WHY?! Why can't we ask things like "Bush assasination"? And see if it comes up. I could think of lot's of things to have the computer do sequences of, that would pertain to the future. How 'bout Yassir Arafat? I thought that Drosnin was going to do another Bible Code book. I'll have to check that out and see if he is pursuing more 'codes'.

An example of one I am making up, but is atypical:" Terror in city....great towers collapse." If that was in there...what would you think?! The prime minister of Israel, that was assassinated, is in there, and says about assaination. Kennedy is in there, and says either about assassination, and/or Oswald, and/or Dallas. There are MANY interesting codes in there. They are quite explicit. They wouldn't just say, "Towers collapse". For true validation, the code includes names of where, or who...stuff like that...so you know that is the event that they are talking about.

[tracer]

Originally posted by Iamme
What indeed is fascinating about it is that more than just one word on the subject comes up on a page that doesn't contain all THAT many letters.

For example: Take the Kennedy assassination. On that one page, it will not only say Kennedy, but will include words like assassinated, and Oswald (from my recollection). Or it might say Dallas. That's pretty weird, no matter how you slice it.

I never did check out the validity of the Moby Dick book claim, so I can't comment on that. It just does indeed seem pretty haunting that there can be the NUMBER of words, relating to one past event, that are sequenced, on only one page of letters.
It sounds pretty eerie ... until you realize how they go about the search.

They don't look for "Kennedy" and "Oswald" or "Kennedy" and "Dallas". They just look for Kennedy. Then, when they come up with a grid of Hebrew letters that contains "Kennedy" at some skip-length spacing, they do a word search for any other terms in the same grid that are even remotely connected to "Kennedy" in some way. If "Dallas" is in there, they circle it. If "killed" is in there, they circle it. If "Jackie" is in there, they circle it. If "leader" or "president" is in there, they circle it. If "Cuba" or "missile" or "bay" or "pigs" or "Harvard" are in there, they circle 'em.

Yes, the odds of "Kennedy" and "Dallas" happening to appear together in the same grid are infinitessimal. However, the odds of "Kennedy" and any other word related to Kennedy showing up in the same grid are much, much higher.

The part that most troubles ME, is how they are able to translate words like Kennedy and Oswald, from ancient Hebrew (the original Torah...the Torah, being the first 5 books of the old testament which are credited to Moses, for authoring). We have to take the authors word for it, that the words they are sequencing from Hebrew letters, are actual English words when spelled out. You would think that the Hebrew alphabet would be different than the English alphabet. And if it is...how was he (Drosnin) able to get a name like Kennedy out of it.
My understanding is, Drosnin used the names for these people as they appear in modern Hebrew-language newspapers.

A very important point to note is that written Hebrew contains no vowels. This means they're not really searching for "KENNEDY", they're just searching for "KNNDY", which is a couple of letters shorter and is therefore much more likely to occur by chance.

[Yahweh]

Wow, if all these predictions are found in the Bible, shouldn't we be able to prevent wars, trajedies, win lotteries, found missing people...

I'm only impressed when these prophecies are discovered before the event...

[Iamme]

Yahweh---Yes....alot of 'predictions' about the past.:D

After reviewing the book and trying to comprehend the meaning behind it, and pondering if God is toying with us.....toying with us because he thinks we are egotistical, or something...that MAYBE, if we read the Bible backwards, it will say, "The Beatles were a figment of your imagination!"

And I do recommend to everyone that you check out the book. Maybe a website about it. The authors name is Michael Drosnin. I still remember it. The book is called, "The Bible Code". But as I said....we rely heavily on he and his cohert in interpreting for us what the Hebrew letters are in English. And I have a problem with... if this can always be done. This is something which I never understood, nor heard explained.

[Renfield]

Yeah. Just consider the multitude of names, places, words, events, etc. the bible code people have to work with when doing these searches. Its not suprising at all that they can find so many matches with all the possible cominations available. In fact, you would expect it.



Originally posted by tracer

It sounds pretty eerie ... until you realize how they go about the search.

They don't look for "Kennedy" and "Oswald" or "Kennedy" and "Dallas". They just look for Kennedy. Then, when they come up with a grid of Hebrew letters that contains "Kennedy" at some skip-length spacing, they do a word search for any other terms in the same grid that are even remotely connected to "Kennedy" in some way. If "Dallas" is in there, they circle it. If "killed" is in there, they circle it. If "Jackie" is in there, they circle it. If "leader" or "president" is in there, they circle it. If "Cuba" or "missile" or "bay" or "pigs" or "Harvard" are in there, they circle 'em.

Yes, the odds of "Kennedy" and "Dallas" happening to appear together in the same grid are infinitessimal. However, the odds of "Kennedy" and any other word related to Kennedy showing up in the same grid are much, much higher.


My understanding is, Drosnin used the names for these people as they appear in modern Hebrew-language newspapers.

A very important point to note is that written Hebrew contains no vowels. This means they're not really searching for "KENNEDY", they're just searching for "KNNDY", which is a couple of letters shorter and is therefore much more likely to occur by chance.

[SRW]

Originally posted by Renfield
Yeah. Just consider the multitude of names, places, words, events, etc. the bible code people have to work with when doing these searches. Its not suprising at all that they can find so many matches with all the possible cominations available. In fact, you would expect it.






Also we have only one man word for it apperently, so we do not reallly know how accurate the translations are. This is espcially suspicous when it is only dealing with past events. When you know what results you want it would seem much simpler to find them.

One of the people on the program (didn't catch his name) kept refering to his computer program, that was finding the matches
it would be very intresting to see what that program is actually doing.

[Correa Neto]

The way the "research" is done, IMHO, it will always come with some "significant" result for a simple reason- biased data selection. Lets see if the Bible says something about mankind reaching the Moon... They make a search for "moon", and chances are they´ll find "man" and "bird" (and even interpret it as meaning "eagle"- oh, you know, wings, beaks and feathers, after all) and "fire"-> I SEE THE LIGHT! Its a prediction about men landing on the Moon on a fire eagle, it has to be the rocket that placed the Eagle lander on course towards the Moon! The truth is that all the data (words) that did not fit their hypothesis are dumped (much more words that have nothing to do with the issue, say, "fish", "olive", etc).

And they would certainly find predictions about the shuttle disasters, USA´s war against Iraq, last world soccer cup results and so on... And probably they would also find prophecies on Danielle Steel´s books...

There´s another thing that must be taken in to account-

In terms of historical significance, why there are so many "landmarks" in the XX and XXI centuries? For example, was Kennedy´s death so important that God wrote about it?

[tracer]

Originally posted by Correa Neto
In terms of historical significance, why there are so many "landmarks" in the XX and XXI centuries? For example, was Kennedy´s death so important that God wrote about it?
Because every generation wants to believe that they are the "special" generation.

It's why nearly every gloom-and-doom end-of-the-world prophecy seems to place Armageddon within the lifetime of the reader. (Including the Book of Revelation -- it's clear from the text that the author predicted the Second Coming would happen within his own lifetime.)

[Iamme]

It's easy to see how any poster can conclude that first, Drosnin looks up Kennedy, to see if it's there...and lo and behold, it is. But keep this in mind; Kennedy is spelled out in sequential letter spacings. But what is intriquing is when very important supporting words to the event are also not only on the page, of not all that many letters...but they TOO are sequentially spaced!

Your belief in all this has to first of all, hinge on the belief that Drosnin is telling the truth on everything. I don't know ancient Hebrew. I have to take his, and his schooled cohort's word for this. (The guy is some professor at some University in Israel)Then...you have to see if, in your minds eye, the supporting words to the main name and/or event are remarkable. If you found, let's say, Kennedy, Oswald, and Dallas, all on one page containing only a few hundred letters, and each of those words were sequentially spaced...would not you think this is quite remarkable?

[tracer]

Originally posted by Iamme
It's easy to see how any poster can conclude that first, Drosnin looks up Kennedy, to see if it's there...and lo and behold, it is. But keep this in mind; Kennedy is spelled out in sequential letter spacings. But what is intriquing is when very important supporting words to the event are also not only on the page, of not all that many letters...but they TOO are sequentially spaced!
Yes, the supporting words on the same grid as "Kennedy" are also sequentially spaced ... but not necessarily with the same sequential spacing as "Kennedy" was!

F'rinstance, suppose "Kennedy" was found by reading every fifteenth Hebrew letter somewhere in the Book of Isaiah. Then, Drosnin would make a grid 15 Hebrew letters wide and some 10-20 Hebrew letters high. "Kennedy" would, of course, be found in this grid as a word spelled out vertically. Drosnin then performs a Hebrew word search, just like you get in those little puzzle books. "Dallas" might be spelled on an upper-left-to-lower-right diagonal, meaning the word was sequentially spaced every sixteenth letter. "Killed" might be spelled on an upper-right-to-lower-left diagonal, meaning it was sequentially spaced every fourteenth letter.

And Drosnin doesn't limit himself to the rectilinear diagonals, either -- he can "find" words in this grid by circling letters on shallow slanty diagonals like this:

C B C D E F G H I J K L M N O K
A B C D A F G H I J K L M N O E
A B C D E F G H R J K L M N O N
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O N
G B C D E U G H I J K N M N O E
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O D
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O Y... where the red letters represent the word "car" sequentially spaced every nineteenth letter, occurring in the same grid as "Kennedy" spaced every fifteenth letter. Or he can skip letters on the same line and come up with hits like this:

G B C D E U G H I J K N M N O E... which represents the word "gun" sequentially spaced every fifth letter in the same grid.


Doesn't look quite so miraculous now, does it?

And again, remember, he's not finding "Kennedy" and "Dallas", he's finding vowel-less Hebrew words like "KNNDY" and "DLLS", which are shorter.

[Marvel Frozen]

Your belief in all this has to first of all, hinge on the belief that Drosnin is telling the truth on everything. I don't know ancient Hebrew. I have to take his, and his schooled cohort's word for this. (The guy is some professor at some University in Israel)Then...you have to see if, in your minds eye, the supporting words to the main name and/or event are remarkable. If you found, let's say, Kennedy, Oswald, and Dallas, all on one page containing only a few hundred letters, and each of those words were sequentially spaced...would not you think this is quite remarkable?

I might think it was remarkable if there was only one "page", however, he has millions, if not billions of potentential pages to search from. Suddenly, it's no longer so remarkable.

[Scott Wheeler]

I believe a famous baseball player once said that predictions are hard to make, especially about the future.

[BNiles]

Originally posted by Scott Wheeler
I believe a famous baseball player once said that predictions are hard to make, especially about the future.

I'm pretty sure it was Yogi Berra.

I saw this show too, and was completely unimpressed. Especially with the 1.5 minute coverage of the guy who did the same thing with Moby Dick. If I'm not mistaken, didn't someone on the show say that maybe God wrote Moby Dick too?

And why, if they are using Hebrew to search, are they finding the English equivalent words. Has anyone looked for Spanish or French? How about Swahili? Oh I forgot...God only speaks English nowadays. :rolleyes:

[Scott Wheeler]

Yogi Berra is one of my favorite philosophers. It's good to see more people realizing that English is the official language of heaven. Every creationist knows this is a fact. Is it me or is there something fishy about the sun being created on the third day as it says in Genesis?

[WildCat]

Yogi Berra quotes:

"When you come to a fork in the road....Take it"

"It gets late early out here"

"If the people don't want to come out to the ballpark, nobody's going to stop them"

"Never answer an anonymous letter"

"It's deja vu all over again"

"You can observe a lot by watching"

"I usually take a two hour nap from one to four"

"We made too many wrong mistakes" (on why the Yankees lost the 1960 World Series)

"The future ain't what it used to be"

"It ain't over 'til it's over"

And finally...
"I didn't really say everything I said"

:D

[Iamme]

Hmmmmm! I think everyone should go to the site that google offers up when you type in "Bible Code" (no quotes necessary). Onj the first page that comes up, scroll down a little and click into the site about Moby Dick. I read several of the illustrations. I'll be. Just like the Bible Code. So, it looks like the Bible Code is not as phenomenally strange as it's made out to be. They've done basically the same thing with Moby Dick. How embarrassing. Not for me. For Drosnin, and that professor that helped him.

Thanks tracer, for your illustrations above.

[lilac]

It's all just another Nostradamus, isn't it? It's easy to see patterns and prophecies in hindsight, isn't it?

This may be someone wasting years on researching something that is basically a more intricate version of seeing faces, bears and bunnies in cloud formations.

Lilac

[Iamme]

lilac---There are indeed many a persons who have wasted entire LIVES on some useless endeavor. Some Fulton's Folly, if you will.

I think that the self-taught electrical engineer, by the name of Joe Newman is such a case in point. The poor guy. What would you do, if after say 40 years of resarch, protypes, etc., you discovered the flaw in your thinking. And here, for all those years, you thought you were smarter than the professionals, and had discovered something that the entire science community had somehow overlooked. This is what an ego can do. it's like a punishment from God. This would then become that person's living hell.

[bouch]

One simple question about the "Bible Code"...

Hebrew is read right to left, English left to right, correct?

So, in Tracers example...

C B C D E F G H I J K L M N O K
A B C D A F G H I J K L M N O E
A B C D E F G H R J K L M N O N
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O N
G B C D E U G H I J K N M N O E
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O D
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O Y

Shouldn't we be looking right to left? We wouldn't see "CAR" unless it was oriented the other way...

A B C D E F G H C J K L M N O K
A B C D A F G H I J K L M N O E
R B C D E F G H I J K L M N O N
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O N
G B C D E U G H I J K N M N O E
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O D
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O Y

[zakur]

Originally posted by bouch
One simple question about the "Bible Code"...

Hebrew is read right to left, English left to right, correct?

So, in Tracers example...

Shouldn't we be looking right to left? We wouldn't see "CAR" unless it was oriented the other way...They find words in any orientation - left-to-right, right-to-left, up, down, diagonal. Just another reason why the theory is bunk.

I seldom refer anyone to Christianity Today, but even they say Bible codes are bunk:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/9t8/9t8060.html

[Dogwood]

I think the main problem with the "Bible Code", is that there is no actual "code". There is no formula, no standard, no rules, just an arbitrarily chosen line length, and a lonely man playing acrostics all day.

[Iamme]

zakur---It's easy, to make it sound foolish, the way you did in your post above. But you have to remember that the supporting words, when up, down, diagonal, forwards, backwards, or whatever, are also sequenced, under the same page that was sequenced for the first word that was asked for. It does strike ones self (me, anyway) as being rather odds-on-against for such a thing to happen. Especially if a number of words, (say from 3 to 6 words) truly are quite specifically supportive of the asked for word.

A made up, but a typical, example of this would be if you allowed a computer to sequence a book until it found the words "collapsed towers". Once this sequence is derived, you no longer can change the rules. You can't change the sequence pattern. Now, you have only one small page printed out that shows "collapsed towers" on it. But it becomes hauntingly eery if you also find, in a sequence pattern, "New York". And MORE spooky to find in a straight line, also sequenced , the words "two"...and the words "planes". Creepy.

But...as I said in a previous post...I am no longer impressed, because they were able to show pretty good similar examples of this in the book Moby Dick.

What is so impressive about this is that they not only find the supporting words....they find all the words, also sequenced, in only say 2-300 letters. That seems odd to me.

[Dogwood]

In my old lab, we used to look at amino acid sequences of various proteins to see what we could find (the 20 prevelant amino acids all have one letter abbreviations, obviously, six shy of the full alphabet). We found our own names frequently, or darn close, plus those of people we knew. Plus other words, (we frequently looked for dirty ones). It was quite amazing really, and we never had to bother with looking for backward words or diagonal ones.

[xouper]

Iamme: ... It does strike ones self (me, anyway) as being rather odds-on-against for such a thing to happen.Perhaps that's because some mathematical illusions are better than others. :)

[BNiles]

The other question I have about this is how they deiced what word to use initially. For example, they used "Man on the Moon" and found the other stuff. Why not Apollo, or Lunar Lander, or Neal Armstrong? Why does one work and not the others?

I also noticed that when searching for "Kennedy" they found info for John not Bobby. When they searched for Bobby they used "R.F. Kennedy". How did they come about this distinction?

Why not "JFK" or "John F. Kennedy" or "Jack Kennedy"? Probably because they did try them, but didn't find anything else with them.

Now if they used "Presidential Assassination" and then found Kennedy and Lincoln and maybe Reagan, I might stand up and pay attention.

[tracer]

What I wanna know is, what about all the other "hidden" words in the same grid that don't have anything to do with the original word/phrase being searched for, or which stand in direct contradiction to the word/phrase being searched for? E.g., I'll bet if you looked, you could find a grid that contained "Kennedy" and "Survived", or "Hitler" and "Nice guy".

[bozothedeathmachine]

Holy crap, it's so true!!!

I searched for some code about the Kennedy assasination in a book and found THOUSANDS!!!!!!!!!!!

Here's the book:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0738846090/ref=pd_sbs_b_1/103-9527651-7888635?v=glance&s=books

[Iamme]

tracer---Good point.

(i.e., Kennedy...Oswald...didn't do it) :D

[WildCat]

BTW, did anyone here notice the Bible Code author's defense of it in the Letters section of Scientific American this month?

[Psi Baba]

Originally posted by Iamme
Now, you have only one small page printed out that shows "collapsed towers" on it. But it becomes hauntingly eery if you also find, in a sequence pattern, "New York". And MORE spooky to find in a straight line, also sequenced , the words "two"...and the words "planes". Creepy.

I'm not sure why you keep using this example. I think you are confusing the fake Nostradamus quatrain that was floating around shortly after 9/11 as Bible Code. It's bad enough that for centuries people have been concocting hopelessly contrived interprations of his quatrains, but now people are getting so lazy that they just make one up instead.

[tracer]

People have made up Nostradamus quatrains before. The infamous quatrain that supposedly mentions "Hitler" (or "Hister" or some other Hitler-sounding word) actually does not contain any word that even remotely resembles "Hitler". This was a propaganda myth started by one of Churchill's guys, because they'd heard that Hitler believed in Nostradamian propecy.

[Dunstan]

This piece of trash is re-airing this afternoon. I really love:

(1) the part where the author claims that he has scientifically, logically, proven the existence of God through the laws of physics;

(2) the part where one believer goes on about how it the code could have been put there by time travellers. Or aliens. Or alien time travellers. Right. Because that's what I'd do if time travel existed: go back and plant messages in a code so obscure that it can't be used to make predictions because you never know what you're looking for until it's already happened. And I'd be particularly sure to plant messages about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, because that's critical information for people of the past to get. Um, after it's already happened. Yeah, that's the ticket.

(3) the voiceover noting that "some skeptics" believe that the Bible was written by humans. Yeah, it's only those crazy skeptics.

[Sword_Of_Truth]

Am I the only one who can see "Professor" Steven Jones doing this with the Book of Mormon?

[Dunstan]

Oh, they finally got to a future prediction! The bible code predicts that a comet will annihilate Earth in 2012.

Oh, but it also predicts that "I" (God, I guess, or else our time-travelling alien friends) will destroy the comet in 2012.

So not matter what happens in 2012, the Bible code will be right! Awesome.

[gumboot]

They make a search for "moon", and chances are they´ll find "man" and "bird" (and even interpret it as meaning "eagle"- oh, you know, wings, beaks and feathers, after all) and "fire"-> I SEE THE LIGHT! Its a prediction about men landing on the Moon on a fire eagle, it has to be the rocket that placed the Eagle lander on course towards the Moon! The truth is that all the data (words) that did not fit their hypothesis are dumped (much more words that have nothing to do with the issue, say, "fish", "olive", etc).



This pattern can be seen perfectly in ole Nostro's "predictions". The exact same passage was used to predict both the assassination of JFK and Bobby, AND 9/11 (something about "two brothers struck down by lightning...blah blah blah")

In each case they didn't take the entire passage, they took the bits that fitted.

When you see what you're really working with, these "predictions" are always obscure, and can be twisted or bent to fit practically any event you want them to...

And I've always wondered why these guys all, without fail, predict a series of events from the 1960's onwards that are only really overly important to the USA. Meanwhile they tend to ignore a few other important events that occured around the world AFTER their document was written...

You know...

The Persian Empire
Alexander the Great
The Roman Empire
The Diaspora
The Crusades
The Black Death
The Reformation
The Spanish Inquisition
Discovery of the New World
Anglo-Spanish War
Napoleonic Wars
World War One
World War Two

Most of the events above contained numerous individual events that were far more significant than some of the silly events predicted by God and so forth...

-Andrew

[David Swidler]

Orthodox Jews who are sufficiently knowledgeable put no stock in the codes as an indicator of divine authorship.

Hebrew's a pretty flexible language, phonetically. Part of that stems from the fact that there are no vowel characters in Biblical Hebrew, and two of the vowel sounds ("oh" and "oo") can appear with or without a silent consonant that "carries" them. There are also terminal consonants - especially the letter "heh" - that have no phonetic contribution when they appear at the end of a word. The same word can appear in different places in the bible with more than one spelling, with or without these "extra" characters.

The Talmud itself nips the idea of codes in the bud: "We are not experts in the 'extra' or 'missing' letters." In other words, 1500 years ago the Rabbis stated openly that the string of characters that constitutes Scripture is not reliably the same as the original text(s).

[The Fool]

Holy crap, it's so true!!!

I searched for some code about the Kennedy assasination in a book and found THOUSANDS!!!!!!!!!!!

Here's the book:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0738846090/ref=pd_sbs_b_1/103-9527651-7888635?v=glance&s=books
that is amazing. On the cover of that book are the words Kennedy and assasination in a strict sequence! It can't just be a fluke...