You can spend hours, days, weeks, months, or years researching this phenomena. Even if you're a skeptic, the mathematical likelihood of meaningful words finding their way so closely in certain texts is mind boggling. I'm amazed at what has been found in the Torah so far, but I can't bring myself to fully consider myself a believer in Bible Codes. I guess I'm a little wavering on the subject, but whether or not you believe in Bible Codes, the following discovery will certainly leave you curious. This is what was found in the Torah (specifically, Genesis 32, 34-36, 44), regarding the Oklahoma City bombing:


Murrah Building, Torn to pieces, Killed, Desolated, Slaughtered, Death, Oklahoma, Terrible frightening death, There will be terror, His name is Timothy, McVeigh, Day 19, On the ninth hour, In the morning, He ambushed, He pounced, Terror


In order to make sense of the above, I recommend you research the subject matter. All of these words or phrases were found closely lumped together, using Equidistant Lettering Sequence (ELS), which is the cryptanalysis formula used by Bible Code enthusiasts.

Well, do you believe in a Bible Code?

Not in my opinion. You could do that with any large body of text...Just keeping banging away at it with different algorithms until parts of it make sense.

On the other hand, I love plays on words, puns, cryptograms, etc, and I find odd things in all sorts of stuff...I've even been known to incorporate it in my own writings.

When you start looking for stuff like that, you'll see it more often. Those guys have just taken it to the next level of complexity.

A quick read of Wiki's entry on it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_code#Criticism) confirms that people much smarter than me have figured this out too.

You can make up your own mind though.

Just keep in mind that others may look at you funny when you bring it up.

Or...Tell everybody, I don't care.

See? This is easy.

Everybody can do it.

Not in my opinion. You could do that with any large body of text...Just keeping banging away at it with different algorithms until parts of it make sense.

On the other hand, I love plays on words, puns, cryptograms, etc, and I find odd things in all sorts of stuff...I've even been known to incorporate it in my own writings.

When you start looking for stuff like that, you'll see it more often. Those guys have just taken it to the next level of complexity.

A quick read of Wiki's entry on it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_code#Criticism) confirms that people much smarter than me have figured this out too.

You can make up your own mind though.

Just keep in mind that others may look at you funny when you bring it up.

Or...Tell everybody, I don't care.

See? This is easy.

Everybody can do it.
That was awesome! :bow:

Add me to the non-believer in Bible code group. My study of the Bible for the the past 16 years would probably be greater that most if a survey was taken although I am far from an expert. Many people have found meaning in word groupings, numerology, and even the significance of certain colors mentined in the Bible. My understanding is the God reveals understanding as he sees fit based on prayerful study, discussion with others, and seeking the counsel of others who have studied the Bible and provided commentarty without having any persona lagenda. The Bible can be read as history or as a great novel but that is not maximizing personal benefit.

i do believe in the bible, but not in a bible code. as it's been stated, one can use pretty much any large text and sift through it in such a way that 'prophecy' is found. i've seen reports where similar results are produced from a copy of moby dick.

-M

I'm going to put myself in the "no" camp.

I am a born-again believer in Christ, and have come to realize the Bible explains itself pretty plainly when it comes to Christ's purpose. Although in His wisdom He surely could have embedded a code or secret symbolism within it for some purpse, what message would have been more important than an individual's personal reconciliation to God through the atoning death, burial, and resurrection of His Son?

Now, there are clearly certain symbologies in the Bible that are significant; the representation of 7 as the number of perfection; 40 days of cleansing and atonement; blood as a cleansing agent (in animal sacrifice in Old Testament times; Christ's blood in New Testament times), etc. There's also passages in the Bible that make it clear that Christ purposely spoke in parables that some people would not understand, but I don't consider those to be in the same vein of a "buried code" wherein we try to apply cryptographic techniques to recognize certain patterns of symbols and syntax. That might be an interesting study, but you have to be careful to keep them in context of warnings in the latter part of Hebrews about being distracted by diverse doctrines.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the critical message of the Bible isn't buried in code at all...

-soonerdave

I believe in bible codes no more than I believe in the bible itself.
A bunch of hooey made up to satisfy someones needs or wants.

How in the heck could there be such a thing? The Bible wasn't written in English! To derive meaning from the placement of letters in a book which at parts is a 3rd or 4th generation translation, in many parts being the result of an oral tradition not transcribed for thousands of years is just, for the lack of a better word, stupid.

Why Midtowner...where's your blind faith in the magical properties of the book? I'll pray for your cynical little soul.

Why Midtowner...where's your blind faith in the magical properties of the book? I'll pray for your cynical little soul.

Doesn't that book also say something about worshiping false idols?

Do people worship the Bible now at the exclusion of Christ?

Dude, don't you read bumper stickers? "The bible said it, I believe it and that settles it!"

i don't believe that a translation of the bible is being used, though. the source text used is generally the original hebrew. the encoded words are in hebrew, names are phonetic renderings. not defending the practice, just setting the facts straight.

-M

Doesn't that book also say something about worshiping false idols?

Do people worship the Bible now at the exclusion of Christ?

Midtowner!!!!
Probably the most profound post I've seen on any religion centered post.
Very well said!!!!!!!

I know I'll probably get slammed for this, but I do think the Bible Code is very real, and at the very least POSSIBLE. Most people base the code off of Daniel 12:9 And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words [are] closed up and sealed till the time of the end.

Bible codes are not a reliable basis for making predictions. Their real purpose is to authenticate the Bible as a book of a divine, supernatural origin.

As mmm said, the crytograms or ELS are done with the original translations of the bible in Hebrew. I know others have mentioned that you can do some sort of algorhtym with any text. While that is true, there have been proven fallacies with the sequences in every other book except the Hebrew Bible. Moby Dick had the least number of fallacies for any book that is not apart of the Bible. I believe the author and maker of life, the beginning and end, could have easily encrypted a secret code in his WORD far more than we'll ever understand. If you look at the events around us, it's easy to see where living in events described as the "last days" if your a believer. This secret code was impossible to unlock without the invention of the computer. Furthermore, it takes modern computers to make such calculations, etc. So, with this being said, it can be at least a POSSIBILITY that the code is real. Not only has the BIBLE CODE predicted or shown past events, but it has also predicted future events. If you follow the story of the BIBLE CODE, you will know that it was founded by an ATHEIST, someone who didn't even believe there was a GOD. As I said, I encourage someone at best to at least read more in depth about it before you come to a conclusion. At best, it could be a possibility. The events it has predicted in Hebrew text have come to pass, so you can't say it's not at least somewhat true.

I leave you with this quote from the book:


What rigid coping mechanisms people deploy. Curiously, some fundamentalist Christians shudder at the thought that new truths might be unearthed from their sacred book. If they believe that God wrote the Bible, wouldn’t they also have confidence that God controlled whatever codes might exist within it?

Rigidity isn’t limited to the religious right, however. The intellectual elite of our age have a gut jerk reaction to anything that hints that the Bible might be more than a revered collection of myths. What if some of the codes were so outrageously improbable that we are left staring at the inescapable conclusion that some of them must be intentional? Perish the thought! Surely such an affront to the wisdom of this age must lack all substance. Who needs to test such a hypothesis? It cannot be true. Isn’t that self-evident? Therein the enlightened dogmas of the elite show forth their bulldog tendencies.

Many suspect there must be an infinite number of codes that could be extracted from any text. Therefore, you can find as a code whatever you are looking for. This is a neat way to take a leap of intuition and land squarely on your assumptions. In reality, the number of codes that can be extracted from the Bible is very much less than infinite—large though it is.

Whatever happened to the honest search for truth? Even though scientific testing of this phenomena is very straight-forward, there is only dogma-serving rhetoric. What differs is the breed of dogma. Is it religious or enlightened?

In the past three years books by atheists, Jews and Christians have been published on the controversy. Some Jews use the codes to “prove” that Jesus was a false messiah while some Christians use other codes to “prove” the exact opposite. This leaves the impression that Bible codes could buttress any perspective. If we limit ourselves to those few codes that are astonishing, however, this seeming contradiction disappears. When we do that, we find that many codes that have been characterized as amazing are highly likely to be coincidental—the kind you could find in about any book in any language. There is no point wasting time studying such things.

What has totally astonished me, however, is that many clusters of codes are so improbable that there is no way that all of them could be coincidental. This is my conclusion as a professional mathematician. It is also that of other mathematics professors. We aren’t talking here about opinions, but about cold, hard calculations and readily available evidence.

When something is a one-in-a-million long shot, we can still argue that long shots do happen. When the odds are less than one in a trillion times a trillion, and there are several clusters that are far more unlikely than that, coincidence fails as an explanation.

That quote from the book is nothing but ad hominem attacks on people that disagree with it's author. It presents no argument other than pretty much: I'm a mathematician so you should believe me.

That man's opinions are NOT fact. Sure, he's got some mathematicians to back him up, but I'm sure there's an army of mathematicians that disagree with him as well...With equally good proofs.

Actually the attempts to experimentally discredit that I've read have pretty much failed. I was pretty skeptical when I first read about it but I have to admit I find the experimental results more convincing than I ever imagined. It isn't clear to me how one would prove it. It shouldn't be that hard to disprove and yet it remains thus far. Of course, my degree is in Physics and we do things like estimate the mass of the universe and add indeterminable constants to make our formula work.

"When my critics find a message about the assassination of a prime minister encrypted in Moby Dick, I'll believe them." -- Michael Drosnin (Challenge made in Newsweek, Jun 9, 1997)

Moby Dick Codes (http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/moby.html)

"When my critics find a message about the assassination of a prime minister encrypted in Moby Dick, I'll believe them." -- Michael Drosnin (Challenge made in Newsweek, Jun 9, 1997)

Moby Dick Codes (http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/moby.html)

Who gets to lay out the text? I've read Moby Dick, and I assure you the text was not laid out in uniform blocks like that at all.

Who gets to lay out the text? I've read Moby Dick, and I assure you the text was not laid out in uniform blocks like that at all.

Really?

I bet the bible is...Otherwise, it would throw the whole algorithm of the bible code all...out...of.......OH.

People's fascination with the Bible Code always struck me as kinda odd. Looking for secrets beyond the scripture is kinda like missing the trees for the forest. If people would read scripture for all it's worth, they'd quickly realize that the most crucial information is in plain English (translated, of course), not in some cryptic message that could possibly, maybe, perhaps mean something.

I should have hung onto my secret decoder ring........

I think its a total load of crap. Ask yourself, which translation of the bible does that code work on, which itteration from the past, which version from thousands of years ago? Hmmm.

People can make the bible say whatever they want it to say...hence fundamentalism.

They did it with Moby Dick!