silly bible codes

[zoul]

Bible codes are silly
It’s an enormous word search game. Not a code at all, depending on the dimension of the grid given take every word out of the bible and stick it in a grid. Finding words is a matter of searching all the given letters in straight lines up down from left to right or right to left and diagonals. Completely random words could be found and linked to anything else you could find, and with hindsight, linked to anything to prove whatever has already happened.
I suppose if you took the lord of the rings trilogy and did the same thing no doubt you could find many more facts or patterns or whatever. Maybe Gray’s Anatomy would bring many more findings than the bible, depending on how gullible the searcher is. The theist will say, “Ha bible code it’s in the bible so it must be true” while people with more analytical minds will see the codes for what they are. Lets say someone found in this word search the words BUSH DEATH BY SNIPER and lets face it using the right grid and a book the size of the bible you could easily find these four words, what do you do? Ring the White House? What about finding in this giant word search things like THERE IS NO GOD or words to that effect? I should think using this word search I could find “evidence” and I use the word loosely, that I should rule the planet. I think I’ll try telling that to the theist’s. Hey it’s in the bible codes so it must be true.
PS. Who is this Michael Drosnin?
Zoul

[Mark]

Hey,

I'm a Christian and I believe that the Bible is true. But, like you, I don't believe in the so-called "Bible Codes" for exactly the reason you give.

Some people will do anything for money, eh?

His,
Mark.

[Yaw]

Incidentally, there actually is a Jewish tradition of seeing the bible as a code. The major difference is that is doesn't work the same way as the "Bible Code" people want it to.

Yes, any sufficiently long book will contain phrases that seem to make predictions after the fact, when analyzed in the method "The Bible Code" proposes. I believe people have found them in "War and Peace", and Tolstoy certainly didn't claim to be a prophet. So "The Bible Code" is silly in that way. Which doesn't even get into the language question -- are they finding these things in the original Hebrew? In a translation? Which translation? What language are these so-called prophecies being found in? And so on.

The Jewish tradition involves Hebrew only, first of all, so avoids the translation difficulties. It also doesn't try to make prophecies. Rather, people involved in that would permute the letters in one word to form another, which they would consider equivalent. Alternately, each Hebrew letter also has a numerical equivalent, so they'd consider words with the same numerical equivalent to be associated. It's a rather strange art that doesn't really have much of a hold even in Judaism -- the person historically most associated with this sort of thing, Rabbi Abraham Abulafia (who lived in Spain in the 12th Century), was (and still is) sort of considered a heretic. He was a rather interesting fellow, who even went so far as to travel to Rome to attempt to convert the Pope to Judaism!

[ck]

is their actually a bible code site out of curiousity?

[zoul]

well i typed in biblecodes in my browser and found thousands of them. so i read maybe 2 and came to the conclusions seen above ;D.

[kaeis]

I'm going to browse for 'bible codes' now... Although, I think its a load of mist.

[Maverick]

ck said:

is their actually a bible code site out of curiousity?

There is a book called "The Bible Code" by Michael Drosnin. The author claims that the Hebrew Bible contains some kind of complex code that prophesied events that happened thousands of years after the Bible was written.

But, as Yaw already stated, you could use Drosnin's methods on any book that has enough pages and come up with predictions for the future.

I haven't finnished reading it yet, but here is an article about the book by the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP): www.csicop.org/si/9711/bible-code.html. It describes the claims of the book in greater detail.

[Mark]

Incidently, why on earth would God (who says He loves us and who offers us grace freely) make it so difficult for us to find these codes?

I don't believe it fits His character (from what I read in my Bible). God communicates simply yet powerfully, not in hidden and contrived methods that take thousands of years to find.

His,
Mark.

[KEvb0]

I believe there is a book called the Divinci Code which is similar to this idea.

Anyone see the movie pi? Part of it has to do with these ultra-religious jews trying to decode the torrah (sp?)

[Yaw]

I haven't seen "pi", although the scene you mentioned does sound accurate on its face. It's a minority view in Judaism that they are representing, though.

To take off on what Mark said, this is an area where Jewish and Christian thought diverges. Jewish tradition is that although the Torah can be (and is) read literally, it is more important to interpret it. There are extensive collections of biblical commentary that attempt to relate things in the Torah to life in general. These "midrash" are quite different in nature from what you would consider a sermon -- they generally take very specific sentences and interpret them based on the word structure, the order of the words, etc. The "decoding" is a rather extreme form of this that, again, forms a very minor viewpoint. Also interesting is the fact that Jews think the Torah to be endlessly interpretable. New interpretations are highly valued...as long as they don't undermine basic beliefs.

In other words, Jews don't see it as a choice between simple and complex meaning. There's significant amounts of both. And Drosnin's "Bible Codes" are still silly.

[AuntieSocial]

I've been invited to (and have accepted on occasion) indepth studies and interpretation discussions of the Torah (okay, so it was PalTalk, how indepth can you get?). One thing that I greatly admire is how seriously the Jewish people take the study of their faith. They really know their holy texts. To have an hour+ discussion on the preamble to a particular Psalm was a bit much for me, though.

[Mistwalker]

Of course it's ridiculous. These "hidden messages" not only can be found in any book of legnth, but these are from the TRANSLATED version of the bible. There are many different versions of the english bible, which have conflicting parts, and more importantly, different words, and therefore different sets of letters, and would yield different "hidden messages". You can do this with the bible, with the dictionary, or with Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings.

People who believe this should be dopeslapped, and soon.

[Acriku]

I think it'd be worth it to download a bible coder and find the words THERE IS NO GOD as close as possible, and show that to the bible-code-advocates. ;D

[Jewel]

I think I'm going to grab a big OLD book & find some random codes in there too. I'm SURE Shakespeare was a prophet...lemme just go prove it.

I think he mentions "out out damned spot." That represents the end of the world. We are the spot & we are going to be OUT like a light. LOL

Have I made any point at all?

JM

[BaalShemRa]

Yaw,

"as long as they don't undermine basic beliefs."

The 13 principles?

I'd say the Reform and the Reconstructionnists and emmbers of Humanistic Judaism have undermined RAMBAM's 13 by their interpretations. What about them? How valued are their interpretations?

Who gets to decide what the basic beliefs are anyway? It's not like there's a Vatican and if a pork eating homosexual calls himself observant, no one can incontrovertibly tell him he's not, right?


Auntie,
"One thing that I greatly admire is how seriously the Jewish people take the study of their faith."

The Orthodox do, but if you were to take the average ashkenazi/mizrahi at the street corner, do you think he would even be a regular synagogue goer? Think he'd be a regular at a yeshiva?

According to the 2001 American Jewish Identity Survey, MAYER, Ergon, KOSMIN, Barry, KEYSAR, Ariela, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York ( where "Jew" was defined in the broadest possible way for their sample ): 51% of respondents considered themselves Jewish by religion, 40% as Jews by parentage, 3% by upbringing, 2% considered self Jewish only with the remaining 2% institutionalised.

That is not glaring piety amongst the Ashkenazim and Mizrahim..

Google it.