102
The Mysterious Hebrew Codes
Conclusive Proof that Man did NOT Write the Bible?
by Grant R. Jeffrey
What follows is a short commentary made by the NCCG.ORG website author's initial enthusiastic response made in 1997 that expresses his opinion at that time. It is followed immediately afterwards by Grant Jeffrey's article. You will find a link at the end of this article to the website author's opinion that followed 25 years later after once again reviewing the considerably large amount of data accumulated in the intervening years. Be sure to take a look at that afterwards. The original 1997 review remains unaltered to, in the absence of any revelation on the subject, provide contrast to how wrong assumptions can lead to false conclusions.
These scientific conclusions didn't just rock the boat
of the scientific community -- they capsized it.
Foreword
On or about New Year's Day folk in the Western Word
traditionally make "New Year Resolutions" to improve some aspect
of their life. This year I made mine -- to abandon a
semi-liberal school of theology which I had embraced for the
past ten years which taught that the revelation of the
Scriptures was basically conceptual in origin and that the
prophets and other writers of the Biblical record had merely
expressed in their own words what God had revealed to them in
"mind pictures". During the night of 29/30 December 1996 I
wrestled with the material which is presented in this booklet
(together with other material which is not reproduced here) and
concluded that I had fundamentally misjudged the Word of God. As
an educator, biochemist and systems analyst, I was forced to
face the incontrovertible facts, namely, that many parts of the Bible (like the Pentateuch)
were not
only an infallible word for word revelation written by God
Himself through human agencies but that it is letter for letter
infallible also.
I pray that the following article will impress you as much as it
did me. Though I have been a Christian for the past 18 years I
consider now to have even better rationalistic grounds for the
profession of my faith. Whether you have ever seriously
considered the existence of God or not, I hope that this article
will prove to be a first or an ongoing stimulus to do so. I am
sharing this not to force anyone to believe (for "he who is
convinced against his will, remains unconvinced still") but to
encourage you to search further. It took advanced computer
technology to make the following revelation possible...and alot
of hard work.
Two thousand years ago Jesus the Messiah taught that if a man or
woman seeks, he or she will find. The operative word is "seek"
which means to "actively search". I hope that you will take up
the challenge.
Våler, Østfold, Norway, 1 January 1997
For a simpler version of this article, see
The Mystery of the Hidden Bible Codes Explained
"It is the glory of God to conceal a matter,
but the glory of kings is to search out a matter."
Proverbs 25:2
Recently, researchers in Israel discovered a staggering
phenomena of hidden codes beneath the Hebrew text of the Old
Testament that reveal an astonishing knowledge of future events
and personalities that cannot be explained unless God inspired
the writers to record His precise words. The material is
possibly the most important evidence I will present in the book
that will prove to any unprejudiced observer that the Scriptures
are truly inspired by God.
Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl, a brilliant Czechoslovakian Jewish
scholar in astronomy, mathematics, and Judaic studies, found an
obscure reference in a book by a fourteenth-century rabbi known
as Rabbeynu Bachayah that described a pattern on letters encoded
within the Torah. This discovery during the years before World
War I inspired Rabbi Weissmandl to begin exploring for other
examples of codes hidden within the Torah. During the war years
he found that he could locate certain meaningful words or
phrases, such as hammer and anvil, if he examined the letters at
sequences that were equally spaced in the Hebrew text. In other
words, if he found the first letter of significant word such as
Torah, and then, by skipping forward seven letters he found the
second letter of the word Torah, he continued to skip forward
the same number of letters to see whether or not the complete
word Torah was spelled out in the text at equally spaced
intervals. Rabbi Weissmandl described this phenomenon as
"equidistant letter sequences" (ELS). The rabbi was astonished
to find that an incredible number of significant words were
hidden in code within the text of the Torah at equally spaced
intervals. These spaced intervals between significant letters
varied from every five letters, every seven letters, and
numerous other intervals. However, once they found a particular
word spelled out at, say every 22nd letter, the balance of the
letters from the words in this group were also spaced at an
interval of every 22nd letter.
Initially, Rabbi Weissmandl could not be certain if this
phenomenon was truly significant or whether it was simply due to
the great number of possible combinations of words and phrases
that could occur by chance arrangement by skipping forward
various intervals of letters in the Hebrew text. The proof that
this phenomenon was evidence of a supernatural intelligence and
design was confirmed almost forty years later in Israel. The
invention of sophisticated computers and statistical analysis
was finally able to analyze the text of the Bible to prove that
these codes could not have been produced by random chance.
Although Rabbi Weissmandl found many coded names by simply
manually counting the letters in the text, he did not record his
discoveries in writing. Fortunately, some of his students did
record several examples of his code discoveries. Over the
following decades, students in Israel who had heard about his
research began searching the Torah for themselves to ascertain
whether or not such codes actually existed. Their discoveries
ultimately resulted in the research studies at Hebrew University
that have proven the validity of this research. The introduction
of sophisticated high-speed computers allowed Jewish scholars at
Hebrew University to explore the text of the Torah in ways that
previous generations could only dream about.
Equidistant Letter Sequences
A group of dedicated Jewish scholars in Israel, following up on
Rabbi Weissmandl's research, found many additional hidden codes
embedded within the text of the Torah. A paper called
Equidistant Letter Sequences in the Book of Genesis, was
published in 1988 in the scholarly Journal of the Royal
Statistical Society. This academic magazine is one of the most
prominent mathematical and scientific journals in the world. The
study was completed by Doron Witztum, Yoav Rosenberg, and
Eliyahu Rips at Hebrew University and the Jerusalem College of
Technology. This study has been republished in several other
respected scholarly journals recently, including Bible Review,
October 1995, and on the Internet. Their discoveries of complex
Hebrew codes that reveal supernatural and prophetic knowledge
about the future is causing tremendous consternation in the
academic community because it challenges the long-held beliefs
of liberal scholars who generally reject verbal inspiration of
the Bible.
This scientific discovery is earth-shaking in its consequences
because it reveals a staggering level of mathematical design and
intelligence which could only have been produced by a
supernatural mind, providing unshakable mathematical proof that
the Bible was truly inspired by God. The incredible data
demolishes forever the false claim by liberal scholars and
skeptics that the Bible was written and edited by uninspired men
and that it is full of errors and contradictions. Despite the
fact that numerous scholars and scientists have attempted to
challenge the validity of this Torah research, the evidence has
not been refuted.
Every Jot and Tittle
Jesus Christ, Himself, affirmed that the actual letters
composing the Scriptures were directly inspired by God and were
preserved in their precise order throughout eternity. "For
verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or
one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be
fulfilled" (Matthew 5:18). The English word jot is our
translation of the Greek word iota, the Greek letter i. This
iota is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew letter yod, which is
the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet. The word tittle is
the Greek work keraia, derived from the smallest Hebrew
grammatical symbol. Jesus Christ stated that even the smallest
of the letters and grammatical marks in the original text of the
Bible were directly inspired by God.
This intriguing statement by Jesus about the Scriptures has been
confirmed two thousand years later by means of an intricate
analysis of the Hebrew text of the Bible by mathematicians and
computer scientists in Israel. To their total surprise, these
researchers discovered that every single letter of the Torah
fits into a complicated tapestry of staggering mathematical
precision. In this regard we should remember the provocative
words found in Proverbs 25:2, "It is the glory of God to conceal
matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter."
This phenomenon of Hebrew codes was placed beneath the text of
the Bible thousands of years ago. However, it has been hidden
successfully by God until our generation. Many of these codes
could not have been discovered by manual examination of the
text. The invention of high-speed computers, developed in the
last twenty years, enabled the researchers to examine every
possible combination occurring in any of hundreds of possible
intervals (from every second letter to every 500th letter, for
example) throughout the millions of Hebrew letters in the Old
Testament. However, once detected by the computer program,
anyone can personally verify the existence of the code by
manually counting out the letters to see that a particular name
is spelled out by skipping the appropriate number of letters.
The Process of Analyzing the Torah
Using the ancient Hebrew textus receptus (the Masoretic text) of
the Torah, the scientists began by eliminating the spaces
between the Hebrew letters, words, and sentences throughout the
first five books of the Bible. The traditional Orthodox text was
written in this manner-without punctuation marks or spaces
between the letters, words, grammatical marks, or sentences. To
demonstrate what this would be like, let us take a sentence in
English and write it out as it would appear in an ancient Hebrew
manuscript.
THEBIBLEWASWRITTENINHEBREWWITHOUTPUNCTUATIONMARKS
To understand this sentence, we break it up with appropriate
spaces:
THE BIBLE WAS WRITTEN IN HEBREW WITHOUT PUNCTUATION MARKS
There is a curious tradition in the writings of the ancient
Jewish sages who claim that Moses first saw the Hebrew letters
of the Torah revealed in his vision on Mount Sinai as a
continuous sequence, without spaces between letters, composed of
letters of black fire appearing upon a background of white fire.
The sages wrote that Moses wrote these divinely revealed letters
one-by-one in the five books of the Law, the Torah, as he
recorded God's commands to Israel.
In their initial experiment, reported in their 1988 paper, the
scientists arbitrarily chose three hundred Hebrew work-pairs
that were logically related in meaning, such as hammer and
anvil, or tree and leaf, or man and woman. They asked the
computer program to locate any such word pairs in the Genesis
text. Once the computer found the first letters in Hebrew of
"hammer," it would look for the second letter at various
intervals or spaces between letters. If the program couldn't
locate the second letter of the target word "Hammer" following
the first letter at a two-space interval, it would then search
at a three-space interval, then a four-space interval, etc. Once
it located the second letter at, say, the twelve-space interval,
it would then look for the third letter at the same twelve-space
interval, and so on through the entire 78,064 Hebrew letters in
Genesis. The computer also looked for coded words by checking in
reverse order. Since the computer can compute millions of
calculations every second, the scientists could quickly examine
every 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th letter, for example. The sophisticated
computers could examine every one of millions of possible
combinations to discover encoded words that no human could ever
have found manually, including such words as Hitler, Berlin and
Sadat.
After the program had examined the text for each of the three
hundred word-pairs, the researchers were astonished to realize
that every single word-pair had been located in Genesis in close
proximity to each other. As mathematical statisticians, they
were naturally astounded because they knew it was humanly
impossible to construct such an intricate and complicated
pattern beneath a surface text, such as Genesis, which told the
history of the Jewish people. After calculating the
probabilities of this phenomenon occurring randomly by chance
alone, they published their calculations in their scientific
journal. The odds against the three hundred word pairs occurring
by chance in the text of Genesis are less than one chance in
fifty quadrillion. To express this number another way, it would
look like this: one chance in 50,000,000,000,000,000! Most
scientific journals consider an experimental result significant
if it exceeds the probability of one chance in twenty. The
bottom line is that only a supernatural intelligence, far beyond
our human capacity, could have produced the pattern of secretly
coded words found in the Bible.
More Surprises
As they studied this pattern the scientists discovered that many
of the coded words described future events and personalities in
human history, from ancient times until today. When they looked
at the string of Hebrew letters in Genesis 1:1, they counted
forward forty-nine letters from the letter , the first letter
(tav) of the Hebrew word Torah and found the second letter in
the word. Skipping forward another forty-nine letters they found
the third letter of the word Torah. Incredibly, the Hebrew word
Torah was spelled out using every fiftieth letter in the text.
To their surprise they found that the opening verse of Exodus,
the second book in the Bible, contained the same word Torah,
once again spelled out at the same fifty-letter intervals
beginning with the first appearance of the letter . However,
when they examined the opening verses of the third book of the
Bible, Leviticus, they did not find Torah encoded. However, they
did discover the word God was spelled out when they skipped
forward every eighth letter from the first letter yod that
appeared in the book.
Upon examining the initial verses of Numbers and Deuteronomy,
the fourth and fifth books of the Bible, the scientists again
found that the word Torah was encoded. In the Book of Numbers,
the word Torah is spelled out in reverse at a fifty-letter
interval. However, to their surprise, while the word Torah was
also found to be spelled out in reverse order in the Book of
Deuteronomy, it appeared at a forty-nine-letter interval
beginning with the fifth verse of the book.
Mathematicians calculated that the odds were more than three
million to one against the word Torah being encoded by chance
alone within the opening verses in the first five books of the
Bible. Bible students know that the number fifty is very
significant in Scripture. For example, God commanded Israel to
free their slaves and return family lands that had been pledged
to a lender on the fiftieth Year of Jubilee. In addition, the
Bible reveals that Law itself, the Torah, was presented to the
Jewish people at Mount Sinai by God precisely fifty days after
their miraculous Exodus from Egypt.
These coded words are interlaced in intricate patterns at evenly
spaced intervals in the text reading both forward and backward.
The scientists realized that these coded letters formed words
and associations of such complexity and design that it is
absolutely impossible that the patterns could have occurred by
chance.
It is fascinating to observe that the key word "Eden" is encoded
repeatedly sixteen times within the relatively short Genesis
2:4-10 passage of only 379 Hebrew letters dealing with the
Garden of Eden. The odds against sixteen "Edens" occurring by
chance in such a short passage is one chance in ten thousand.
Another fascinating feature of this phenomenon was found, in
Genesis 2, which deals with the Garden of Eden. Scientists found
twenty-five different Hebrew names of trees encoded within the
text of this one chapter. The laws of probability indicate that
the odds against this occurring are one hundred thousand to one
(Professor Daniel Michelson, Codes in the Torah). 25 Names of
Trees encoded in Hebrew in Genesis 2 Word Skip: wheat-5,
vine-18, grape-6, chestnut-44, forest-3, date-5, accacia-3,
bramble-7, cedar-5, nut-13, fig-14, willow-15, pomegranate-8,
aloe-6, tamarisk-2, oak-17, poplar -85, cassia-7, almond-5,
mastic-2, thorn-5, hazel-13, olive-3, citron-3, fir-8.
Thousands of detailed and precise patterns and codes such as
these were discovered hidden in the Hebrew text of the ancient
Scriptures. Mathematical and computer statisticians, after
exhaustive statistical analysis, concluded that this patter of
coded words could not have occurred by chance nor could a human
writer have purposely produced this phenomenon. Their conclusion
is that only a divine intelligence could have directed Moses to
record this precise text containing such complex codes thousand
of years ago.
Other Mysterious Codes Reveal God's Prophetic Foreknowledge
The scientists discovered that some of the words coded in the
text of the Torah concerned events and personalities that
occurred thousands of years after Moses wrote the text.
Naturally, many academics rejected out of hand the possibility
that this phenomenon could be real. However, despite many
attempts, no one could refute the data. They recently discovered
a pair of words - "Zedekiah", the last king of Judah in 587
B.C., when Jeremiah was a prophet, and "Matanya", which was king
Zedekiah's original name before he ascended the throne (2 Kings
24:17). Incredibly, they also found the word "Hanukkah", which
refers to the festival of lighting the Menorah that commemorates
the rededication of the Temple after it was recaptured from
Antiochus IV Epiphanes in 165 B.C. The word "Hanukkah" appears
near the word "Hasmoneans" which is the famous name of the
family of warriors led by Judias Maccabee, the Jewish general
who defeated the Syrian armies of King Antiochus IV Epiphanes.
How could the writer of Genesis have known about King Zedekiah
and the Festival of Hanukkah when the Book of Genesis was
written centuries before they occurred?
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat
Possibly the most astonishing of the phenomena recently
discovered involves codes that reveal events that occurred in
our generation. As one example, the name of the late Egyptian
President Anwar Sadat occurred together with the name of the
leader of the Moslem Brotherhood assassination team that killed
him. The same code sequence also contained the year of his
assassination, 1981, and the words "president", "gunfire",
"shot", and "murder". Incredibly, even the Hebrew word for
"parade" appears in this coded sequence. President Sadat was
assassinated during the president's review of a military parade
in 1981.
Adolph Hitler, the Nazis, and the Death Camps
Were Prophesied in the Bible
Truly one of the most incredible of the hidden codes is their
discovery of the words "Hitler", "Nazis" and names of several of
the actual death camps embedded within this text of the Book of
Deuteronomy: "For the Lord your God is God of gods, and Lord of
lords, a great God, a might, and a terrible, which regardeth not
persons, nor taketh reward: He doth execute the judgment of the
fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him
food and raiment. Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were
strangers in the land of Egypt. Thou shalt fear the Lord thy
God; him shalt thou serve, and to him shalt thou cleave, and
swear by his name. He is thy praise, and he is thy God, that
hath done for thee these great and terrible things, which thine
eyes have seen. Thy fathers went down into Egypt with threescore
and ten persons; and now the Lord thy God hath made thee as the
stars of heaven for multitude" (Deuteronomy 10:17-22).
In the Hebrew text of Deuteronomy 10:17-22 , the word "Hitler"
in Hebrew is spelled out at a twenty-two letter interval.
Beginning with the second last appearance of the Hebrew letter
(bet) in this passage, researchers counted every thirteenth
letter from left to right. To their amazement they discovered
that the coded letters spelled out the phrase, "b'yam marah
Auschwitz", which means, "in the bitter sea of Auschwitz". As
they carried the counting forward another thirteen letters they
came to the letter resh. From this resh, they counted every
twenty-second letter from left to right. To their amazement they
found the word "Hitler", the name of the greatest enemy of the
Jews in history, the one who almost conquered the Western World
in World War II. It was Hitler's satanic obsession against the
Chosen People that motivated him to create the Final Solution
which ultimately slaughtered over six-million Jews and another
six-million Poles and Russians in the murderous death camps in
Eastern Europe, such as Auschwitz. Amazingly, the actual names
of the Nazi concentration camps, "Auschwitz" and "Belsen", were
also encoded close to the word "Hitler" and "Berlin" in a
cluster of letters hidden within the text of this passage in
Deuteronomy.
Scientists found the Deuteronomy 33:16 also contained a hidden
message about the Nazi Holocaust. Beginning with the first
Hebrew letter mem , they counted every two hundred and
forth-sixth letter from left to right and found that the coded
letters spelled out the phrase, "Melek Natzim", which translates
as the "King of the Nazis". Another group of nearby letters
spelled out the phrase, "laiv m'Laivi" which means, "the heart
from Levi", referring to the Levites, one of the twelve tribes
of the Jews. Incredibly, this same passage yielded another
hidden code about the rise of Nazi Germany; the phrase "kemi
bait rah", "an evil house rose up".
One of the most fascinating of these Nazi codes appeared in
Deuteronomy 32:52. Beginning with the appearance of the first
letter aleph , the researchers counted from left to right every
six hundred and seventy letters throughout the passage, and
discovered the name "Aik'man", which is a Hebrew form of the
name "Eichmann". Adolph Eichmann was a Nazi official who
designed the Final Solution, the evil system of concentration
camps used in the Holocaust. Eichmann and Hitler were among the
greatest killers in history.
The whole series of hidden codes dealing with Nazi Germany ended
in Deuteronomy 33:21 with a final astonishing code. Beginning
with the letter resh that appeared in the word "Yisrael",
researchers counted every twenty-second letter from left to
right and found the tragic phrase "re'tzach alm" describing the
terrible sufferings of the Jews during the Holocaust, which
translated as "a people cry murder, slaughter". I have often
been asked by Jews about why the Bible's prophecies do not say
anything about the Holocaust, the worst event in the history of
God's Chosen People. Now we can see that God included these
coded words beneath the text of the Bible describing this
terrible time of persecution.
Skip Word(s)-------------------------50 the Holocaust
Found in the passage of Deuteronomy traditionally quoted as
foreshadowing the Holocaust- "and I will hide my face on that
day because of all the evil that you did for you turned to other
gods ..." (5 31 16). Other close word-pairs found on
HitlerWord(s)Skip Germany-153, Berlin-4, the troubler-9,
Nazi-12, he was a great hunter-1, the breaking of the Jews-153,
Hitler-31, Nazi-1, the butchery-14, for the heart of a man is
evil from his youth-1, Auschwitz-119, the Holocaust-2,
Holocaust-2.
The French Revolution in the Torah
Another passage in the Book of Genesis revealed a cluster of
encoded words that deals with the French Revolution. The
following words are clustered together: "Mapecha HaSarfatit"
(which spells "the French Revolution" in Hebrew), "Louis", the
name of the French king, and word "Beit[house of] Bourbon", his
royal dynasty. In the same cluster were the following words:
"Hamarseilles" (the name of the French national anthem) and the
word "Bastilla" (the infamous French prison for political
prisoners that was stormed by revolutionaries). Interestingly,
this cluster dealing with the French Revolution appears embedded
in Genesis, chapters 39-41, which describe Joseph's imprisonment
in Egypt. The Hebrew word for "Bastilla" is found encoded within
the sentence in Genesis 39:20 that describes "the prison in
which the king keeps his prisoners".
It is fascinating that these messages and data have been hidden
secretly within the text of the Torah for thirty-five centuries
until today. However, a skeptical and scientifically minded
generation in our lifetime has generally rejected the authority
and inspiration of the Bible. There is a greater need for our
generation to see evidence and proof that the Bible is the true
Word of God. In the sovereign plan of God, it is only in this
generation of sophisticated high-speed computers and new
techniques of statistical analysis, that men could both discover
and fully appreciate this divine message from the past that
introduces our skeptical generation to the God of their future.
Dr. David Kazhdan, chairman of the mathematics department at
Harvard University, warned those who would casually reject this
evidence of Torah codes: "The phenomenon is real. What
conclusion you reach from this is up to the individual".
The Scientists Prove Their Findings
The Israeli scientists wrote a follow-up paper for submission to
Statistical Science, a scientific journal that insisted that a
group of opposing scholars review and challenge their data and
examine their computer program before publication. Despite the
fact that all of the reviewers held previous beliefs against the
inspiration of the Scriptures, the overwhelming evidence and the
integrity of the data forced the editors to approve the study's
scientific accuracy and reluctantly publish the article. Robert
Kass, the editor of Statistical Science, wrote this comment
about the study: "Our referees were baffled: their prior beliefs
made them think the Book of Genesis could not possibly contain
meaningful references to modern day individuals, yet when the
authors carried out additional analyses and checks the effect
persisted. The paper is thus offered to Statistical Science
readers as a challenging puzzle". ("Equidistant Letter Sequences
in the Book of Genesis", Statistical Science, August 1994). The
study concluded that the peculiar sequences of Hebrew letters at
equal spaces from each other that formed significant words could
not possibly have occurred by simple coincidence.
The Response From Recognized Experts
I realize that this information will sound almost unbelievable
to many readers. However, the well-respected mathematician,
Professor Kazhdan of Harvard University, and his fellow
scientists from other universities including Yale and Hebrew
University in Jerusalem, have confirmed that this is "serious
research carried out by serious investigators". These recognized
experts in mathematics wrote a letter confirming the value of
this research in the introduction to a recent Israeli book about
this phenomenon called Maymad HaNosaf (The Added Dimension),
written by Professor Doron Witztum of the Jerusalem College of
Technology. Professor Witztum is the leading researcher on these
Torah codes. Realizing that this discovery is extremely
controversial in today's academic world, these scientists
encouraged additional research on the phenomenon and declared
that "the results are sufficiently striking to deserve a wide
audience". In light of their known attitude of rejection of the
Bible's inspiration and the supernatural, their statement is a
powerful endorsement that the phenomenon is legitimate.
One of the most interesting of the experiments examined the text
of Genesis 38, which describes the history of Judah and his
daughter-in-law Tamar, who gave birth to two sons, Pharez and
Zerah. The Book of Ruth tells us that King David, the greatest
king of Israel, was descended from Pharez in this manner: Pharez
was the ancestor of Boaz, who married Ruth and gave birth to
Obed, the father of Jesse, who was the father of King David.
Every one of the five Hebrew names of these ancestors of King
David were found encoded at forty-nine-letter intervals, hidden
within the text of Genesis 38. Incredibly, these five names also
appeared in the correct chronological order as recorded in the
Bible. The statisticians calculated that the odds against these
five names occurring in this passage in the exact, chronological
order they lived, are more than eight hundred thousand to one
against this happening by chance.
They also examined the text of Genesis 28 dealing with Jacob's
vision of the ladder to heaven, which he received at Mount
Moriah, the "place of God". The scientists found the key words
"Temple" and "Torah" encoded at twenty-six-letter intervals in a
continuous sequence of nine Hebrew letters. The occurrence of
these two significant words occurring together in sequence in a
biblical passage declaring that "this is none other but the
house of God, and this is the gate of heaven" is extraordinary.
The researchers calculated the probability of these key words
occurring by chance in this passage dealing with the "place of
God" was less than one chance in seventeen billion
(17,000,000,000). Coded word found in Genesis 1 28:10 - 1 28:17
Word(s)Skip Temple-26, the Torah-26, the Palace-26, Zion-26.
In another analysis, they examined the first chapter of
Leviticus, which records God's laws concerning the priesthood of
Aaron, the High Priest of Israel. They found the Hebrew name
"Aaron" encoded twenty-five times in this one chapter, not
counting the four times the word Aaron appears in the normal
surface text. The odds against this occurring by chance are more
than four hundred thousand to one.
Aaron in hebrew (Aharon) found 25 times [22 listed here] in
Leviticus - (the Torah of the Priests): WordSkip Aaron-4,
Aaron-6, Aaron-9, Aaron-18, Aaron-21, Aaron-26, Aaron-26,
Aaron-32, Aaron-36, Aaron-44, Aaron-62, Aaron-64, Aaron76,
Aaron-78, Aaron-87, Aaron-87, Aaron-109, Aaron-136, Aaron-139,
Aaron-141, Aaron-150, Aaron-180 (See also the Journal of the
Royal Statistical Society, Vol. 151 Part I, 1988 p. 177,178.)
Scientists who have studied these results state no human could
create such a Hebrew document containing hundreds of encoded,
significant words hidden within this text. They concluded that
it would be impossible to reproduce this phenomenon in a Hebrew
text even if they had the help of a group of brilliant language
geniuses, or the assistance of the world's most sophisticated
super-computers. In addition, it is impossible to account for
the prophetic knowledge of future personalities and events found
in these codes. The inescapable, logical conclusion is that God
inspired Moses to record the precise Hebrew words in the words
of the Torah. In addition to demonstrating that the text of the
Torah was dictated by God, this evidence of this marvelous
design destroys the false theory of the skeptics that the Book
of Genesis was created by different "editors" who interwove
several different texts centuries after the life of Moses. Only
one supernatural mind could have imposed this marvelously
complex design upon these five books of the Law. Only God could
have designed the text of the Torah. Recently, the researchers
discovered similar codes throughout the Old Testament.
More Astonishing Discoveries
In a 1994 follow-up paper, the team of researchers recorded the
results of their search for pairs of encoded words that relate
to events which occurred during the period long after the time
when Moses wrote the Torah. They selected the names of
thirty-four of the most prominent rabbis and Jewish sages during
the thousand years leading up to A.D. 1900. Interestingly, the
researches simply selected the thirty-four sages with the
longest biographies in the Encyclopaedia of Great Men In Israel,
a well-respected Hebrew reference book. They asked the computer
program to search the text of the Torah for close word pairs
coded at equally spaced intervals that contained the name of the
famous rabbis paired with their date of birth or death (using
the Hebrew month and day). The Jewish people celebrate the
memory of their famous sages by commemorating their date of
death. Incredibly, the computer program found every single one
of the thirty-four names of these rabbis embedded in the text of
Genesis paired at significantly close proximity with their
actual date of birth or their date of death. The odds against
these particular names and dates occurring by random chance were
calculated by the mathematicians as only once chance in 775
million.
Scholars at the Statistical Science Journal who reviewed this
experimental data were naturally astonished. They demanded that
the scientists run the computer test program again on a second
sample searching for the next thirty-two most prominent Jewish
sages listed in the encyclopaedia. To the astonishment of the
skeptical reviewers, the results on the second set of famous
sages were equally successful. The staggering result of the
combined test revealed that the names and dates of their birth
or death of every one of the sixty-six most famous Jewish sages
were coded in close proximity within the text of Genesis.
An article in Bible Review magazine by Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, in
October 1995, reported that the mathematical probability of
these sixty-six names of Jewish sages and their dates of birth
or death occurring by chance in an ancient text like Genesis was
less than one chance in two and a half billion! Interestingly,
the researchers attempted to reproduce these results by running
the computer program on other religious Hebrew texts outside the
Bible, including the Samaritan Pentateuch. The Samaritans
developed their own variant text of the five books of Moses,
called the Samaritan Pentateuch, which differs in many very
small textual changes from the Hebrew Bible, which is the basis
of our modern Authorized King James Version. Despite the surface
similarity of the two texts to the normal reader, the
researchers could not detect word pairs in the Samaritan
Pentateuch or any other Hebrew text outside the Bible.
When you carefully think about the phenomenon you can see that
even a minor change of spelling or choice of words would totally
destroy the precise sequence of Hebrew letters that reveals
these hidden words coded at evenly spaced distances throughout
the text of the Torah. A reviewer insisted they attempt to find
codes in a Hebrew translation of Tolstoy's famous novel War and
Peace, because it was the same length as the Book of Genesis.
However, the phenomenon was not present in War and Peace; nor
any other modern Hebrew writing. In fact, an exhaustive analysis
reveals that no other Hebrew text outside the Old Testament
contains these mysterious codes, not even the Hebrew apocryphal
books written during the four hundred years before the birth of
Christ.
Naturally, following the appearance of this article on divine
authority in Bible Review, there was a virtual onslaught of
letters to the editor in the following monthly issues attacking
the article in the strongest terms. Most of the critical letters
dismissed the phenomenon out-of-hand without seriously
considering the scientific data that was presented. Several
critics attacked the author's argument and data in ways that
revealed they either failed to grasp the actual statistical
method used to detect the Hebrew codes or they didn't understand
the rigorous methodology that eliminated the possibility that
this phenomenon had occurred by pure random chance.
After his research was published in Bible Review in November
1995, the original researcher, Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, responded
to his critics who had challenged his assertion that a pattern
of elaborate and significant words was encoded within the text
of the Torah. Dr. Satinover replied to his critics as follows:
"The robustness of the Torah codes findings derives from the
rigor of the research. To be published in a journal such as
Statistical Science, it had to run, without stumbling, an
unusually long gauntlet manned by some of the world's most
eminent statisticians. The results were thus triply unusual: in
the extra ordinariness of what was found; in the strict scrutiny
the findings had to hold up under; and in the unusually small
odds (less than 1 in 62,500) that they were due to chance. Other
amazing claims about the Bible, Shakespeare, etc., have never
even remotely approached this kind of rigor, and have therefore
never come at all close to publication in a peer-reviewed,
hard-science venue. The editor of Statistical Science, himself a
skeptic, has challenged readers to find a flaw: though many have
tried, none has succeeded. All the 'First Crack' questions asked
by Bible Review readers-and many more sophisticated ones-have
therefore already been asked by professional critics and
exhaustively answered by the research. Complete and convincing
responses to even these initial criticisms can get fairly
technical" (Bible Review, November 1995).
Some critics have suggested that the Israeli scientists simply
played with the computer program long enough, that by chance
alone, "they got lucky". This objection raises the relevant
objection that there might be numerous unreported "hidden
failures", a common problem in most scientific research today.
To prevent this from occurring, editorial observers from the
Statistical Journal demanded that the scientists analyze their
data by examining a completely new group of personalities that
were chosen solely by the Statistical Journal's editorial
judges, namely the sixty-six most famous Jewish sages. The
results I quoted earlier were based on this group of individuals
chosen by these judges. In addition, the judges appointed by the
Statistical Journal analyzed the computer programs to determine
that they were both valid and neutral in their design.
We need to keep in mind that the standard text of the five books
of the Torah was published years ago in widely available
computer programs and printed texts. These texts cannot be
modified. In fact, as a result of the production and sale of
fascinating "Torah Codes" computer programs that are now
available in North America, anyone with a computer and lots of
time can personally verify the existence of these codes beneath
the text of Scriptures. I have personally verified the presence
of these fascinating patters of hidden codes during long hours
of examination using the computer programs I acquired several
years ago in Jerusalem when this research was just beginning.
Professor Harold Gans, a senior researcher who examined
sophisticated foreign government intelligence codes for the U.S.
Army, has publicly confirmed the existence of these codes as
reported in Statistical Journal through the use of advanced
analytic techniques and his own sophisticated computer program.
Dr. Gans is a brilliant mathematician who has published 180
technical papers. Gans learned of this discovery by Professor
Witztum of coded words hidden within the Torah. However, as a
skeptic, he initially believed that the claims were
"ridiculous." Unlike many readers, as an intelligence specialist
dealing with complex codes and computers, Gans had the technical
ability to test the claims and data for himself. In 1989 he
created a complex and original computer program on his computer
to check Witztum's data. For nineteen straight days and nights,
Gans let his program examine all possible variations and
combinations in the 74,064 Hebrew letters in the Book of
Genesis. Dr. Gans program checked through hundreds of thousands
of possible letter combinations at many different spaced
intervals. Finally, Gans concluded that these Torah codes
actually existed and that they could not have occurred by random
chance or by human design. He had confirmed the absolute
accuracy of Professor Witztum's conclusions. As a result of his
discoveries, Professor Gans now teaches classes in synagogues
throughout the world about the incredible evidence proving
divine authorship of the Bible.
A follow-up study examined the data on the sixty-six hebrew
sages in the last 2000 years. Incredibly, Dr. Harold Gans's
study found that the text of Genesis also revealed the encoded
names of the actual cities where each of these sixty-six sages
was born. Professor Witztum produced a new scientific paper, on
this new set of data about the cities of the sages which proved
the odds against this occurring by chance was one chance in
250,000,000. In responce to the claim that this phenomenon is a
result of simple chance, the scientific team determined that the
odds against even the simplest codes occurring by random chance
is only one chance in 62,500. However, when we examine the most
complex patterns mentioned in this paper the odds are far in
excess of billions to one against the possibility that this
phenomenon has occurred by random chance. I can assure you there
are many additional examples that will be revealed in the
future. Careful investigations are now being conducted by many
scientists from other universities and laboratories that confirm
the supernatural nature of the phenomenon.
A Caution Regarding This Phenomenon of Hebrew Codes
There is an important caution we need to keep in mind regarding
this phenomenal discovery. Remember that no one can search the
Torah using these codes to foretell future events. The reason is
that it is impossible to extract the encoded information unless
you already know what the future facts are. The information
about future event cannot be pulled out of the text in code in
advance of the event because you wouldn't know what to tell the
computer to look for. It is only after the event has occurred
that you could have the program look for the name of the person
or the event and check to see if the codes contain the
information concerning the event. In other words, this method
confirms that the Torah has encoded data about events that
occurred centuries after it was written. However, the method
cannot be used to foretell the future. The Bible prohibits us in
foretelling the future.
The ability to prophesy future events is left to God alone. The
Bible clearly forbids fortune telling. The prophet Isaiah warned
against false prophets and declared only God can prophesy future
events accurately (Isaiah 46:9,10). When an event has occurred
and we can verify that the codes within the text of the Bible
accurately describe it thousands of years ago then God will
receive the glory, not man. Although this discovery proves that
some future events were encoded by God within the text of the
Torah, we must wait until the future becomes the past before we
can find it. It is also important to remember that although the
phenomenon of hidden codes is statistically powerful, it is
still relatively weak. The proximity of the word-pairs in the
Hebrew text is defined only statistically. In addition, the
phenomenon of word-pairs appears only when we examine a large
number of examples that reveal a much closer proximity than
would be expected by chance occurrence alone.
Another important point to note is that these Hebrew codes do
not contain any hidden theological or doctrinal messages. This
phenomenon has nothing to do with numerology. There are no
secret messages or theology. God's message to mankind is only
found in the open words of the Scriptures. However, the
discovery in our lifetime of these incredible codes reveals
names and events that provide a wonderful proof to a sceptical
humanity that God truly inspired the writers of the Bible to
record His message to mankind.
The phenomenon of Torah codes is now being presented to Jewish
groups and synagogues throughout North America and Israel by a
group called "Discovery Seminar," sponsored by the Alish HaTorah
College of Jewish Studies. This group was created in Israel by a
number of scientists, mathematicians, and Judaic scholars. In
addition to presentations in Israel, Aish HaTorah have adapted
the material to English enabling their teams to share this
fascinating information with Jewish audiences throughout the
world showing the divine inspiration and authority of the Torah.
Many people have told me that numerous agnostic Jews have
returned to their religious roots in Orthodox Judaism as a
result of their exposure to this incredible evidence of God's
inspiration of the Scriptures.
The Implications
Even those scholars who are philosophically opposed to God and
the inspiration of the Bible are stunned by this research.
Despite many arguments and challenges the data still stands
uncontested. Secular scientific journals have declared that the
phenomenon is real and not a result of fraud or computer error.
The simple truth is that this phenomenon could not have occurred
by chance alone. Nor could any group of brilliant human beings,
even with super-computers at their disposal, produce this
awesome result of encoding a huge number of significant names
beneath the surface text of the Torah. The odds against these
biblical codes occurring by random chance are one in several
billion.
To those who would casually ignore these odds and suggest that
they are not that impressive, consider this equivalent scenario.
Imagine that someone blindfolded you and laid out before you a
mountain of one billion pills loaded with cyanide. In the whole
pile of pills is one pill that contains sugar. Would you blindly
swallow one of these pills by chance if you knew that only one
pill contained sugar while all of the rest would result in
instant death by cyanide poisoning?
It would surpass the skills of any group of human writers to
encode these complex and prophetic messages within the text of
the Torah. Since the evidence is overwhelming that the five
books of Moses were written over three-and-a-half thousand years
ago we are left with the undeniable conclusion that this
phenomenon is another clearly authenticated signature of God
upon the pages of His message to mankind.
Some Examples
Word-pairs of finds related to technology, science and medicine.
Word(s) Skiphammer-24, anvil-5, light beams-975, the candles-7,
and burn-1, a proton-1196, a neutron-1910, mathematical-572,
sequence-3, sequences-208, convergent-1974, Reimann-3,
conjecture-9, diseases-5, viruses-304, viruses (in Hebrew)-931,
bacteria-434, cholera-4, the cholera-126, Koch (discoverer of
the cure)-2, bacilli-2, bacillus-401, bacilli-400, the
anthrax-401, diabetes-6, from the pancreas-8390, pancreas-1,
insulin-3378, AIDS-6, death-1, in the blood-2, from the
monkeys-1612.
Here are some more pairs of finds related to places, people and
times and history. Word(s)Skip Shaul-1, Jonathan-35,
Tzedekiah-7752, Mattaniah (his name at first)-2, Jerusalem-71,
Jerusalem-130, an American-1271, American-1271, Yankee-1271,
Doodle-1270, Franz-36, Yosef-1, king of Austria-10, a
Hapsburg-582, in the city-1, Vienna-9, Jerusalem-198, tsar of
Russia-1274, Nikolai-7, Peter-321, the great-1, king of
Denmark-688, Waldemar-9, the Great-141, Denmark-19, king of
Sweden-2890, Gustav-6504, the Swedish-7, Tomas-9, Masaryk-570,
president-2, Prague-1, will be installed-8110, of Kislev (the
day Masaryk took office)-74.
The AIDS epidemic - Here are more finds connected with the AIDS
virus that appear coincidentally from Dr. Doron Witztum's book,
"HaMaimod HaNosaf" (The Additional Dimension). In this case, the
text was searched for the word 'a destruction' near the passage
in Genesis dealing with the destruction of the Flood (Noah). In
the same tableau the minimum occurrence of the the words 'in the
guise of a virus' is found coincidentally with the words 'AIDS'
and 'a terror'. Word(s)Skip I will destroy the man that I have
created-1, a destruction-3, in the guise of a virus-220,
AIDS-220, a terror-220.
The Gulf War - Israeli negotiations with the P.L.O. - These
finds connected with the Gulf War and the recent Israeli
negotiations with the P.L.O. collected from the Aleynu Seminars
and from Dr. Moshe Katz. Each set were found in small matrix
tableaus in Sefer Bereshis: Word(s)Skip Scuds-57, missile-1,
Russian ( the Scuds were Russian )-12, will be activated (or
fired off )-6, on the 3rd of Shevat (Hebrew date of first
missile attacks on Israel)-88.
Word(s)Skip Schwartzkopf (commander of American forces )-6777,
Sadam - (ruler of Iraq )-6, they were the mighty men that were
of old the men of renown-1, the 2nd of Shevat (Hebrew date of
first day of the war )-20, Iraq -6, on the seventeenth day of
the month on the fifth day (the war started on Thursday - the
5th day of the week, Jan. 17) - this passage refers to the
beginning of the 'flood'-1,
Word(s)Skip Arafat - (This whole sequence takes place during the
story of the fight between Jacob and the angel of Esau.)-12,
shook hands-1, shook hands-25, with Rabin-8, Kadumi (PLO 2nd in
command)-9, 27th of Elul - (the day of the signing)-118, the
head of the P.L.O.-1255.
References:
Jeffrey, Grant R., "The Signature of God", Frontier Research
Publications, Inc. (1996), p.202-220 "The Signature of God" can
be ordered from GRANT R. JEFFREY MINISTRIES
Additional References for the tables:
-TORAH SOFT NEWS, VOLUME 1, NUMBER 1, PURIM, 5753
-Codes in the Torah, Prof. Daniel Michelson, in B'Or HaTorah,
Number 6, 1987, p. 7-39, SHAMIR, Jerusalem.
-Jewish Studies Magazine, Yeshiva Dvar Yerushalayim, 33,
Jerusalem, Summer 5747-1987.
-Discovery, Jerusalem and Arachim, Bnei-Brak Seminars
-TORAH SOFT NEWS VOLUME 1, NUMBER 2 Torah Soft News - Summer
'95 SHAVUOS, 5755
-Codes in the Torah, Prof. Daniel Michelson, in B'Or HaTorah,
Number 6, 1987, p. 7-39, SHAMIR, Jerusalem.
-Codes in the Torah: A Rejoinder, Prof. A. M. HaSofer, in B'Or
HaTorah, Number 8E, 1990, SHAMIR, Jerusalem.
-Codes in the Torah, discussion- Profs. Michelson, HaSofer,
Eidelberg, Rabbi Stolper, in B'Or HaTorah, Number 9, 1995, p.
113-129, SHAMIR, Jerusalem.
-Jewish Studies Magazine, Yeshiva Dvar Yerushalayim, 33,
Jerusalem, Summer 5747-1987.
-Discovery, Jerusalem and Arachim, Bnei-Brak Seminars.
-D. Witztum, E. Rips, Y. Rosenberg, Equidistant Letter Sequences
in the Book of Genesis, Journal of Statistical Science, Aug.
1994.
For a secular critique, see Scientific Refutation of the Bible Codes
to read NCCG.ORG's current (2023) position on the 'Codes'
This page was created on 13 April 1998
Last updated on 16 January 2023
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