The Bible Code

[virtualgirl]

The Bible Code

Before I begin, I would like to say that the following is only my thoughts and am in no way slandering the beliefs of others.


I have been reading "The Bible Code" by Michael Drosnin and I believe I am coming to an understanding. What if the bible is a 3 dimentional program that was waiting to be broken by a civilization with the technological abilities to see through the top layer of the bible. Maybe Armageddon is not really the "End of Times" but only the end to life as we know it. It appears to me that the rapture could be a war between the people who accept the underlying code of the bible and the people who refuse to believe anything other than the surface layer of the bible. If the war ended and all who believed the top layer perished, that would fulfill "Rapture", leaving everyone else behind. Some of the greatest scientific minds in history believed there was a hidden code in the bible and it seems Eli Rips is on to something. If the bible code is correct, and my thinking is correct, humanity will change drastically. Theology has always been the central point in all of humanity. Could the world still function as a whole without it or would there be total chaos?

This was weighing heaving on my mind and I would appreciate any thoughts the forum might have. I am going to purchase the bible code software and do some of my own research to validate what I am reading in the book.

Thanks,

Virtualgirl

?"Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding." Albert Einstein

 

[PyRo99]

The Bible Code

I have heard, and read tons about the Bible Code.

However, I do not believe that the Bible has any great significant importance, even serving as a three dimensional code. However, if you look what were living in, and what you just said, you will realize that you just said 3D, and 3D code.

Plus, the Bible wasn't written by the Savior. Nor was it written by someone, "higher up". And I don't even know who wrote the Revalations, which contains the Apocalypse. The huge war, could also be the fact there is many waking up in the darkness.

Light Vs. Dark. Who will win...

 

[ZeoEmeraude]

The Bible Code

Hmmmm....I am not too sure about the whole bible code thing myself. I think you could open The Wall Street Journal to any page and decifper some hidden code. Although the thought is an entertaining one, I am the kinda guy who just reads the Bible for its face value.

 

[Eutychus]

The Bible Code

Originally posted by PyRo99@Dec 26 2004, 06:22 PM

Plus, the Bible wasn't written by the Savior. Nor was it written by someone, \"higher up\". And I don't even know who wrote the Revalations, which contains the Apocalypse. The huge war, could also be the fact there is many waking up in the darkness.

Light Vs. Dark. Who will win...

​

Pyro, the Revelation (full name of the book: The Revelation of Jesus Christ) was written by the apostle John (there is both internal and stylistic evidence that point to John as the author) during his time of exile on the island of Patmos. It is a letter to the seven churches of Asia Minor (Turkey) in which their effectiveness is assessed by the savior and then attention is turned to end time matters. The latter portion is full of imagry and subject to interpretation, but the core message is God is in control and the good guys win. As to the question of light and dark, who wins?: If there is any light at all, darkness loses.

Regarding the Bible Code, that whole subject is based on some statistical analysis of the text, and if you try hard enough, you can make statistics say anything.......

 

[PyRo99]

The Bible Code

Oh Really?

Tell me, the Roman Empire beat Hanibal. Were the Romans the good guys in that battle?

And I still question the credibility of the Bible. :kiss:

 

[KiraSjon]

The Bible Code

Originally posted by PyRo99@Dec 26 2004, 07:22 PM
Light Vs. Dark.? Who will win...

From one pagan's perspective:
Neither if they choose to fight instead of find their balance. Of course, light and dark do not entail Christians vs. Everyone else ><

One thing about the Bible, I'd like to say: you really have to take into consideration when it was written and by who's hand and how their views at the time may have influenced what they wrote (even for those who believe every word of the book should take this part into serious consideration). Another thing to consider, is the actual time period of the Christian religion. Technically, it was not complete until 4 centuries after Jesus' death until the filioque situation. I think many Christians (and in this sense, people of all religions) can benefit from the knowledge of their religion's history - and any researcher will tell you, never base your sole argument from one source. Anything in history that is considered a fact has more than one documented source, even the existance of Jesus.

 

[PyRo99]

The Bible Code

Thats what I love Kira.

If the Bible was compeleted 400 years, after Christ's death. How could they remeber all of these things he supposedly said? Interestingly enough, we've chosen to believe it was him saying it, for more than a thousand years.

 

[Tippy]

The Bible Code

I haven't read the Bible Code - only heard and read ABOUT it - so I don't have any specific opinion, but I suppose that if time travel is true - for the future at any point - then perhaps someone could have traveled back in time and hidden codes. Think of all the soothsayers, Nostradamus, etc., that have spoken in code and rhyme to keep from being killed in a time when that kind of think was considered nonsense. Maybe they tapped into some form of "records" or maybe someone visited them - or maybe they made it all up.

But - if they did obtain future knowledge for some purpose - they may have encoded it.

BTW - Revelation is not considered to be a writing that John made from what Jesus showed him - nor is it named after Jesus as one poster mentioned - but it is called The Revelation of St. John the Divine and it is the visions he experienced while in prison. It was almost not included in the Canon in the fourth century.

But, it is still a good story.

 

[pauli]

The Bible Code

This was weighing heaving on my mind and I would appreciate any thoughts the forum might have. I am going to purchase the bible code software and do some of my own research to validate what I am reading in the book.

Hi Virtualgirl,

Having spent the past few years with awareness of the Bible Code, or Equidistant Letter Sequencing codes of the Torah, I can only say that the whole thing is very amazing. Because of my involvement in Jewish circles, I was aware of Bible Codes prior to Drosnin's book being published. There are many codes, found specifically in the first five books of the Bible, that are truly hair-raising and pretty awesome. Unfortunately, to get the full impact of them, it helps if you can read and understand Hebrew. That is when things really come alive for you. I cannot imagine how opaque looking at a slide presentation, or book page, must be for someone who cannot see the words and understand them by just looking at the passage. It has so much more impact when you can read it for yourself and are not relying on someone telling you that this word, or passage, really means...

That being said, I must put forth a word of caution to you. If you wish to learn and study Bible codes, do it correctly. I have read a lot of shtuyot (nonsense) written by people about this subject that have not handled the subject matter according to the originally defined perameters of the initial project. In the initial project, the researchers defined their perameters very clearly and concisely. When looking up a specific code, or doing a word search, they ALWAYS chose the shortest Equidistant Letter Sequence available. That means if they were looking for the word Saddam (as in Saddam Hussein) and they found five hits - one with an ELS of 15, another of 39, a third of 129, a fourth of -2, and a fifth of 3824 - they always went with the smallest Letter sequence combination. (in the last example -2) This is EXTREMELY important, because it sets up the findings they turned in later to the Journal of Statistical Science (which is basically the Statistical Bible of that field). I have read many people who take words with ELS lengths of any and all amounts, without minding the smallest jump rule, and create their whole theology - or prophecy - on the words, or combinations attached thereof. This is not the way serious Bible Code people do their work; it is pretty much hack sort of stuff. So, beware ; don't be taken in by that sort of thing, and don't give those findings any sort of credence.

As to the initial article written up in said Journal (listed above), the original people who researched and wrote the article put forth a challenge at the end of their written work. They said that if anyone could refute their findings, or offer an explanation as to how this apparently random ELS event could be found consistently throughout the first five books, that they would pay that person a large sum of money. So far, no one has managed to refute them based upon the original perameters of the experiment. The money is still up for grabs.

Hope you enjoy researching this subject matter. It is indeed fascinating.

 

[pauli]

The Bible Code

Oh, just found this. You may find it interesting:

Codes Definition.

In order to determine whether or not Rambsel or Jeffrey's findings are valid, we must clearly state what is meant by \"Codes.\" There are two types of word patterns that are formed through sequences of letters equidistantly spaced in a document: 1) Accidentally occurring word patterns, i.e. \"ELS\" (Equidistant Letter Sequence) 2) Encoded word patterns deliberately inserted into a document, i.e. \"Codes.\"

The first type (ELS) - words accidentally formed through equidistant letter skip intervals - can obviously be extracted out of the letters found in every document written throughout the history of the world: The Bible, Shakespeare, any newspaper, the instructions on any medicine bottle, this article, etc. Their \"existence\" is purely coincidental and, therefore, a cryptologist4 would never refer to them as \"Codes.\" For example, in the sentence written above, the phrase \"the history of the world\" appears. Starting with the \"T\" in the word \"the,\" count every seven letters until you have spelled \"toe\" (the history of the world). Did we deliberately arrange the letters and words of that sentence in a way that would generate the ELS of the word \"toe\"? Obviously not. We never try to encode words in the letters we write to friends and family, yet every one of them can yield hundreds of such extractions. They are all there by accident. Their \"existence\" is unintentional. In fact, it can be clearly demonstrated that they are statistically and mathematically meaningless (i.e. the accidental appearance of these patterns is completely expected).

The second type - encoded words deliberately inserted into a document - is categorically different. These types of word patterns are Codes that were purposely placed in a document by the document's author. They are not random, coincidentally constructed words extracted from a text. In fact, there are Codes whose intentional placement in a document can be statistically and mathematically verified.

A unique type of Codes has been found in the Torah (Five Books of Moses). Its uniqueness lies in the fact that: 1) it can be statistically verified that these Codes were deliberately placed in the Torah by its author; 2) the information that was encoded could not have been known to mankind at the time it was encoded. One of the \"Torah Codes\" claims is as follows:

Names of famous Rabbis, together with their birth dates and death dates, were deliberately encoded in the Torah by its author thousands of yearsbefore these Rabbis ever lived. This claim has been statistically verified, (i.e., the probability that this phenomenon is due to chance is exceedingly small).

The other hundreds, thousands, and sometimes millions of ELS's that appear in every document in the world are mere coincidences (until proven otherwise).

Furthermore, the first and foremost issue that must be addressed when dealing with this phenomenon is whether or not it can be shown that the ELS's were deliberately inserted into a document. If it is clearly demonstrated that a particular ELS is merely a coincidence because: 1) no objective evidence exists that proves it was deliberately inserted into the document; 2) The ELS is statistically meaningless (you expect it to appear by accident); 3) the methodology used to find these ELS's is inherently invalid - then it is absurd and deceptive to use it as proof or confirmation of anything.

This piece is a portion of a larger article which speaks about a specific attempt by others to "prove" something based upon Bible Codes. The author is using the above definition to make a distinction between the two types of codes - 1) accidental, 2) deliberate. The Rabbis names and dates of birth and death were part of the original article written in the Journal of Statistical Science, where the authors took the names of Rabbis whose lives were written up in the Encyclopedia of Judaica. They did two testings for this in the Book of Genesis. They selected the first group of names based on how many pages was written up for specific Rabbis (3 or more pages - these Rabbis made the first cut). The researchers found a consistent pattern of an ELS for these Rabbis along with the date of birth and date of death found in the same section of text that encapsulated that Rabbi's name. Once the researchers had located all the names, they extended their original search by selecting Rabbis whose lives had 1 1/2 pages written up in the Encyclopedia Judaica and found the exact same pattern within the Torah. The odds on this occurrence being random are astronomical to say the least. It is/was their assertion, therefore, that this ELS in the Torah is not a random occurrence, but shows example of intelligent design (aka intent). Their conclusion at the end of the article is that these findings are consistent with "Intelligent Design."

This is the original basis to the Bible Codes and the only one, in my mind, that has credence. If anyone wishes to study the Codes, then I recommend they use the same methodology to obtain their results - ahem, and not the methodology used by many popular sensationalists of the phenomenon, who are attempting to sell a lot of books.