What is the code in Michael
Drosnin's book,
The Bible Code?
1
Thess. 5:21-22 (NASB) "Examine
everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good; abstain from every form of
evil."
It’s either the most incredible discovery in the
history of the world or one of the most spurious.
Allegedly, the Bible contains a secret code that details
the entire past, present and future of each person who will ever live plus the record of
all human events, including even natural disasters.
What is this marvelous code and how does it work? The code
involves a hidden "skip sequence" of Hebrew letters that is said to spell out
the details of human history. Supposedly an omniscient intelligence somehow coded the
Bible in such a manner that this skip code could only be discovered in our modern computer
age. Computers aside, the concept of a hidden Bible code is almost as old as the Bible
itself. It has fascinated Jews, Christians, occultists, the infamous and even the famous:
"The first modern scientist, the man who figured out the mechanics of our solar
system and discovered the force of gravity, Sir Isaac Newton, was certain there was a
hidden code in the Bible that would reveal the future. He learned Hebrew, and spent half
his life trying to find it. In fact, it was for Newton, according to his biographer John
Maynard Keynes, an obsession. When Keynes became provost at Cambridge University, he
discovered there the papers that Newton had packed up in 1696 when he retired as provost.
Keynes was shocked.
Most of the million words in Newton’s own handwriting
were not about mathematics or astronomy, but esoteric theology. They revealed that the
great physicist believed there was hidden in the Bible a prophecy of human history.
Newton, said Keynes, was certain that the Bible, indeed the whole universe, was a
‘cryptogram set by the Almighty,’ and wanted to ‘read the riddle of the
Godhead, the riddle of past and future events divinely fore-ordained.’ Newton was
still searching for the Bible code when he died. But his lifetime quest failed no matter
what mathematical model he applied." Newton never found a code because, proponents
claim, the code could only be discovered by computer. 1
Code researcher Michael Drosnin explains, "The hidden
text of the Bible was encoded with a kind of time-lock. It could not be opened till the
computer had been invented." And, "At its heart, it’s a simple skip code in
the existing text of the Old Testament. We find that if we skip every five, or ten or
hundred letters hidden messages are revealed: the names of people who live today; the
details of events that happened thousands of years after the Bible was written; dates,
places, names, all in accurate detail." 2
Apparently influenced by or based in Kabalistic
numerological theory, Elijah ben Solomon [1720-97] also known as "The Gaon [or
Genius] of Vilna", a leading Jewish mystic of the 18th Century believed in the code.
He apparently inspired three modern Jewish scholars, Eliyahu Rips, Doron Witztum and Yoav
Rosenberg, to spend years investigating the possibility of such a code. Finding initial
compelling evidence of this code, they brought their discovery to the attention of the
academic community in 1988 and 1994. Then skeptical journalist Michael Drosnin expanded
the code and popularized it for everyone else in 1997 in his smash best seller The
Bible Code.
Claims
There is no doubt that Bible Code proponents make
astounding, even incredible claims. Taking only the initial "surface" level of
the code that Rips, Witztum and Drosnin are now dealing with, "apparently every major
figure, every major event in world history, can be found with the level of encoding we
already do know."3
What Rips and his colleagues did was to turn the entire Old
Testament into one continuous strand of 304,805 computer-programmed letters. Once
programmed, the computer searches in skip sequence for meaningful word associations to a
key word or phrase such as Yitzhak Rabin or John Kennedy. When the computer finds the key
word that it has been programmed to search for, it then looks for related words and
information coded in close proximity to that word. "Time after time it has connected
names, dates, and places encoded together…" 4
In Drosnin’s book, The Bible Code, the 1991
Gulf War is used as an example to illustrate how the code works: "We [Drosnin and
Rips] asked the computer to search for Saddam Hussein. Then we looked for related words to
see if they came together in a way that was mathematically significant. With the Gulf War,
we found Scuds, Russian missiles, and the date the war would begin coded with the name
Hussein." 5
Considering what Drosnin claims the Bible code reveals a
phenomenon like this is either monumentally significant or monumentally flawed. Again, we
are either dealing with one of the greatest revelations in human history or one of the
greatest mistakes in human history. Everyone who has heard the fascinating details of the
code wants to know: Is the code real?
Is it "gold" or "fools gold?"
What exactly does Drosnin claim the Bible Code has
predicted? It reads like a Who's Who of world personalities and events. Consider these
examples. Allegedly the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin was revealed a year in advance,
including the name of the assassin, and the place and year of the assassination. The code
revealed the words "Yitzhak Rabin", "assassin who will assassinate",
"Amir", "Tel Aviv" and "in 5756" [the Jewish calendar year
for 1995-96]. Clinton’s election as President was revealed six months in advance by
the words "Clinton" and "President." Watergate and Nixon’s
resignation were found by the code "Watergate", "who is he", and
"President, but he was kicked out". Here are other examples: the Great
Depression of 1929; the Moon landing, including the date Neil Armstrong stepped on the
lunar surface, July 20th 1969; the collision of the Shoemaker-Levy comet with Jupiter,
including the names of the astronomers who discovered it in 1993; the Jewish holocaust,
including the terms "Hitler", "Nazi", "Berlin",
"Eichmann", "ovens", and "extermination," as well as the gas
used to kill the Jews, "Zyklon B" (encoded with the name Eichmann);
"Roosevelt", "Churchill", and "Stalin"; the American
Revolution in 1776; "Napoleon", "France", and "Waterloo";
the Ebola virus; the 1917 Communist Revolution in Russia; "Shakespeare" coded
with "presented on stage", and his plays "Hamlet" and
"Macbeth"; "Homer" is identified as "the Greek Poet";
"Beethoven" and "Johann Bach" are encoded as "German
composers", along with "Mozart" encoded with "composer" and
"music"; "Rembrandt" is encoded with "Dutch" and
"painter"; "Picasso" is called "the artist"; the
"Wright Brothers" are encoded with "airplane"; "Edison" is
encoded with "electricity" and "light bulb"; "Marconi" is
encoded with "radio"; "Newton" and "Einstein" are each
encoded with their major discovery, "Newton" with "gravity" and
"Einstein" with "he overturned present reality" and "theory of
relativity"; the code also stated the month and year of the February 5th 1996
terrorist attack on Israel killing 23 people, encoded with "autobus",
"Jerusalem", "bombing" and "Jaffa Road".
The code revealed the unexpected election of Prime Minister
Netanyahu to the Israeli Government, along with "surely he will be killed".
President Roosevelt’s December 1941 Declaration of War is seen while "Pearl
Harbor" is encoded with the words "destruction of the fortress", "the
fleet", " World War", "December 7th" and "Hiroshima".
In addition, "atomic holocaust" is encoded with the year "1945". The
code spelled out the murders of Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Ghandi, Anwar Sadat and John
Kennedy. With Kennedy, the words "President Kennedy to die" and
"Dallas" were coded. But it also revealed the name "Oswald" along with
"marksman" and "sniper", and the fact Kennedy would be killed in the
head. In addition there was the name "Ruby" with "he will kill
assassin". Even the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy was found, along with the name
"Sirhan" and "second ruler will be killed".
The code contained the February 1994 massacre of 30 Arabs
praying at the famous Muslim mosque; including the name of the killer,
"Goldstein" and "Hebron" where it occurred; for the Japanese Doomsday
cult "Aum Shinrikyo" it included the words "subway",
"plague", and "gas". The "Oklahoma bombing" detailed even
more information. It included the words "Oklahoma", "terrible, frightening
death" and "there will be terror", along with "Murrah Building",
and "killed", "torn to pieces". But there was also "his name is
Timothy", "McVeigh", "day 19", "on the 9th hour",
"in the morning" and "he ambushed", "he pounced", and
"terror". The San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 are encoded with
"S.F. Calif" and "1906" along with "fire",
"earthquake" and "city consumed, destroyed".
The Bible Code
also predicts more mundane events
such as World War III and Armageddon.
Truly, however, few things have captured the public’s
attention like the phenomenon of alleged Bible codes. Oprah Winfrey devoted a large
segment to it on her TV show. As the camera panned the audience at points, one could see
their intense interest in the subject – and fear that Drosnin’s
"Bible-based" predictions of approaching apocalyptic disasters just might be
true. Warner Brothers quickly snapped up the movie rights.
Drosnin himself is said to be working a sequel. Many other
books are now in the works by other authors including Doron Witztum, a co-author of the
original article that gave the phenomenon statistical credibility. By August 27th after
its first several months of publication, the Simon and Shuster web page had no less than
231 book reviews of Drosnin’s book [JW or CA: Update at Galleys]
Why are millions of people fascinated with alleged Bible
Codes? Consider what the Bible codes phenomenon involves: a trinity of the most respected,
enticing and frightening factors possible: the Bible, computer prediction of the future,
and Armageddon. This certainly underscores the phenomenal success of Drosnin’s text. Time
Magazine humorously noted, "The mix of Christian Scripture, Jewish
mysticism, Cyberwizardry and existential dread is year 2000 catnip." 6
There is enormous interest today in the Bible, with
hundreds of millions of people worldwide viewing it as the Word of God. There is
increasing interest and awe with the stunning capabilities of computers. Drosnin himself
refers to a NY Times article and the possible emergence of "quantum computers"
that can perform in minutes calculations that would take our best super computers hundreds
of millions of years. Finally, we have the ever present, undying interest of people in the
future – not only their own– but– that of a world which in spite of it all,
always seems to inch closer to the brink. 7
The Bible Code phenomenon wraps all of this into one
intriguing and fascinating package. So it is hardly surprising to find Drosnin’s The
Bible Code on all the best seller lists. As British scholar John Bowker, editor of The
Oxford Dictionary of World Religions remarked "There is a perennial urge to find
order in the creation and divinity in order. This desire is as old as humanity and
"profound" in all religions."
So what is our conclusion? It must be to return to the
biblical admonition at the front of this book: "Examine everything carefully; hold
fast to that which is good; abstain from every form of evil." (1 Thess. 5:21-22
NASB)
If there is a genuine Bible code, time will reveal it.
Until then people, Christians especially, should be cautious.
Endnotes
1
Michael Drosnin, The Bible Code, New
York, Simon & Shuster, 1997, p. 21
2
Michael Drosnin, The Bible Code,
Michael Drosnin, Interview on NBC, May 29th, 1997, transcript p. 13
3
Drosnin p. 45
4
Ibid. 26
5 Ibid.
6
Lisa McLoughlin, "Deciphering God's
Plan", Time, June, 9th, 1997, Internet copy, David Van Biema with reporting
by Lisa McLoughlin
7
LCathy Lynn Grossman. "Critics Say 'Bible
Codes Predictions Don't Add Up'. USA Today, June 4th 1997, p.8d
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