UNDERSTANDING THE B IBLE CODE CONTROVERSY

John A. Jelinek
Seminary Chaplain, Baptist Bible Seminary
Associate Professor, Baptist Bible Seminary

There is a Bible beneath the Bible.

Drosnin, The Bible Code, 25

INTRODUCTION

The so-called Torah Codes or Bible Codes have been much in the news lately because of the excitement
generated by press notices that attended the release of journalist Michael Drosnin's book. At one point, The Bible
Code was on the “top ten” best sellers list simultaneously in New York, London, Paris, and Rome.1 The Bible Code
has fostered discussion around the world these days and is accompanied by seemingly endless speculation (even
within evangelical circles). The book also has been reviewed widely and has stimulated pieces in Newsweek and
Time Magazines. Drosnin has been making the rounds of the talk -show circuit, including the 700 Club and the
Oprah Winfrey Show in June 1997. One reporter in Time indicated that Warner has purchased the movie rights.2
The impact of the book on American society is a matter yet to be determined, but the presuppositions and
methodology that underlay the book are not limited to the more popular conclusions in the book by Drosnin.
Others (such as Christians, Muslims, and Jews) are employing similar codes and methodologies to draw their own
distinctive conclusions. What is a biblical response to the issue of the Bible codes? Can the codes really be used to
establish divine authorship of the Bible? Will Bible codes become an important weapon in the apologetic arsenal of
evangelical Christians?
The goals of this review are 1) to define common terminology associated with the controversy, 2) to explain in
some detail the various examples of the codes and to discuss in layman's language both some of the general
mathematical issues and some detailed analysis of the precise method, 3) to illustrate some parallel uses of this
methodology in the apologetical approaches of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian circles, and 4) to critique the
methodology from within the framework of biblical theology. In the process of investigation, some of the more
prominent names and figures associated with the controversy will arise and brief bibliographic information will
attend each key figure.
A careful analysis of the Bible Code controversy indicates that there are many reasons to reject the theory that
there are codes embedded in the Torah (or elsewhere in the Bible) of the type presented by these codes researchers
(whether individuals or groups).

EXPLANATION OF PROCESS AND B RIEF HISTORY

The Bible is constructed like a giant crossword puzzle. It is encoded from beginning to end with words that
connect to tell a hidden story.
What Moses actually received on Sinai was an interactive data base, which until now we could not fully access.
The Bible Code, 25, 98

Explanation of Process

1
Drosnin is a reporter by trade. He was formerly on staff with the Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.
His book is entitled The Bible Code (New York: Simon, 1997).
2
David Van Biema, “Deciphering God's Plan,” Time, 9 June 1997, 56. See also Sharon Begley, “Seek and Ye Shall
Find,” Newsweek , 9 June 1997, 66-67.
 In The Bible Code, Drosnin utilized a highly complex code, allegedly embedded in the Hebrew Bible, to propose
that hidden messages 3 revealing future events have been placed into the Torah text. His argument depends on the
precise positions of all 304,805 letters in the Torah text.4 The significance of the precise letters of Torah being used is
an issue that should not be overlooked. Many observant Jews believe that every letter of the Torah was directly
dictated to Moses by God. While most evangelicals do not subscribe to a dictation theory of inspiration, they do
hold to the integrity of the autographa, that there was no error in the original manuscripts. Evangelical belief in the
preservation of the Word is often expressed in terms of the smallest letter or stroke of the Hebrew letters of the Law
(Matt 5:18 and Luke 16:17).5
All of the Bible Codes methodologies 6 involve searching for so-called Equal Letter Sequences (or Equidistant
Letter Sequences, hereafter simply ELS), which allegedly reveal words separated by the same number of spaces. That
is, one takes the entire Torah (or a specific book within Torah), drops spaces between letters, and looks for new
words in the resulting stream. The coded message is then decrypted (located) by sampling, for example, every 4th or
12th or nth letter rather than following successive letters. The spacings considered can be quite large—for example,
Drosnin’s celebrated location of Yitzhak Rabin's name has a spacing of 4772 letters, that is there are skips of 4771
“unused” letters between the letters that happen to spell out his name (see Appendix II).7
Reducing this approach to a crude analogy, the authors of the various Bible Codes have constructed a
computerized sieve or strainer for locating meaningfully paired names, dates, and events they hypothesized may have
been systematically hidden in a text. They applied their sieve to particular biblical books (like Genesis and
Deuteronomy) and received a statistical count. They next applied the same sieve to a control (non-biblical) text and to
randomized versions of both texts, in order to get an idea of whether the count for the biblical is high. On the surface,
the count for the Bible books seemed to be improbably (statistically) high.
Such an explanation leaves many open questions (such as what is meant by “meaningfully paired” or
“systematically hidden” words). The process of giving detailed answers to these questions adjusts the holes in the

3
The phrase “hidden codes” is redundant. If it is a code, it is hidden in some manner.
4
A computer program arranged the Torah into a continuous string of Hebrew letters from the Masoretic Text
(utilizing the Textus Receptus). The Masoretic pointing (vowels) is omitted in the process. The authors of the article
write (p. 436): “In transliterating foreign names into Hebrew, the letter “a ” is often used as a mater lectionis {“mother
of meaning” the plural being matres lectionis} for example, “Luzzatto” may be written wtwl or wtawl. In such cases we
used both forms.” Words within {} are this author’s explanation. Other natural questions concern whether they
ignore vowels, whether they distinguish word -final character forms, which spellings they use, etc. These questions
are all settled somewhat arbitrarily. The arbitrariness of the system arises in part from their concern to be statistically
“fair.” They sought not to over-design the study in a way that is somehow rigged to produce the desired result.
5
This is an underlying basis for some believers who wish to suggest that God preserved a particular text type or
version. One may believe that the text in its fulness exists, however, without pointing to a particular version or
collection of manuscripts. Reasonable doubts exist about the verities of any textual tradition left standing on its own.
6
See the attached bibliography for alternative proposals by Grant Jeffrey, The Signature of God: Astonishing
Biblical Discoveries (Toronto: Frontier Research Publications, 1996), also by Jeffrey, The Handwriting of God:
Sacred Mysteries of the Bible (Toronto: Frontier Research Publications, 1997), Yaacov Rambsel, Yeshua: The Name
of Jesus in the Old Testament (Toronto: Frontier Research Publications, 1996), and others who have devised their
own approaches to the subject.
7
The reader should realize that the number of ELS is potentially very large. The number of letters in the
Pentateuch (in Jewish literature, Chumash , lit., “a fifth,” a reference to the five books of Moses in rabbinic writings) is
304,805 which means the number of ELS with spacings of 5000 or less, forwards or backwards, is around 3 billion!
When code authors search for an ELS of a relatively short word, they are unwittingly searching for a blade of grass in
a haystack! To illustrate, consider Drosnin’s prediction concerning the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin (The Bible
Code, 27). Drosnin had the computer arrange the letters of the text in 64 equal rows of 4772 letters. What makes
anyone think such an arrangement is intentional, let alone sacred? The intent was arrived at when the searcher found
what he considered significant, and then proceeded to look for other “tidbits” that would “validate” the first trial as
unexplainable.
sieve. If Genesis is special, the sieve should still pick that up, to a greater or lesser extent. At least hypothetically, if
errors have crept into some “truer” original text, the sieve should be robust against it.
Those writing about the subject often display the results of ELS by writing down the section of Torah
containing the ELS with lines as long as the spacing of the ELS or a length a few letters longer or shorter than this
spacing. That way, the ELS appears as a straight up and down vertical or as a neat diagonal “Hebrew ‘Word Search’
puzzle” (see Figure 1 which only shows part of the long lines used horizontally). This method of display has no
special significance, although it appears designed to make readers forget the large spacings between letters that are
sometimes involved. One is allowed to look for coded messages within ELS going forwards, backwards, or, on some
occasions, as a boustrephedon!8 The difficulty, of course, is in determining the meaning of anything found by this
process.9

After sequencing letters and spacing, codes researchers look for words positioned:

Boustrophedon-
v y yllaci
e l
r l
horizontally, t a
i n forwards
c o or
a g sdrawkcab
l a
l i
y d

Further, codes researchers can allow one, two, three, or nearly any number of characters to come between adjacent
letters in their dxixsxcxoxvxexrxexdx wxxoxxrxxdxxs! In some cases it is the sound of the word, not the actual spelling,
that counts.
Some codes researchers distinguish between ELS and what they call legitimate codes.10 Legitimate codes are, in
their view, to be distinguished from the whole ELS concept by the accidental nature of ELS versus the purposeful
nature of Bible Codes. The nature of the codes for these researchers is thus defined by the purposeful placement of
the codes into the text by the author of the text. Even where these “codes” are found and demonstrable in texts (a
feature as yet unverified to my satisfaction), the significance is hardly clear. Further, ELS are used to identify these
codes as purposefully placed by the author! One need not dispute the possibility that biblical authors may have
used such methods. It is another question altogether, however, as to what significance should be given to such
placement.

A Brief History

8
A boustrephedon refers to an ancient writing method in which the lines of a text alternate in their inscription and
in reading from left to right and then right to left. The word is a combination of the Greek words bou"j (ox) and
strefein (to turn). The metaphorical comparison would be the turning of the oxen while plowing a field. One plowing
with oxen heads down one row and returns along (but below) the row just plowed. For a clear example in Drosnin, see
The Bible Code, 104.
9
Doron Witztum seems to acknowledge this in an internet article he has written (with others) which is critical of
Christian uses of the codes. “The most important statement one can make regarding codes research is that it is
impossible to interpret anything you find.” See Rabbi Daniel Mechanic, Doron Witztum, and Harold Gans, “Jesus
Codes: Uses and Abuses” at http://www.cybermail.net/ ~codes/yeshua.html.
10
See, for example, “Jesus Codes: Uses and Abuses,” at http://www.cybermail.net/~codes/ yeshua.html, p. 2 of
15.
 Drosnin’s approach in The Bible Code is not new. His book is based on a popularized approach to a 1994 study
published in the scholarly journal Statistical Science.11 In that article, three Israeli mathematicians (Witztum, Rips,
and Rosenberg) reported that Genesis contains the names of a list of rabbis correlated to their dates of birth or death.
This was an involved attempt (including a sophisticated statistical analysis done on a computer) to try to show that
the codes cannot be explained by random chance. Likewise, the 1994 theory and presentation by the Israeli
mathematicians in their article in Statistical Science is not new, but is a computer-nuanced approach toward some
much older Jewish Bible study methods (as shall be demonstrated below).
The noted Rabbis example of Rips and his colleagues within the article is a sophisticated statistical analysis
done on a list of celebrated rabbis correlated to their dates of birth or death. This data is provided in an involved
attempt to demonstrate that the codes are not to be explained by coincidence or contrivance.12 Questions about the
original nature of Hebrew writing are not really relevant to the assumed validity of the work performed by Rips and
his colleagues in their article. They ignored Masoretic marks and pointing altogether and did not consider text critical
matters.
The authors took a list of names of 32 noted rabbis. In their initial sampling, they used the names of 34 very
famous rabbis, but after refining their methods of analysis, they reported that they took the moderately known rabbis
to avoid any charges of having fitted the tests to accommodate the data. “Moderately famous” was qualified as
having an entry in the book Encyclopedia of Great Men of Israel13 with a length of between 1.5 and 3 columns of
text. The trial took the names of these 32 great men, together with their dates of birth and their dates of death, and
examined how closely the dates were to the names when they searched for the names and dates as ELS in the
consonantal text of Genesis.
There are some mitigating factors of the process that are very significant. First, variant spellings were allowed
and employed for each of the 32 rabbis’ names and dates of birth and death.14 Only the months and days of birth, not
the years, were sought in the trial. Further, the authors did not use the actual dates or names cited in the
Encyclopedia but ones that they had determined from their own research. Other factors could be cited, but one gets
the impression that, when looking for examples of what one wants to see, it helps to increase the probabilities of
getting to see it if one increases the variables.
There is insufficient space to critique the Israeli mathematicians’ conclusions here,15 but these factors suggest
that one should, at the very least, be cautious about drawing dramatic conclusions such as Drosnin has from this

11
Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips, and Yoav Rosenberg, “Equidistant Letter Sequences in the Book of Genesis” in
Statistical Science 9, no. 3 (August 1994): 429-38. The paper was reportedly presented in 1988 in the Journal of the
Royal Statistical Society. I was unable to access a copy of this earlier article to verify this point. Rips is Associate
Professor of Mathematics at Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Witzum and Rosenberg, his associates, carried out their
research at Jerusalem College of Technology, Jerusalem.
12
The methodology of repeating tests on a computer need not be understood as indicating an attempt to deceive
on the part of these men. One searching for codes has to experiment to find what might be encoded. Computers allow
the trial of limitless possibilities so that even a well-meaning searcher can inadvertently produce what appear to be
statistically rare results when doing multiple tests.

13
M. Margalioth, ed., Encyclopedia of the Great Men of Israel: A Bibliographical Dictionary of Jewish Sages
and Scholars from the 9 th to the end of the 18 th century. Vols. 1-4 (Tel Aviv: Joshua Chachick, 1961).
14
The number of alternative names for each rabbi varied from one to eleven so that, all told, the 32 rabbis had a
total of over 100 identifying names!
15
Mathematical and scientific critiques of methodology are forthcoming as of this writing. For some initial
responses consider Dror Bar-Natan (of Hebrew University) and Brandan McKay (of Australian National University),
Equidistant Letter Sequences in Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” Web publication posted at
http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/WNP.
data. In fact, Rips and others have been vocal in their criticisms of Drosnin, suggesting that he does not understand
the proper uses of codes methods.16

A JEWISH CATECHISM FOR SECULAR J EWS

An active Israeli evangelistic agenda may be behind promoting certain Bible Codes “discoveries.” Discovery
Seminar is a fast-spreading Judaism seminar that purports to offer scientific proof that God exists. The testimonies of
Jews attending the seminar are illustrative, if not enlightening. “I walked in a secular atheist and walked out believing
that the Torah had been handed down by G-d to Moses on Mt. Sinai,” says Ms. Grayson, a 24-year-old graduate
student of Social Work at Columbia University.17 The seminars currently feature Bible Codes evidences and have
provided a forum on their web site for Rips and others who advance codes research.18
According to its own reckoning, about 240 U.S. Jewish community centers, schools, and synagogues looking to
expand their membership have paid Aish HaTorah (the Jerusalem-based organization that runs Discovery) about
$1,000 to put on each Discovery seminar. Aish HaTorah (“Man of the Law”) is a non-profit Jewish education group.
Their mission is to persuade secular Jews to return to observance of Judaism. They have put about 60,000 people
world-wide through the seminar since 1987—more than one third of those just in the past two years.19 Such seminars
do not constitute proof that the Bible Codes are false, but the use of untested evidences in this fashion suggests that
there may be an activist agenda driving some who advocate Bible codes.
CHRISTIAN COPY CODES : A CHRISTIAN REVIVAL OF GNOSTIC GEMATRIA20

Insights long hidden darkly in the Bible text are coming

to light.
Web page claim marketing the book, Yeshua: The Hebrew Factor21

Ever since the work of Witztum and Rips became known (and perhaps before), claims have been made that
hidden messages of Christian theological relevance can likewise be found embedded in the Hebrew text. Most of
these claims have little merit due to a lack of any scientific discipline on the part of those espousing them. In order to
understand the level of “research” often performed by these scholars, consider these words by Linda Rambsel in the
foreword to Yacov Rambsel’s book on Bible Codes and Yeshua:

16
For Eliyahu Rips’ explicit statement, see http://www.aish.edu/bibleodes/rips.htm. Rips goes so far as to say,
“All attempts to extract messages from Torah codes, or to make predictions based on them, are futile and are of no
value.”
17
“Seminar Tries Science to Revive Faith,” The Wall Street Journal, 11 November 1996.
18
See http://aish.edu/biblecodes.
19
“Seminar Tries Science to Revive Faith.”
20
Authors like Grant Jeffrey try to downplay the connections between their “research” and ancient Jewish
cabbalah and gematria. See, for example, Jeffrey, The Handwriting of God, 116, where he writes: “. . . the Bible Codes
has nothing to do with numerology. Numerology is defined by the authoritative Webster’s Dictionary as ‘the study
of the occult significance of numbers [sic].’” Not only does he fail to indicate which version of Webster’s Dictionary
he used, but he also misleads the reader into thinking that numerology is the only questionable practice at hand in
this debate. The associations with numerology are stronger than he realizes, however, since no one claims that the
Bible Codes authors are using strict numerology to draw their assertions, but a strange blend of modern computer
science, mathematics, and gematria. Jeffrey cites with approval Yaacov Rambsel’s work on the text, and the website
advertisements, by the admission of Rambsel’s wife, indicate that Rambsel utilizes gematria and the numerical value
of each word. Jeffrey cannot have it both ways!
21
As of April 12, 1998, this claim in advertisment for Rambsel’s book could be found at
http://home.cwnet.com/crm/yhf.html.
 Let me introduce my husband, Yacov (James) Rambsel—the author—to you. He can sit down with his Hebrew
Bible, scratch paper, pen, artist’s pencils, and calculator. Within seconds he has read the Hebrew, totaled its
gematria (numerical value), and dis covered insights (hidden secrets) within this magnificent language that go
beyond one’s imagination. It is awesome to observe Yacov as he mines for the priceless jewels of wisdom
revealed to him by the Ruach Ha’Kodesh (Holy Spirit). And he often tells me, “Honey, this is too much; this is
too wonderful! I’ve gotta get up and go outside and walk around! These insights are coming in too fast for me to
write them all down!”22

Of course, the actual proof is in the pudding, in the substance and argument of a book that either bears credible
internal consistency or does not.
The strained credibility issue extends from Rambsel to other Christian Bible Codes researchers. For example,
what Grant Jeffrey uses to document his codes research is often questionable at best. Publication in a critical journal
like Statistical Science is not ipso facto proof of the alleged reality of the Bible code. Even the length of time that has
elapsed since the publication is not proof of the accuracy of the statements made by some codes researchers. While
it is true that the codes have not been refuted point-for-point, it is also true that they have not been corroborated by
others’ tests. The complexities of statistics and mathematical probabilities involved prevent a quick response from
the critics. This is not to say that the critics have not weighed in with their responses.
Jeffrey cites articles in Statistical Science and elsewhere in a way as to suggest that he considers the sources
unimpeachable. He cites an article in the liberal Bible Review by Jeffrey Satinover, for example, for its open stance to
the codes. What Jeffrey fails to tell his readers is that subsequent issues of Bible Review provide scathing critiques
of both Eliyahu Rips and Drosnin for their ignorance of basic matters pertaining to Hebrew, mathematical
probabilities, and textual transmission issues. To be sure, the men who write these (and other) critiques are not
Christians, but this does not excuse Jeffrey from answering the specific issues raised by them that invalidate his
entire position. These positions were matters of public record at the time of his later publication of The Handwriting
of God.
To hold to Jeffrey’s and Rambsel’s assertions about the Bible Codes, one must grant them at least the following
presuppositions, none of which are clearly spelled out in their writings. First, one must posit that the Masoretic Text 23
(the Textus Receptus in the Koren edition) as we have it is the autographic text of the Hebrew Scriptures from which
neither “jot nor tittle” will fail.24 Current textual criticism concerning linguistic development25 (the spelling and even
the content of the original Hebrew text) must be rendered moot for purposes of discussion. If even one Hebrew letter

22
Yeshua, from the foreword.
23
The Leningrad Codex (a codex is a book with pages, not a scroll), which can be dated to about 1010 C.E., is the
basis for the Kittel-Kahle edition of the Bible which many know as Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Biblia Hebraica
contains the multiple variant readings fo und in different ancient manuscripts in its critical apparatus. Drosnin,
however, consulted the Koren edition (The Bible Code, 186) also known as the Jerusalem Bible (Koren Publishing
Company, 1992), which differs from the Leningrad Codex by 41 letters in Deuteronomy, but only 23 in Genesis. The
Talmudic citations of the Hebrew Bible also differ from the Koren edition in about 300 citations. Eliyahu Rips used the
Textus Receptus in his experiments
24
Indeed, Drosnin, 194, contends that “all Bibles in the original Hebrew language that now exist are the same
letter for letter . . . The Bible code computer program uses the universally accepted original Hebrew text.” Jeffrey, The
Handwriting of God, 60, argues for the ultimate preservation of the text, but seems unaware of this problem. The
argument here is not with the fact that God has indeed preserved His Word, but that any particular text fully is that
Word.
25
The alphabet, script, and the orthography of the Hebrew language changed over the centuries during which
manuscripts of the OT were being copied. Grammatical constructions were modernized and the consonants vocalized.
See, for example, B. Waltke and M. O’Connor, Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Winona Lake, IN:
Eisenbrauns, 1990), 15-19, and Ernst Wurthwein, The Text of the Old Testament, trans. Errol F. Rhodes (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1979), 17-19, 105-110.
is omitted, all of the ELS sequences proposed (with their attendant conclusions) go awry.26 Codes proponents argue
that their system allows for variations within the actual numbers of letters in the text. They argue that the code will
deteriorate proportionate to the number of missing letters, but does not altogether disappear.27
Second, for the Christian, the door must be left open to the possibility that the New Testament contains such
cryptic codes as well, a theory that Jeffrey does not deny.28 One might ask the same question of the New Testament
that has been asked of the Old Testament: On the basis of which text do we make the assertion? The Majority Text?
The critical text of UBS4? Perhaps we should accept the one that provides the most interesting codes messages?
Third, one must first baptize and then advance odd hermeneutical notions such as gematria and gnostic hidden
secrets. The notion that God would “hide” information about Himself that could only be discovered by means of
advanced technology or specious practices is dubious. Jeffrey does allow that others discovered the codes in earlier
centuries without the aid of advanced technology,29 but these were the mystic Jews (a fact he fails to mention) who
were the fore-fathers or leading proponents of gematria. Jeffrey wants to dis tance himself from this system because
of its occultic character.
This would seem to set the plain meaning of the text in tension with a hidden meaning. Why would God be
predis posed to hide in this manner important truths or information when His historical method has been to reveal his
intent and plan in ordinary human language?
Fourth, Evangelicals who believe that mathematically derived codes can be found in some manuscripts must also
be open to the possibility that such codes would be divinely inspired as is the text. To assert this, however, is to
assert that the Bible is no longer the final authority and to read limitless possibilities into their newly discovered
codes. Thus, Jeffrey and Rambsel unwittingly advocate that there is actually more divine revelation, heretofore
undiscovered, yet somehow persuasively, if not equally, authoritative! Thus, they fall into the same difficulty Richard
Gaffin observed pertaining to the charismatics and their views on the non-cessation of prophecy and other revelatory
gifts.30
Grant Jeffrey’s words about his book, The Signature of God, which rose to the position of a number three
bestseller among Christian books (it sold over one quarter million copies, remaining at the top of the bestseller lists
for the last eleven months), illustrate the point.

I believe that God would authenticate His own true revelation by writing His signature on the pages of His
Scriptures. This signature would consist of evidence, knowledge and phenomenon in the text of the Bible that no
unaided human could possibly have written. In other words, the genuine Scriptures should contain supernatural
evidence within its text that no one apart from a Divine Intelligence could create.

26
On the surface, this may read like a denial of inerrancy or, at the least, a denial of Jesus’ affirmation that not one
letter of the Law will pass away until all is fulfilled. This is due to the fact that some Christians link the doctrine of
inspiration with the doctrine of preservation. One’s belief that the original text is available to us through textual
criticism of the best available texts (and therefore extant) does not require that we hold to the infallibility of one
particular text or group of texts (in this case the Leningrad Codex, which is the basis for BHS).
27
See, for example, Jeffrey Satinover, Cracking the Bible Code (New York: Morro w, 1997), 143.
28
See Handwriting of God, 114: “Several researchers have told me they found indications of codes in the Greek
of the New Testament, but no detailed research has been published to date.”
29
Handwriting of God, Chapter 7.
30
Gaffin suggests that, if the gift of prophecy is available and active today, then what is revealed in such
prophecies bears equal weight with canonical Scripture. See Richard Gaffin, Perspectives on Pentecost (Phillipsburg,
NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1973), 91-102, and Gaffin’s article, “A Cessationist View,” in Wayne A. Grudem, gen.
ed., Are Miraculous Gifts for Today? Four Views (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996). It will not do to simply say (as
does Jeffrey in Handwriting of God, 116-118) that we do not know why God would put these into the text of
Scripture. God has revealed in the plain text of Scripture that all of his communications have meaning and are given to
be obeyed, not guessed at. If these codes are divinely placed, the implications are difficult to subordinate to t he plain
meaning of the text, and principles of proper hermeneutics for interpreting them must be formulated.
The untrained layperson picks up on the semi-technical nature of these discussions and is unable to understand the
complications afforded by textual critical and statistical difficulties, computer capabilities, and mathematical
probabilities. He begins to wonder whether or not there is something to this codes proposal that he cannot fathom.
The real problem, of course, is that the Bible nowhere suggests in its macroliteral message that hidden codes exist or
have anything to do with proving the validity of the Bible to anyone. It seems doubtful that any believer’s spirituality
would be improved in this process.

CODES : GENERAL PROOFS OF DIVINE INSPIRATION?

Perhaps Christian Bible codes researchers should be wary of attempting to prove too much with their research.
Other world religions (such as Islam and the Baha’i) have long used numerics as well as ELS in demonstrations of the
divine origin of their sacred writings.31 In speeches Islam leader Louis Farrakkhan has applied numerics to the
Washington Monument and to the street maps of Washington, D.C., to support his contention that the city is a
“nerve center” in the white conspiracy against people of African descent. At least one group of Muslims holds the
conviction that the number 19 miracle in the Quran (in combination with ELS) proves its divine origin.32
The point is that, if such demonstrations validate divine inspiration in the case of the Bible codes, could not the
same case be granted to works of other religions, should they care to validate their claims in this way? Perhaps New
Testament scholars should begin working on codes in the Greek New Testament so that we can uncover new “gems”
God may have hidden there.

THE CABALA CONNECTIONS

There are striking similarities between the hermeneutical approach of Drosnin, Rips, Witztum, and others in
locating the Bible code and what is taught in the Cabala (from the Hebrew, "received tradition"). According to at least
one author, the majority of Jews who have held to the presence of codes in the Torah have historically had cabalist
backgrounds.33
The cabala (alternately Kaballah, cabbala, kabala, kaballa, qaballah) is a collection of esoteric writings of various
rabbis and a few medieval Christians which consists of mystical and numerological interpretations of Hebrew
scriptures. Cabala is, generically, Jewish mysticism34 in all its forms but specifically refers to the esoteric theosophy
that crystallized in 13th-century Spain and Provence, France, around Sefer ha-zohar (“The Book of Splendor”),
referred to as the Zohar, and which generated all later mystical movements in Judaism.
The authors of cabala treat every letter, word, number, and accent of the Torah (Scripture) as if it were a secret
code which contains some profound but hidden meaning put there by God for some profound and hidden purpose,
including prophecy. The mysteries are available to those who know the secret. The cabala also provides methods of
interpretation of the occult marks on paper that the less spiritually gifted take to be mere words to be understood
either literally or figuratively. The purpose of the cabala is apparently to read God's mind and thereby become one
with the divine. Like all other mystical works and movements, cabalists believe that the only world worth knowing is
the divine realm “above” and that one's life on earth should be spent trying to understand the mystery of the “upper
level.”

31
For a Muslim approach to ELS, see Muhammad Zamir, Dreams, Miracles and Supplications in Islam (Dhaka,
Bangladesh: University Press, 1995).
32
See Martin Gardner, “Farrakhan, Cabala, Baha'i, and 19,” Skeptical Inquirer 21, no. 2 (1997): 16-18, 57.
33
Satinover, Cracking the Bible Code, 74-77.
34
The earliest known forms of Jewish mysticism date from the first centuries A.D. and are variations on the (then)
prevailing Hellenistic astral mysticism. The adept (the initiated gnostics), through meditation and the use of magic
formulas, journeyed ecstatically through and beyond the seven astral spheres. In the Jewish version, the adept seek
an ecstatic version of God's throne, the chariot (merkava) beheld by Ezekiel (Ezek 1:15-16). For further description and
detail, see the Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 10 of 16 vols (New York: Macmillan, 1972).
 Cabalists accept and teach that all knowledge can be uncovered in the Torah by using cabalistic methods like
gematria, notarikon, and temurah.35 Such methodologies have clear connections to the occult. Equally disturbing is
the fact that connections to the cabala within the history of Bible codes research are not difficult to establish.
According to Drosnin,36 Weissmandel’s students reported that he “wrote out the entire Torah on index cards, with
100 letters on each card, ten rows of ten letters each, and then looked for words with equidistant skips.”
Weissmandel’s interest in the codes, however, was inspired by Babbenu Bachya ben Asher of Spain, a 13th century
Jewish cabalist.37
In like manner, Drosnin and Rips (and many others) use modern computers to achieve what many cabalists and
others in the past tried to establish—that there are hidden messages or codes in the first five books of the Bible as
well as in the rest of the Tanach. Similarity in method, or even this association with the cabala, does not negate the
possibility of Bible codes by itself. It does suggest that caution is called for on the part of those attempting to utilize
the codes in an apologetic. Clearly the methodologies employed here suggest careful scrutiny.

A GENERAL CRITIQUE OF B IBLE CODE RESEARCH M ETHODS

. . . you can become clever at manipulating a text,

making something appear that looks miraculous.
Shlomo Sternberg (Rabbi, Harvard mathematician)

In addition to what has been observed above, some general criticisms may prove helpful in sorting out the
issues for the interested reader.
Those advocating codes research make much of the “scientific character” of these studies.38 One wonders
exactly where the “proof of science” lies in the Bible Codes experiments. Roll a pair of dice 30 times and record the
exact sequence you get. The probability of getting that exact sequence is less than one billion, but somehow you
got it. When someone attempts a number of different trials looking for something and only reports the successes, the
calculations of the a priori probabilities of the results are meaningless.
A helpful analogy for understanding the research methods of Bible Codes authors is the lottery.39 In
Pennsylvania, for example, the probability of winning the daily lottery with a single ticket is very small. Similarly,
Codes authors argue that the probability of getting an improbable match (such as “Clinton” and “president” or the
names of the 12 apostles in Isaiah) is also very small. But what happens to those probabilities if one buys more than
one ticket? The average odds of winning the $1 million jackpot with just one ticket are about ten million to one

35
Frederick Bligh Bond and Thomas Simcox Lea, Gematria: A Preliminary Investigation of the Cabala
(Hammersmith, London: Research into Lost Knowledge Organization, 1977). Additional information and a sane
hermeneutical approach to the use of numbers in the Bible can be found in John J. Davis, Biblical Numerology: A
Basic Study of the Use of Numbers in the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1968). Davis takes umbrage with biblical
numerology as it attempts to assign numerical values to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet (149). Gematria is the
(theological) interpretation of a word according to the numerical value of its letters. Most attempts at gematria sum
the numerical value of the letters and try to find significance in the numbers obtained. Usually, gematria of Hebrew
uses the numerical values of proper nouns and words in the Hebrew lexicon. The Bible Code has a component that
might be regarded as gematria in reverse: certain systematically chosen characters are interpreted as dates, so that
some characters from various different words are interpreted according to their numerical v alues.
36
Drosnin, The Bible Code, 188.
37
Connections to ben Asher and other 13 th century cabalists are drawn out in some detail in Satinover, Cracking
the Bible Code, 67-76.
38
Grant Jeffrey, for example, in his book The Signature of God points to the publication of the Israeli
mathemeticians in the journal Statistical Science as a proof of the scientific nature of these studies. As an editor of a
journal, my job is not normally to check the author’s facts. My job is to check to see if the resulting article is
important enough to warrant publication, which apparently the editors of Statistical Digest did. They presented the
article, however, not as proof of anything but as a curiosity puzzle.
39
The lottery is actually a form of government-sponsored taxation on those who are bad at math.
against. With two tickets, the odds plummet, to about five million to one. At one million tickets, the odds of winning
drop to only about ten to one against. At $10 million in tickets, the odds become approximately two to one in the
bettor’s favor!
In the Bible Code lottery, however, codes searchers do not have to succeed more often than they fail. As a
matter of fact, they do not even have to break even. All they require to conclude a successful search is to “win”
every once in a while. Further, they have what boils down to millions of “free tickets” simply by running a computer
program with multiple adjustments to the sieve in terms of skips of letters, starting points, and the like.
Further, as some have noted, the claims of Bible Codes researchers are not founded on science. Scientific
assertions provide the standards by which their claims can be disproved either in principle (theoretically) or in reality
(the laboratory). None of the Bible codes proponents, so far as written evidence is concerned, have told us what
would constitute falsification of their research. Of course, the reverse claim is made by the Bible codes advocates.
How many examples of codes not found in whatever texts would it take to invalidate the hypotheses that undergird
their assertions? The basic critique raised by critics of the codes remains valid. If it is not possible to disprove a
theory, then it is not a scientific hypothesis by modern definition.40 Any proponent of a scientific theory must
demonstrate not only the proof of his theory, but also the kinds of evidence that would invalidate or falsify that
theory.
As noted above, with regard to the text of the Pentateuch, we know that there are a few differences between
today’s accepted text and the ones used in earlier times. We are no longer expert in the various optional vowel letters
that marked earlier Hebrew words (like y and w). In other words, Hebrew spelling practices were dynamic, not static. As
Ronald Hendel observed, “Every known ancient Hebrew manuscript of the Bible—including every ancient
manuscript of the traditional Masoretic text —has a different number of letters.”41 Such differences may not affect the
meaning of the text, but the placement of a single letter into the skip sequencing of the codes undoes the whole
operation. One cannot make an ad hoc case that the results would have improved with the original text. How can one
prove from what is no longer in our hands?
The first serious, independent test of the Torah Codes claims was made in the middle of 1997 by Dror Bar-Natan,
Alec Gindis, Aryeh Levitan, and Brendan McKay.42 These authors reported that they “failed to find any significant
effect.”

We have performed two series of experiments similar to that published by Witzum, Rips, Rosenberg. One
matches the appellations of famous rabbis against the names of the books they wrote. The other matches their
appellations against the years of their birth or death. In each case, the result was unambiguously negative. No
indication of any extraordinary phenomenon was found.43

Many of the proposed passages under consideration, at least in the way that Drosnin and others show them,
engage in a generous dose of poetic license with the Hebrew. Some of the passages Drosnin cited must be read
forward, others backward. As noted above, one passage he cites (p. 96) evidently reads boustrophedonically
(alternately from left to right and right to left)! Some of the passages to which Drosnin refers in his appendix do not
match the versions in any of several Bible translations.
Hebrew is prone to wordplay. Further, because of the triconsonantal nature of the language, many words are
extremely short, presenting more possibilities for locating strings of meaning. Many words in Hebrew can be read
as either nouns or verbs, depending on context, prefixes, and modifiers present. Because of this factor, many
passages can be read in different ways. Thus, any given snippet of text, with the spaces between the words removed,
could be interpreted in innumerable ways. In short, once one has determined an encoded message, how does one
interpret its meaning?

40
Certainly this is applicable in the case of evolution as well as the Bible Codes.
41
Ronald S. Hendel, “The Secret Code Hoax,” Bible Review 13 (August 1997): 23.
42
For “Report on new ELS tests of Torah” May 29, 1997, by Dror-Bar-Natan, Aryeh Levitan, Alec Gindis, and
Brendan McKay, see www.math.gatech.edu/~jkatz/Religions/Numerics/report.html. The testing was done in
consultation with Eliyahu Rips, who also interacted with the input data and criterion of the tests.
43
Ibid, p. 1 of 12.
 Drosnin does not seem content to work only within the actual confines of the Hebrew language. At times
convenient to the conclusions he wishes to draw, he alternates between Hebrew and English transliterations.44 He
also alternates between which particular words identify the code’s presence in the sacred text. On page 99, for
example, he finds the string “Bible Code” and utilizes the Hebrew words qnt rpc (lit. “tanakh”). Later (p. 104), he uses
the word sepher, and later still the identification “torah” (p. 185) in combination with rpc to indicate the presence of
the words “Bible Code” encrypted into the text. One nearly falls over in incredulity when also he uses a Hebrew
transliteration of the English word “code” (cf. dwq, p. 180) to mark the presence of the code.
Further, Drosnin occasionally splits Hebrew words in the middle in order to accommodate his conclusions. One need
not look far to find examples. One of the more famous “predictions” of the book has to do with the assassination of
Yitzhak Rabin as discovered by Drosnin in Deuteronomy 4:42 (found prominently on the cover to the book). He
purports that Rabin’s name crisscrosses with the phrase “assassin that will assassinate.”45 To accomplish this,
Drosnin freely but incorrectly renders “manslayer who kills inadvertently” (jx'ry] I rv,a} j'xwe ro) as “assassin will
assassinate.” Next he apocopates the word hM;v; (shamah, meaning “there”) to mv, yielding “name.” This method
allows him to find the name of Rabin’s assassin, Amir (rym[) albeit backwards or, as he puts it, “hidden in plain
sight.”46 Obviously this is an objective method in which exegetes can place full confidence. Using similar
methodologies, one adept scholar even succeeded in finding numerous assassination predictions in the English text
of Herman Melville's Moby Dick.47 Brendan McKay, together with his colleagues, searched Hebrew texts besides the
Bible using ELS. They found fifty-nine words related to Chanukah in the Hebrew translation of War and Peace. But
McKay does not propose that someone engineered this remarkable feat for his or anyone's benefit. Since then,
McKay has responded to the following challenge Drosnin made in Newsweek:

When my critics find a message about the assassination of a prime minister encrypted in ‘Moby Dick’ I'll believe
them. 48

Utilizing Drosnin’s method, McKay found assassination “predictions” in Moby Dick for Indira Gandhi, Rene
Moawad, Leon Trotsky, Rev. M. L. King, and Robert F. Kennedy, among others.49
McKay claims to have attempted two rigorous versions of the same project as Drosnin, and, as he emphasized in
an E-mail, “failed to find any trace of the claimed phenomena.” A creative debunker, McKay applied ELS to the U.N.
Convention on the Law of the Sea. The results revealed several “hidden” statements, including the phrase “Hear the
law of the sea.” The probability of those words turning up, McKay notes, was “a spooky 95 out of a million.” But
claiming divine authorship for them posits a very playful deity. A bigger problem arises from different meanings of

44
See the critique by George C. Hammond in the Westminster Theological Journal, 52.3 (Fall 1997): 329-331.
Hammond observed his alternation between Hebrew designations for the months of the year and Hebrew
transliterations of English words (e.g. p. 158, Ju ly = ylwy). Hammond correctly observes that there is no reason to limit
oneself to just English and Hebrew to find codes. Presumably many more coded messages could be found if other
languages were factored into the equation. Some languages are more prone to wordplay; others less so. In the
Mandarin language, Hammond reckons, words are one syllable in length and homophony is rampant. At the opposite
end of the spectrum, Hammond reckons, no technical text plotted out in German according to this method would b e
expected to contain even as little as the names of Shem, Ham, and Japheth!
45
The Bible Code, 15, 16, 17.
46
Ibid., 16.
47
See the web site by Brendan McKay, “Assassinations Foretold in Moby Dick!” found at
http://cs.anu.edu.au/people/bdm/dilugim/moby.html. McKay observes that “English with the vowels included is far
less flexible than Hebrew when it comes to making letters into words.” One can assume vowel pointing into Hebrew
texts which cannot be put into English texts. McKay is a computer-science professor at Australian National
University who claims to have attempted two rigorous versions of the same project as the Israeli mathemeticians and
Drosnin, and, as he emphasized in an E-mail, “failed to find any trace of the claimed phenomena.”
48
Quoted in Begley, “Seek and Ye Shall Find,” 67.
49
See http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/ dilugim/moby.html.
“significance” in statis tics and in exegetical work. In other words, such statistical analyses can often tell you that
events are meaningful, without telling you what they mean.
Drosnin uses many methods to improve the odds of his “impossible-by-chance” linkages. In one instance, he
uses horizontal words taken directly from the original text. For example, when Drosnin found “Clinton” linked to
“president,” the word “president” was just the Hebrew word for “chief,” taken from its actual context in the original
Bible. Again, no formal rebuttal of Rips and his colleagues has appeared in print, but both sides (those critical and
those supportive of Bible codes) are working feverishly to put their views into print.
Drosnin wrote frequent statements indicating that the computer science (in the Witztum-Rips-Rosenberg report)
is solid and the math is flawless, or passed rigorous peer review. Such claims are meaningless, especially when
stipulated by a non-scientist who has never written, let alone published, a technical paper. There is no substantive
computer science in finding strings of equidistant letters and organizing letters into a matrix based upon the string
locations, fewer than one hundred lines of BASIC code. A 1960s technology could accomplish that. Stating that the
math is flawless is also mis leading; there is little math in the original paper, except for the calculation of the odds of
this or that occurrence.
Drosnin states that the code cannot be used to tell the future, but that one can readily fit past events to the
code, evidently by being very flexible with the Hebrew. One is immediately reminded of the Centuries of
Nostradamus.50 Nostradamus’ predictions are so vague that they can be interpreted to fit anything in retrospect. One
would not suggest, however, that Nostradamus’ quatrains derive from reading the Torah backward and looking for
patterns! Robert Newman of Biblical Seminary has examined Drosnin’s arguments and added the additional point that
Drosnin’s position also suffers from the standpoint of failed prophecies.51 Newman cites Drosnin’s prediction of the
assassination of Benjamin Netanyahu as an indication of Drosnin’s violation of the Bible’s standard for unfailing
prophecy in Deuteronomy 18.

A CHRISTIAN RESPONSE TO THE CODES :

CONTENTMENT WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF B IBLICAL THEOLOGY

Every word of God is tested; He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him. Do not add to His words or He will
reprove you, and you will be proved a liar.
The Words of Agur, Proverbs 30:4-552

What is a Christian response to the issue of the Bible codes?

What should concern us foremost is that God has given His clear Word, the Bible, and yet this fact is not able to
excite some people as much as do these alleged Bible codes. Do believers need secret codes to get them interested in
God's Word? Do unbelievers require “proofs” of this nature to convince them? Evidentialists and
presuppositionalists alike agree that no one is thus argued into the kingdom by means of clever words. They agree
that the Bible is sufficient in and of itself. There is no biblical mandate to find hidden codes to somehow “validate”
the Bible. It seems certain that any unique features (if any) present in texts when analyzed on this level are
subservient to the message of the Scriptures.
It would seem clear that a faith based on secret codes is a faith that begs the question: “Is it real?” Are believers
so shallow in their trust of God and His Word that, in order to validate the faith, they require the neo-gnostic or
mathematical findings of people who often do not even believe in Jesus Christ? Certainly Christians can benefit from
the learning of unbelievers, but such “wisdom” is always measured against the true wisdom of Scripture.

50
There are dozens of books about Nostradamus. In V. J. Hewitt and Peter Lorie, Nostradamus: The End of the
Millennium (New York: Simon, 1991), the authors find hidden predictions in the Centuries by scrambling the seer’s
quatrains in French and decoding according to an elaborate formula.
51
Robert C. Newman, “Cracking ‘The Bible Code,” p. 1. Unpublished paper presented at The Evangelical
Theological Society’s Regional Meeting in Lancaster PA on April 3, 1998.
52
In the context of the proverb, Agur ponders man’s inability to comprehend the infinite God whose ways are
inscrutable (30:1-4). These verses are his advice to those who would go beyond what is written in formulating either
theology or praxis.
 For those who believe the Bible is sufficient, there is no need for the “validation” of codes. The testimony of
Scripture is far more powerful than some secret codes found by supercomputers. God does not need the testimony of
any man, let alone a computer. His established pattern of revelation is to sound forth a clear and distinguishable
message from Scripture, not a clouded or shrouded mystery.
Not needing the witness of the codes is one issue. Whether or not they exist is quite another. As observed
above, Scripture nowhere points to the existence of the codes or suggests a hermeneutic for handling them should
they be uncovered. While certain decoded messages may or may not appear when the text is subjected to ELS’s, this
need not signal the presence of a divine Author (or a superior, perhaps alien, intelligence). It may result from clever
manipulation of data or from innocent manipulation while looking for predetermined results. It is not “chance” in the
ultimate sense, for God is sovereign, but no internal feature of the Scriptures beckons us to consider or rearrange the
letters of Scripture to find or defend our position of faith. Certainly the use of similar methods by those who oppose
faith in Christ should keep us from drawing conclusions for an apologetic.
The perpetrators of these alleged “codes” take advantage of the public’s interest in the Bible, its desire to see
the future, and the scientific allure of the computer to create a marketable product in a pseudo-scientific, postmodern
age. The lack of any absolute authority on the topic coincides well with the spirit of the age. People who care nothing
for sound biblical doctrine are getting excited over the Bible, not for its genuine message, but in the statistical
probabilities pertaining to a rearrangement of its letters. This new teaching may bring many to a “faith in the Bible” as
a mystic code book, but I reserve grave doubts about any other fruit. Of course, God is sovereign, and may use the
attention currently focused on the codes to get people to read the Bible at its face value. It is certain that He must
draw men to Himself and that he uses even human failings to accomplish his will (cf. the compromises of Esther and
Haman). It is equally certain that no one will be saved apart from hearing and obeying the Scriptures as they apply to
the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Drosnin claims mathematical proof that “no human could have encoded the Bible in this way.”53 He says, “I do
not know if it is God,” but adds that the code proves “we are not alone.” He proceeds to speculate that alien
intelligences may have left a message for us to discover. He further believes the code “is more than a warning. It may
be information we need to prevent the predicted disaster. It is not a promise of divine salvation. It is not a threat of
inevitable doom. It is just information. The message of the Bible code is that we can save ourselves.”54 From the
straightforward message of the Scriptures, this is a clear recipe for disaster (cf. Rom 1:18-32).
I fear that those who follow these codes have fallen into a position resembling gnosticism. Secret teachings,
known only by a few, have historically been used to supply a platform upon which men set themselves up as
teachers of the secret information from God or the gods.55 The masses who want to have their ears tickled will
continue to rally around such teachers.
The fact that these phenomena are called “codes” means that searchers have to experiment to find what might be
encoded. Modern computers abet the process by allowing trials of a myriad of possibilities so that even a well-
meaning searcher can inadvertently produce what appear to be rare occurrences when doing multiple tests. If one
reanalyzes data often enough from enough angles, eventually one can make the final analysis show whatever is
required. The point is that even well-intentioned people can produce results that are or appear statistically valid if
they keep reanalyzing data by changing the methods.
Evangelicals would do well to steer clear of the Bible codes. The potential for abuse of the code searching is ripe
and clearly manifest in the plethora of opinions and “research” on the subject from varied sources. Too many
unresolved questions remain about the hermeneutics and methodology behind these studies. The picture of God that
emerges in these codes is often in conflict with the biblical revelation of God’s omniscient and omnipotent character.

53
Drosnin, The Bible Code, 50-51.
54
Ibid.
55
Consider Doron Witztum’s statement cited in Satinover (p. 17) that he alone “could properly conduct codes
searches” due to the mathematical, scientific, and textual intricacies. Such a statement, while perhaps realistic from the
perspective of the massive details involved, should give pause to any dabblers in the code. Without judging
Witztum’s motives, such a position does not inspire confidence in the results he obtains and triggers flags
concerning the provability of his methodology.
Drosnin’s superintelligent “encoder,” for example, suggests only the possibilities for what might happen with a
potential for delay built in, not an absolute certainty about future events.56
With so many groups laying claim to the codes as proof, one must look with a studious eye at each claim. The
inherent complexities of statistical probabilities and computer operations aside, we have a clear message from God in
the plain text of Scripture. As the apostle Peter wrote:

We have the prophetic Word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a
dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts. But know this first of all, that no
prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human
will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. (2 Peter 1:19-21, NASB)

Almost without exception, the men who locate these codes in the text of Scripture fall prey to assigning some kind of
meaning to them. Surely this procedure runs perilously close to violating the spirit, if not the letter, of Peter’s words
of warning.
When it comes to matters of divine judgment and the standards by which we are judged or delivered, if the horn
does not sound distinctly, who will prepare himself for the battle (cf. 1 Cor 14:8 and clear prophecies)? Indeed, who
will prepare to respond to “God’s message” in the Bible codes if the message and the call are not clear? It is
difficult to place one’s confidence in a code which, to this point, has only provided findings which are either neutral
or negative57 with regard to the clear message of the Scriptures.

APPENDIX I
B IBLE CODE DEFINITIONS

Because there are parallels between the methodology (hermeneutics) employed by Bible Codes authors and
other mystic disciplines, it is helpful for the reader to understand and to distinguish between certain definitions
pertaining to codes, Torah, Jewish mysticism, or biblical research.

Bible Code

A theory that encoded messages have been purposely (and perhaps divinely) placed in the text of the Bible (at
this point only the OT texts have been considered) to be discovered in the present day and to prophetically point to
future events. Some Bible Codes theorists suggest that the codes are proofs of the divine origin of Scripture. Others,
like Drosnin, make only the claim that certain future events are predicted, and one cannot be sure of the origin of the
codes.

Cabala
(also Kaballah, caballa, kabala, kaballa, qaballah, etc.)

The cabala is a collection of esoteric writings of various rabbis and a few medieval Christians which consists of
mystical and numerological interpretations of Hebrew scriptures. The authors of the cabala treat every letter, word,
number, and accent of Scripture as if it were a secret code which contains some profound but hidden meaning put
there by God for some profound and hidden purpose, including prophecy. The cabala also provides methods of
interpretation of the occult marks on paper which the less spiritually gifted take to be mere words to be understood
either literally or figuratively. The purpose of the cabala is apparently to read God's mind and thereby become one
with the divine.

56
See Drosnin, The Bible Code, 165-168, for the concept of delays built into the codes. With these delays one
might ask whether what we have here is probability or prediction. Certainly this is in stark contrast with the character
of God in passages like Isaiah 40:12-31 and 41:21-24.
57
By neutral I mean that certain findings by the three rabbis (such as finding the vegetation codes embedded in
the text of Genesis) do not actually undermine the authority of the text. By negative findings I mean the contrary
messages that authors such as Drosnin assert: that the Bible Code itself can save.
 Like all other mystical works and movements, cabalists believe that the only world worth knowing is the divine
realm “above” and that one's life on earth should be spent trying to understand the mystery of the “upper level.”
The cabala is believed to have been handed down orally from Abraham (see the series of monologues
supposedly delivered in the Sefer Yezirah (“Book of Creation,” c. 1894, and one of two main books for cabalists). In
the monologue the case is established for the Sefirot or the powers emanating from God through which the world is
created and its order is sustained. The doctrine of the Sefirot uses the Pythagorean primordial numbers as the basis
for its numerical interpretation of the biblical text.58
In sum, the Cabala is an esoteric theosophy, containing elements of Gnosticism and Neoplatonism, that
describes the dynamic nature of the godhead and offers a powerful symbolic interpretation of the Torah and the
commandments. It began in small, elite scholarly circles but became a major popular movement after the expulsion of
the Jews from Catholic Spain in 1492. The spread of the Cabala was facilitated by the mythical, messianic
reinterpretation of it made by Isaac Luria of Safed. Lurianic Cabala explained to the exiles the cosmic meaning of their
suffering and attempted to give them a crucial role in the cosmic drama of redemption. Luria's ideas paved the way for
a major messianic upheaval, centered on the figure of Sabbatai Zevi, which affected all Jewry in the 17th century.
Cabala still has its adherents among the Hasidic Jews (a popular 18th-century Polish revival movement).

Cabalist

As employed in this review a cabalist is a student, interpreter, or devotee of the Jewish cabala; one skilled in
esoteric doctrine or mysterious art.

Code

Technically, a code is a system of symbols, letters, or words given certain arbitrary meanings, used for sending
messages requiring secrecy or brevity.59 In short, it is a purposely and knowingly encrypted message, however
encrypted.

Cryptogram

Derived from the Greek words for “mysterious writing,” it would refer to deliberately coded words in the text. The
words are coded with the intent of hiding the meaning from all but those with special knowledge.

Gematria

Gematria is the (theological) interpretation of a word according to the numerical value of its letters. Most
attempts at gematria sum the numerical value of the letters and try to find significance in the numbers obtained.
Usually, gematria of Hebrew uses the numerical values of proper nouns and words in the Hebrew lexicon. The Bible
Code has a component that might be regarded as gematria in reverse: certain systematically chosen characters are
interpreted as dates, so that some characters from various different words are interpreted according to their numerical
values. Even if one ignores this “reverse gematria,” I think some of the characters in the source texts originally
represented numbers, but became part of words. (The original texts are a specified version of Genesis, an equal-
length initial segment of a Hebrew translation of Tolstoy's War and Peace used as a control, and various randomized
versions of these texts used as bases for the statistical analysis. I don't know to what extent old Hebrew numbering
was used in the Tolstoy translation.)

58
See Herbert Weiner, Nine and One Half Mystics: The Kabbalah Today (New York: Pelican, 1969); Gershom
Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 3rd ed. (London: Clark, 1965) and Kabalah (New York: New American
Library, 1978) for an introduction to symbolism, mysticism, law, and philosophy of the Cabala and its interpretation.
Also refer to Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale UP, 1990) for a discussion of the two major
trends in Cabala: the theosophical and the ecstatic.
59
Webster’s II: New College Dictionary (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995), s.v. “code.”
 Notarikon

A system of abbreviation used by cabalists in their interpretation of Scripture. The method is to either apocopate
words or write only one letter of a word. Thus each letter is made to stand for the complete word. As an exegetical
device, a single word from the Bible is interpreted as a phrase or a sentence instead. The term derives from a system
of shorthand utilized in Roman courts. In Hebrew studies this is the 30th of the 32 hermeneutical rules expounded in
the Baraita (Aramaic for “external”)60 of 32 rules.

Numerology

Numerology is, in a general sense, the study of numbers. With reference to biblical studies, exegetes use the
term numerology to refer to the investigation of the nature and purpose of the numbers found in the Bible.61
Numerology touches upon the issue of the Bible Codes in the areas of mystical and symbolic uses of numbers
whether in gematria, as above, or in other systems.

60
The idea is that the rules are external to the Mishnah. Any halakhah, halakhic midrash, or aggadic tradition not
included in the Mishnah is baraita. See Dan Cohn-Sherbok, The Blackwell Dictionary of Judaica (Oxford: Blackwell,
1992), 41, 401.
61
Davis, Biblical Numerology, 18.
 Temurah

Literally the word means “exchange” and refers to the sixth tractate in the Mishnah (order Kodashim).62 As a
system of hermeneutics within cabala, it refers to the same practice (viz., substitution and exchange within texts to
determine meanings).

Zohar

A mystical, cabalist commentary on the Chumash (Pentateuch). Written by Moses de Leon (1250-1305), a
Spanish Cabalist, but attributed to the second-century rabbi Simeon bar Yohai. The Zohar depicts the Godhead as a
dynamic flow of force composed of numerous aspects. Above and beyond all human contemplation is God as he is in
himself, the unknowable, immutable En Sof (Infinite). Other aspects or attributes, knowable through God's relation to
the created world, emanate from En Sof in a configuration of ten sefirot (realms or planes), through which the divine
power further radiates to create the cosmos. Zoharic theosophy concentrates on the nature and interaction of the ten
sefirot as symbols of the inner life and processes of the Godhead. Because the sefirot are also archetypes for
everything in the world of creation, an understanding of their workings can illuminate the inner workings of the
cosmos and of history. The Zohar thereby provides a cosmic-symbolic interpretation of Judaism and of the history of
Israel in which the Torah and commandments, as well as Israel's life in exile, become symbols for events and
processes in the inner life of God. Thus interpreted, the proper observance of the commandments assumes a cosmic
significance.

APPENDIX II
SAMPLE CODES FOUND IN DROSNIN

Chart 1 (Reproduced from Drosnin, The Bible Code, 29)

62
Jacob Neusner and William Scott Green, Dictionary of Judaism in the Biblical Period: 450 B.C.E to 600 C.E.,
vol. 2 of 2 vols. (New York: Simon-Macmillan, 1996), s.v. “temurah.”
Chart 2 (Reproduced from Drosnin, The Bible Code, 33)
Chart 3 (Reproduced from Drosnin, The Bible Code, 40)
 APPENDIX III
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