The Dispute More Than 20 Years Ago About the Bible Codes
20 years have passed since the Biblical Code experiment was published in the Statistical Science journal where the names of famous rabbis and their dates of birth and death were paired together and found to be unusually close together in code in the Biblical text.
We have already heard claims from opposers that the data was falsified; and that codes can be found in any book; meaning fake codes in any book.
Although, even they admit that if the experiment wasn’t falsified, it would be significant.
To prove their point, they themselves openly falsifed an experiment on the book “War and Peace”.
They took rabbis’ names and distorted them however, they pleased, so that their manufactured names could be found in equidistant jumps in the book “War and Peace”, in a way that would look as if it is mathematically significant.
They then claimed that the way that they played with the names, as they saw fit, could be the same way that the original researchers who found Bible Codes, falsified their results. That is to say they picked the spelling of the names of the rabbis, etc. in accordance to what would get the best results in equidistant jumps when checked by computer.
Rips and Witzum Even Back Then Relied on an Independent Expert for the Spelling But The Opponents Refused to Agree About An External Expert
But the original experiment, performed by Prof Eliyahu Rips and Doron Witzum was based on the names of the rabbis as found in the Encyclopedia and the list of the rabbis nicknames was determined by an external expert.
This expert was Prof. Havlin, who was at that time the head of the Librarianship and Bibliography Department at Bar Ilan University.
Code Opponents didn’t use any external expert nor refused to have an agreed upon external expert decide the spelling of the code words to be searched.
The Text More Than 9 Centuries Old That Contains “A Priori” Words That Cannot Be Falsified
Professor Rips later arrived at a way to find the spelling of the code words to be searched in Biblical Texts that can’t be falsified. Namely, a code that is based on “a priori” words.
The code is based on Rashi’s commentaries, who lived in France about 900 years ago.
The search terms would come from Rashi’s commentary on the Bible. That is, someone who couldn’t have been in contact with Rips and Witzum would provide the search terms and spellings that are connected to relevant sections of the Biblical text which are being tested for codes.
Regarding the 7 search terms found in Rashi to (Dvarim) Deuteronomy 33:19
As an introduction, I will start with (Dvarim) Deuteronomy 33:18 and then get to the main verse, verse 19
The Torah (5 Books of Moses) says:
וְלִזְבוּלֻ֣ן אָמַ֔ר שְׂמַ֥ח זְבוּלֻ֖ן בְּצֵאתֶ֑ךָ וְיִשָּׂשכָ֖ר בְּאֹהָלֶֽיךָ
עַמִּים֙ הַר־יִקְרָ֔אוּ שָׁ֖ם יִזְבְּח֣וּ זִבְחֵי־צֶ֑דֶק כִּ֣י שֶׁ֤פַע יַמִּים֙ יִינָ֔קוּ וּשְׂפֻנֵ֖י טְמ֥וּנֵי חֽוֹל
The rough translation of these verses as provided by https://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/9997/showrashi/true/jewish/Chapter-33.htm is the following:
And to Zebulun he said: “Rejoice, Zebulun, in your departure, and Issachar, in your tents.
They will call peoples to the mountain; there, they will offer up righteous sacrifices. For they will be nourished by the abundance of the seas, and by the treasures hidden in the sand.”
Rashi as translated by the site mentioned above comments: Peoples: of the tribes of Israel.
They will call [peoples] to the Mountain: I.e., [people from the tribes of Israel] will assemble at Mount Moriah [on the Pilgrimage Festivals]. Every assembly took place through a “calling” [i.e., a summoning of the people. This is why the verse speaks of the assembly of the people in terms of “They will call”]. And there [at Mount Moriah, in the Holy Temple], the people will offer up righteous sacrifices on the Pilgrimage Festivals.
In Hebrew, Rashi says in his commentary to (Dvarim) Deuteronomy 33:19
עמים: של שבטי ישראל
הר יקראו: להר המוריה יאספו כל אסיפה על ידי קריאה היא ושם יזבחו ברגלים זבחי צדק
The words that I marked in red in Rashi’s commentary were used by Prof. Rips as search terms.
These 7 words all appear in code very near to the verse (of Deuteronomy 33:19) in equidistant intervals
- מוריה in intervals of -2
- ישראל in intervals of +2
- שבטי in intervals of +77
- יאספו in intervals of +204
- אסיפה in intervals of -14
- קריאה in intervals of -23
- ברגלים in intervals of -95
The video (which I linked to in the sentence below) explains the unusual statistical significance of finding all 7 search terms encoded in equidistant intervals so close to the Biblical text, that according to Rashi deals with these 7 concepts.
Source of this information https://www.youtube.com/embed/2v6Ej78TwZU?rel=0&modestbranding=1&fs=0
If someone is already taking the calculated risk of being exposed to youtube, an english interview with Prof. Rips
is located at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPu1CEBq-vI
For Further information about the Torah or Bible Codes topic, I also recommend
- Torah Codes by Professor Daniel Michelson
- Torah Codes: Newest surprises from the latest research Pt. 2: Prof. Eliyahu Rips 15th of Cheshvan 5777 – Nov 16 2016
- The Light of Torah Codes
The Great Rabbis revisited
Once someone already believes in the Codes, you might also be interested in reading