Is there any validity to the bible/torah code?

Question

The bible code is the notion that there are patterns of information encrypted in the bible. This idea has been around since the middle ages. In 1994, The Bible Code popped up on the best sellers list, prompting much debate. The author used the equidistant letter sequence (ELS) method to decode the bible and found many surprising result of actual events that have taken place this century.

Answer 1

Definitely not. Using the Bible Code's unreliable methods you can find all kinds of nonsensical, so-called "hidden messages" in the scriptures. It predicted a world war in 2000.

Answer 2

No, because you can do the same thing with Moby d**k, or any huge book.

http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/codes/diana.ht...

Answer 3

Given that you can apply the same method to any other sufficiently large book and get "meaningful" messages, I doubt it.

Answer 4

Nope.

The Drosnin book is total garbage.  Pay no attention to it.  It's the worst kind of yellow journalism.  Even the original "scientific" paper with the names of the musty old rabbis was flawed.

Answer 5

No.

The largest ELS ever discovered describes in numerous details, events and items surrounding Princess Diana's death.

It was found in Moby d**k, a book by Herman Melville.

The best test for such a thing is to get yourself a true random number generator.  Have it spit out huge amounts of letters, in any given language's letter distribution (so for English, lots of E's and S's, not so many Z's, for example).  Take the random text and put it in as one of the documents to search in a Bible Code program, and see if you can find any words.  (Hint: I've done this, the answer is yes.)

To make it easier, remove all the vowels.  Now you have something even similiar to the Hebrew in the Torah and Tanakh -- which doesn't have vowels.  This means you can massage the data a bit to make it say essentially anything you want.

If you can find meaningful ELS even in a truly random system, then there is no validity to the ELS methodology.

Answer 6

No.  It's bunk.

Answer 7

Any "code" works ad hoc. They found the same results analyzing "Moby d**k". The Bible has no code and no surface message that has any worth.

Answer 8

imo no..

Answer 9

The bible code is a bunch of garbage..

Answer 10

No there is no validity to any secret code in the words of the bible or any scripture. And for an FYI the Torah is only the first five books of the Jewish scripture, the whole is called the Tanach or Tanack depending on who is spelling it.

God did not "hide" a secret message within the words of the bible that only a "select few" could reveal. That is the essence of Gnosticism and is a perversion of Christianity.

God revealed everything he had to say in the bible and it is there for all to read. Understanding it can only be done with the Holy Spirit.

Answer 11

There may be some ...and I stress some...validity to it and other possible underlying meanings in the Words of Scripture in the Bible or Torah/Tanach. It may not have predictive powers but could show that certain events were fore-known. As others have stated, using such methods on other literary works can produce some similiar results....there may possibly be some underlying form in language that escapes normal observations. Since the Bible is the inspired, true Word of God, it would follow that an all-knowing Creator of language would possibly have more than one meaning to His Word....or have placed an underlying code in it.  The Bible tells us that it is the Glory of God to conceal things and the glory of Kings (man) to search out a matter. (Proverbs 25:2) Some people have taken this, out of curiosity, to mean there may be deeper meanings or hidden knowledge of future events which an all-knowing God could have embedded in His inspired Words.

I seem to recall an ancient Chinese palace or building that was so precisely co-ordinated, planned and constructed, that there was only one brick left over after it's construction out of hundreds of thousands that were required....that brick is situated above the entrance as a reminder of how precisely it was built. If man can so precisely lay out and organize the construction of a temple or building, it's not hard to believe that God could have instructed certain words to be written down in such a way as to leave a trail or code for future generations with the modern computer's ability to decode them....thereby, testifying to their supremely organized message. Some say there are also hidden meanings and mathematical values in the Great Pyramid at Giza and claim it was inspired and directed to be built by God. It beggars the imagination to think that ancient Egyptians, who were primarily agrarian farmers and herders, would have had or aquired in such a short time, the very precise knowledge of astronomy, stone cutting and construction, geology, mathematics, and other sciences in it's building and positioning to almost true north/south, and other values.

http://www.plim.org/greatpyramid.html

Others have investigated mathematical codes attached to the letters of the Bible and come up with a very precise value for Pi. The Hebrew alphabet has an alpha-numeric context...letters have numbers attached to their meanings.

http://www.khouse.org/articles/1998/158/