This is why some people are fascinated by the Bible Codes.

GENESIS 1: 22-26

The Hebrew text above is one example of why many people believe in the phenomenon of the Bible Codes.  I must admit that I tend to be a skeptic about things like this, but you can see why this would intrigue people.

Rabbi Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl (1903-1957), the driving force behind the Bible Codes movement, found the following in Genesis 1:22-26; the name of Abraham is spelled out (from the top line down, enclosed in the added boxes) by the letters in the passage with each letter of the name separated from the preceding letter by forty-nine (seven times seven; seven was a sacred number, Genesis 2:2, 4:24, 21:28)) intercalary letters.  In each of the forty-nine letter sequences, אֱלֹהִים (elohim/God, backlit in gray) appears.

 In the midrash Bereshit Rabbah (68, 11f), Rabbi Nehemiah said, "The Holy One, blessed be He, united His name with Abraham; with Isaac too he united His name."  

One of the names of God is "Yahweh" (in biblical Hebrew this is represented as HWHY, read from right to left).  Remember that the ancients believed that names and even the letters of which the names were composed carried meaning and power.

When God confirmed His covenant to Abram by declaring that Sarai's son would be the long-promised heir, He inserted himself (the "H") into their names, giving them new and suddenly different lives.  Abram became Abraham; Sarai became Sarah.  Isaac means "he laughed" which is what elderly Abram did when God told him that he and and his very old wife were going to finally have a son. 

The text (Genesis 1: 22-26) into which this insertion of the name of Abraham occurs says nothing about Abram.  He wouldn't be born until centuries later.

"And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.  And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.  And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.  And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."

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There are often odd spacings and other abnormalities in the text when Hebrew and other Semitic languages like Arabic are inserted into a text.  Microsoft Word insists on reversing the letter order to conform to English usage (unintended ATBASH?)  Word processors need special software to properly handle these alphabets; without the software you have to try to trick Microsoft Word which doesn't always work.

Book Comment: Cracking the Bible Code

"All that was, is, and will be unto the end of time is included in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible."  So said the Lithuanian (though born in Belarus) Talmudic scholar Rabbi Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalman (1720 - 1797).  He was a mathematician and bible commentator who memorized the Talmud.  


When the rabbi was challenged, "Where is the Rambam?" (The 12th Century Rabbi Moses ben Maimonides), he instantly responded, "Rabot (may be multiplied) Moftai (my wonders) B'eretz (in the land of) Mitzraim (Egypt)."  This is Exodus 11:9.


Rabbi Moshe Cordevaro (1522-1570) had earlier said, "The secrets of our holy Torah are revealed through knowledge of combinations, numerology (gematria), switching letters, first-and-last letters, shapes of letters, first- and last- verses, skipping of letters (dilug otiot) and letter combinations."


Both men were echoing an ancient Jewish tradition that the Torah was dictated by God to Moses letter by letter and that it contained coded or encrypted information about the past, present, and future.*  This is the subject discussed by Jeffrey Satinover in Cracking the Bible Code (1997).  For example, Satinover points out that AHRN (Aaron) occurs twenty-five times in the Hebrew text at equidistant spaces in Leviticus 1:1-13, a passage in which Aaron is not mentioned.


The claim of hidden messages in the scriptures is at the heart of Kabballah, Jewish mysticism.  There are currently many teams of researchers using computers to search for names, sentences, predictions, etc.  Many claim to have found mentions of historical and modern persons and events.  Most are using the Old Testament Hebrew text; a few are attempting to use the same techniques on the Greek text of the New Testament.


Who knows?  It seems unlikely, but who would dare to insist it is not true?  Is it a situation like what is said in the film, The Number 21, "You're finding it because you're looking for it."?  It does seem dangerous, though, to base one's faith in the Bible on Bible Codes, religious relics, the Shroud of Turin, or other such things when we have the Bible itself and the witness of the Apostles.  The Bible Codes might be equivalent to seeing Jesus' face in a plate of spaghetti.    


















* Many modern theologians, including many Jewish scholars, believe that someone, possibly Moses, assembled the Torah from earlier, far more ancient, sources.  

God Inserted His Name Into Abram's Name

(See the post today titled "Abraham."  This post is related to the October 6th and 7th posts; "Abram to Abraham; Sarai to Sarah."  I'm new at scanning so what you will see was what I was able to do.  I'll get better.)

     Regardless of what you think about the controversy over the idea of divine code's having been inserted into the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) by God in a letter-by-letter dictation of the books to Moses, what I am about to tell you will leave a buzz on the back of your neck.

     Rabbi Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl (1903-1957), the driving force behind the Bible Codes movement, found the following in Genesis 1:22-26; the name of Abraham is spelled out by the letters in the passage with each letter of the name separated from the preceding letter by forty-nine intercalary letters.  In each of the forty-nine letter sequences, the word "elohim," one of the names of God, appears in the text.

     I admit wholeheartedly that the mathematics, statistics, geometry, and computer science being used to search for hidden divine messages in the Torah are all far above my understanding.  Even so, I found the book, Cracking the Bible Code, by Dr. Jeffrey Satinover to be a fascinating read.

     The book claims that names of specific individuals, dates, events, and other subjects have been found hidden in the Talmud with specific locations stated and grids of Hebrew letters presented with the discovered words and phrases highlighted.  To me, it was chilling that the following has been found: "AIDS" ("AYDS"), "virus" ("VYRUS"), "in the blood," and "immunity;" all in the same letter array.

     I don't have enough understanding of the subject of the Bible Codes to make an informed judgement.  It may be as Walter Sparrow's wife says in the film The Number 23 (2007), "You're finding them because you're looking for them."  What is true is that there are numerous rabbis, Hebrew scholars, mathematicians, and computer scientists working full time on the subject right now in Israel.

Gone!

     I just spent the last week in Mundelein and Vernon Hills in Illinois and came away with an odd feeling.  I saw maybe eight black people the entire time I was there and several of them were employees of restaurants and stores I visited.  I saw plenty of Asians and Hispanics but almost no blacks.  It felt creepy, a whole group of people suddenly just gone.  I live in the Deep South where African Americans have a heavy and very visible presence.

     During my alone time during the week I read Cracking the Bible Code by Jeffrey Satinover.  One of the prime movers in the Torah Bible Code movement was Rabbi Michael Dov Ber Weissmandl,  who spent the last years of his life pursuing the codes.

     The more obvious historical significance of Rabbi Weissmandl is his role in at least being able to delay the extermination of the Jews of Slovakia by bribing and deceiving numerous Nazi officials.  It haunted him the rest of his life, but, ultimately the rabbi was not able to save even his own immediate family.  In total, over six million Jews were murdered.  It was as if the entire Jewish population (about 5.2 million in 2009) of the United States were missing.

     The near absence of black people reminded me of the sudden disappearance of the Jews from Europe.  There and then suddenly just gone.