🚀 go-pugleaf

In soc.culture.jewish on Wed, 10 Sep 1997 08:09:33 -0600 Helge
Moulding <h...@slc.unisys.com> posted:


>Judson D. McClendon wrote:
>> [...]the Bible code discovered by Dr.
>> Rips exists, and I stand by my statement, as does Harold Gans below.
>> [quotes H.Gans}
>> the probability that they are mere coincidence is vanishingly small.

>Gans says that what is called "Bible code" is a phenomenon he has
>observed, and that by some statistical analysis it appears to be
>quite a remarkable phenomenon. Whether or not they "exist" in the
>sense that they were put there on purpose is not a statement to 
>which Gans commits without qualification. 

>I have no idea what these people mean by "vanishingly small" 
>probabilities. By some measure, my individual existence has a 
>"vanishingly small" probability. Yet here I am.

Very good point.  This is why I complain when newspaper writers say
the experiment had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent, say.
Actually there was, say, a 92% probability that the margin of error
was within 3%, but still a chance it was much greater than that.
The rest of my answer just deals with facts.

>I'm not inclined to worry too much about "vanishingly small" 
>probabilities. Aren't the names and dates and whatnot of these
>sages already in the OT in plain text? 

No, these are all people who lived *after* the Torah was written.  I
am sure this is true no matter whose date is used for the Torah.

>If so, then finding that
>some transformations turn up the names again, although "encoded"
>may be a forgone conclusion. Has that hypothesis been tested?

>Also, to me finding that the Jews returning from Babylon decided to 
>make their first organized shot at holy writ more than just a 
>collection of stories isn't too unbelievable. It's just that if I
>were writing such a document I'd try a bit harder to impose a sense
>of order on the hidden names and dates - why else go to the trouble?
>So, while I can believe that it was done, I don't think that the 
>discovered "codes" are evidence of this, since they appear to be
>much too random.

Again, none of the material written after Babylon is involved here, at
least in the Witzum, Rips, Gans material, which is the only stuff
stuff which has been peer reviewed (I am not sure Gans has but he used
I think the same program and the same analysis, and the same text).
Because all Jews and almost all Christians (I am told a few Xians are
exceptions) believe that the Prophets and other Writings were written
by man, inspired by G-d, there is no point to looking for codes in
them, unless to show that apparent codes are possible without the hand
of God.  So none of the experiments of W, R, and G, used any text
other than the Five Books of Moses, and for the most/entire? part,
Genesis.

>I'm thinking that if the codes are in fact there on purpose, then
>it is likely that Ezekiel didn't come up with this on his own. Does 
>anyone know if Babylonian religious writings had similar codes 
>embedded? Or were the post Babylonian Jews the first group from this
>part of the world to come up with this idea?

Again, Babylonia is not involved.

>(I'm basing my assumption that the Jews didn't bother writing their
>Bible until this time on Kromer's assertion in _Testament_ that 
>there are no known written fragments of any biblical text dated
>from before the Babylonian captivity.)

None of the pro-codes Jews believe that.  They take it that the Five
Books of Moses were written on Sinai and perhaps during the 40 years
that followed in the desert.  If you think it was written later, you
probably think it wasn't dictated by G-d, and although I guess humans
could have spent their time putting such codes in, no human could know
when some great rabbi would die or even what his name would be to
begin with.

An average Torah scroll in use only lasts about 200 years, despite how
well we try to take care of them.  After that they are buried and
written on parchment, they degrade.  The exceptions that I know of are
two cases where the storage situation was unusual: the Dead Sea
Scrolls which are about 2100 years old and the Cairo genizah (a dry
attic where unusable scrolls and books were put and then, as it
happens, forgotten.  The fact that none of these scrolls go back 3300
years I don't find surprising at all.  2100 years is a tremendous
length of time.  Outside of the material contained in the pyramids,
how much written material on the original parchment or papyrus do we
have from the Egyptians of 3000 years ago or more, or of any other
society?

OTOH, serious question, has anyone searched this same text for my
grandparents and is there any reason the level of closeness within
their names and between their names and dates should also not be
amazingly high?

>-- 
> Helge 

mei...@erols.com

        I miss many posts so please e-mail if you want me to answer.

          Judge all men favorably. Mishna Avos 1:6 from Lev 19:15,
B'tsedek tishpot amitecho. You shall judge your neighbor with righteousness.