🚀 go-pugleaf

In soc.culture.jewish Jacob Love <jl...@engin.umich.edu> wrote:
: The authors of the article base their conclusions on the notion that
: there is a fixed text of the Hebrew Bible which can be relied upon for
: such purposes.

I'm not sure this is a flawed assumption. If the current text, regardless
of history, must be relied upon for halachah, why not for codes (if I
believed in their value) as well?

:                                     Brendan McKay ...
:                                             such "codes" can be
: found in *any* text of sufficient length.

This only addresses Drosnin's book. The point made in the original
book "Hamaymad Hanosaf" (The Added Dimension) is that they have a
model for predicting the frequency of such patterns in Hebrew
text. And the model works -- for the Samaritan text, for war and
peace in Hebrew, for random permutations of verses, etc...

However, when looking at the current, halachically accepted, text
of the Torah, the number of finds jumps by orders of magnitude.

Therefor, no single "code" has any value, since it may be one of
those findable in any text. It's the number of them in total that
raised eyebrows.

Frankly, I think the whole trend into experimental religion is not
what Judaism is about.

-mi

-- 
Micha Berger (973) 916-0287      Help free Ron Arad, held by Syria 3909 days!
mi...@aishdas.org                         (16-Oct-86 - 12-Sep-97)
For a mitzvah is a candle, and the Torah its light.
http://aishdas.org -- Orthodox Judaism: Torah, Avodah, Chessed