What exactly are the Bible Codes?

The Bible Codes are additional information that is found within the text of the Bible itself. The word, CODE simply implies that the extra messages found within the text is numerically hidden from the casual reader. The extra information can reveal specific details about a past, current or pending event or person, be it cataclysmic or general information.

HOW THE CODE WORKS   

   The equidistant length skip interval (ELS) is a decryption method that takes every n-th letter, (where the n value can be any number, from a minimum specified number of 1 or  several thousand or much higher), and checks if they form a previously specified word or phrase, which can  be any word, event or date. The program first arranges the Torah into a continuous string of 304,805 Hebrew letters, then it starts searching, from the first letter of Genesis, (or from any other specified starting point), skipping from letter to letter by the specified distance. If the program does not find the specified word, it starts with the second letter and repeats the skip search. Then it starts with the third letter, on and on until if finds the specified word. When the word is found, the program rearranges the text into a two dimensional array or matrix where the length of each line in the retrieved text is the nth distance in the equidistant skip interval. For example, the name Itzjak Rabin was found encoded only once in the whole of the Torah (the Five Books of Moses), in Deuteronomy, from chapter 2, verse 33, to chapter 24, verse 6, at an equidistant skip interval of 4772. The program retrieves this text arranging it in lines of equal length (4772 letters in each line, with no spaces between them). In this way the code Itzjak Rabin appears in a vertical column.

   An ancient tradition in Judaism states that God dictated the Torah, (i.e. The Law, the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament), to Moses, letter by letter, and that historic facts, past, present and future, are encoded in the Hebrew Scriptures by an encryption system which can be described and unlocked.

   The Gospels may refer to this when they state in Matthew 5:18 “I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished”.

   During the Middle Ages a famous rabbi, Moses Cordevaro, wrote “The secrets of the Torah are revealed in the skipping of letters”. In the 18th century the greatest Jewish thinker of his time, Rabbi Elijah Solomon, known as the Vilna Gaon, said “All that was, is, and will be unto the end of time is included in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible”.

   However the thorough statistical analysis of huge quantities of text could only happen with the development of the computer.

   So, in 1994 the old tradition received a sound scientific basis when three Israeli mathematicians, (Professor Elyahu Rips, from the Hebrew University, Doron Witztum and Yoav Rosenberg), used statistical methods and computers to research the Book of Genesis, searching by “equidistant skip interval” for the encrypted names of 32 sages who lived between the 9th and 18th centuries, checking every nth letter, where n can take any value. They published their study, Equidistant Letter Sequences in the Book of Genesis, in the scholarly journal Statistical Science, (Statistical Science 9:429-438), about what they called ELS (Equidistant Letter Sequences) in Genesis. The program found most of the names, with the odds against this occurring by chance calculated at 62,500 to 1. Their summary said: “When the Book of Genesis is written as two-dimensional arrays, equidistant letter sequences spelling words with related meanings often appear in close proximity, with analysis showing that the (statistical) effect is significant at the level of 0.00002”, (i.e. the odds are 62,500 to 1).  This study gave mathematical and statistical evidence that information about personalities, events and dates can be found encoded in the Hebrew Scriptures.

   The researchers, for comparison purposes, did similar analysis in several texts: in a Hebrew translation of War and Peace, in a scrambled Book of Genesis, and in other texts. In none of them were the same results achieved from what would occur simply by chance.

   Other researchers discovered that the name of Itzjak Rabin, the Israeli Prime Minister, which is found encoded only once in the Hebrew Scriptures, (in the Book of Deuteronomy, from chapter 2, verse 33 to chapter 24, verse 16), appears crossed, (as in a crossword) by the phrase assassin will assassinate. When Rabin was murdered, the Bible Codes theory became the center of international interest and passionate controversy. Books on the subject became huge best sellers.

   Software was developed to allow users to search by themselves the Hebrew Scriptures for hidden codes. Unfortunately all these computer programs shared the same disadvantage:  they required a good knowledge of Hebrew in order to specify the search code and to analyze the retrieved text.

   However today, with the release of Bible Code programs, millions of English speaking people can search the Hebrew Scriptures for hidden codes without knowing Hebrew. The user can type the search code in English, the program automatically translates it to Hebrew, searches and retrieves the text into a matrix, analyzes it and automatically translates all the found words to English.

    On a last note; in the event you would like to do this yourself, (as owner of  the two most popular Bible Code programs to date) know that not all Bible Code software are not the same. Though they all can find the same codes, they simply are not created equal by any means.