Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Andre Desnitsky <bsruss AT dol.ru>]

Dear colleagues,

When I have heard a couple of years ago about the the so called
"Bible codes", quite naturally I considered them to be another trick
of some clever guys with a computer. Quite recently I received an
apology of the method from its supporter claiming that the results
were proven statistically.

I am still very cautious about the method but such a claim can't be
simply discarded because we don't like it. What do you think? Do you
have any other arguments? Has someone tried to repeat the experience
or to do the same with another sequence of Hebrew letters? In a
word, was there an independent expertise?

To give you some impression, hereby I quote two abstracts from "The
Mysterious Hebrew Codes" by Grant R. Jeffrey (from his book "The
Signature of God") sent to me by a supporter of this theory. The
whole article is available in *.htm format and can be sent by
request as well as some other articles on the subject (all of them
pro).

Andre S. Desnitsky, Ph.D.
Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences;
Bible Society in Russia.

-------------------
...

Recently, researchers in Israel discovered a staggering phenomena of
hidden codes beneath the
Hebrew text of the Old Testament that reveal an astonishing
knowledge of future events and
personalities that cannot be explained unless God inspired the
writers to record His precise
words. The material is possibly the most important evidence I will
present in the book that will
prove to any unprejudiced observer that the Scriptures are truly
inspired by God. 

Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl, a brilliant Czechoslovakian Jewish
scholar in astronomy,
mathematics, and Judaic studies, found an obscure reference in a
book by a fourteenth-century
rabbi known as Rabbeynu Bachayah that described a pattern on letters
encoded within the
Torah. This discovery during the years before World War I inspired
Rabbi Weissmandl to begin
exploring for other examples of codes hidden within the Torah.
During the war years he found
that he could locate certain meaningful words or phrases, such as
hammer and anvil, if he
examined the letters at sequences that were equally spaced in the
Hebrew text. In other words, if
he found the first letter of significant word such as Torah, and
then, by skipping forward seven
letters he found the second letter of the word Torah, he continued
to skip forward the same
number of letters to see whether or not the complete word Torah was
spelled out in the text at
equally spaced intervals. Rabbi Weissmandl described this phenomenon
as "equidistant letter
sequences" (ELS). The rabbi was astonished to find that an
incredible number of significant
words were hidden in code within the text of the Torah at equally
spaced intervals. These
spaced intervals between significant letters varied from every five
letters, every seven letters,
and numerous other intervals. However, once they found a particular
word spelled out at, say
every 22nd letter, the balance of the letters from the words in this
group were also spaced at an
interval of every 22nd letter. 

Initially, Rabbi Weissmandl could not be certain if this phenomenon
was truly significant or
whether it was simply due to the great number of possible
combinations of words and phrases
that could occur by chance arrangement by skipping forward various
intervals of letters in the
Hebrew text. The proof that this phenomenon was evidence of a
supernatural intelligence and
design was confirmed almost forty years later in Israel. The
invention of sophisticated
computers and statistical analysis was finally able to analyze the
text of the Bible to prove that
these codes could not have been produced by random chance. Although
Rabbi Weissmandl
found many coded names by simply manually counting the letters in
the text, he did not record
his discoveries in writing. Fortunately, some of his students did
record several examples of his
code discoveries. Over the following decades, students in Israel who
had heard about his
research began searching the Torah for themselves to ascertain
whether or not such codes
actually existed. Their discoveries ultimately resulted in he
research studies at Hebrew
University that have proven the validity of this research. The
introduction of sophisticated
high-speed computers allowed Jewish scholars at Hebrew University to
explore the text of the
Torah in ways that previous generations could only dream about. 

Equidistant Letter Sequences

A group of dedicated Jewish scholars in Israel, following up on
Rabbi Weissmandl's research,
found many additional hidden codes embedded within the text of the
Torah. A paper called
Equidistant Letter Sequences in the Book of Genesis, was published
in 1988 in the scholarly
Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. This academic magazine is
one of the most prominent
mathematical and scientific journals in the world. The study was
completed by Doron Witztum,
Yoav Rosenberg, and Eliyahu Rips at Hebrew University and the
Jerusalem College of
Technology. This study has been republished in several other
respected scholarly journals
recently, including Bible Review, October 1995, and on the Internet.
Their discoveries of
complex Hebrew codes that reveal supernatural and prophetic
knowledge about the future is
causing tremendous consternation in the academic community because
it challenges the
long-held beliefs of liberal scholars who generally reject verbal
inspiration of the Bible. 

This scientific discovery is earth-shaking in its consequences
because it reveals a staggering
level of mathematical design and intelligence which could only have
been produced by a
supernatural mind, providing unshakable mathematical proof that the
Bible was truly inspired by
God. The incredible data demolishes forever the false claim by
liberal scholars and skeptics
that the Bible was written and edited by uninspired men and that it
is full of errors and
contradictions. Despite the fact that numerous scholars and
scientists have attempted to
challenge the validity of this Torah research, the evidence has not
been refuted. 

...

Adolph Hitler, the Nazis, and the Death Camps Were Prophesied in the
Bible

Truly one of the most incredible of the hidden codes is their
discovery of the words "Hitler",
"Nazis" and names of several of the actual death camps embedded
within this text of the Book of
Deuteronomy: "For the Lord your God is God of gods, and Lord of
lords, a great God, a might,
and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward: He
doth execute the judgment of
the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him
food and raiment. Love ye
therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.
Thou shalt fear the Lord thy
God; him shalt thou serve, and to him shalt thou cleave, and swear
by his name. He is thy praise,
and he is thy God, that hath done for thee these great and terrible
things, which thine eyes have
seen. Thy fathers went down into Egypt with threescore and ten
persons; and now the Lord thy
God hath made thee as the stars of heaven for multitude"
(Deuteronomy 10:17-22). 

In the Hebrew text of Deuteronomy 10:17-22 , the word "Hitler" in
Hebrew is spelled out at a
twenty-two letter interval. Beginning with the second last
appearance of the Hebrew letter (bet)
in this passage, researchers counted every thirteenth letter from
left to right. To their amazement
they discovered that the coded letters spelled out the phrase,
"b'yam marah Auschwitz", which
means, "in the bitter sea of Auschwitz". As they carried the
counting forward another thirteen
letters they came to the letter resh . From this resh, they counted
every twenty-second letter from
left to right. To their amazement they found the word "Hitler", the
name of the greatest enemy of
the Jews in history, the one who almost conquered the Western World
in World War II. It was
Hitler's satanic obsession against the Chosen People that motivated
him to create the Final
Solution which ultimately slaughtered over six-million Jews and
another six-million Poles and
Russians in the murderous death camps in Eastern Europe, such as
Auschwitz. Amazingly, the
actual names of the Nazi concentration camps, "Auschwitz" and
"Belsen", were also encoded
close to the word "Hitler" and "Berlin" in a cluster of letters
hidden within the text of this
passage in Deuteronomy. 

Scientists found the Deuteronomy 33:16 also contained a hidden
message about the Nazi
Holocaust. Beginning with the first Hebrew letter mem , they counted
every two hundred and
forth-sixth letter from left to right and found that the coded
letters spelled out the phrase, "Melek
Natzim", which translates as the "King of the Nazis". Another group
of nearby letters spelled out
the phrase, "laiv m'Laivi" which means, "the heart from Levi",
referring to the Levites, one of
the twelve tribes of the Jews. Incredibly, this same passage yielded
another hidden code about
the rise of Nazi Germany; the phrase "kemi bait rah", "an evil house
rose up". 

One of the most fascinating of these Nazi codes appeared in
Deuteronomy 32:52. Beginning with
the appearance of the first letter aleph , the researchers counted
from left to right every six
hundred and seventy letters throughout the passage, and discovered
the name "Aik'man", which
is a Hebrew form of the name "Eichmann". Adolph Eichmann was a Nazi
official who designed
the Final Solution, the evil system of concentration camps used in
the Holocaust. Eichmann and
Hitler were among the greatest killers in history. 

The whole series of hidden codes dealing with Nazi Germany ended in
Deuteronomy 33:21 with
a final astonishing code. Beginning with the letter resh that
appeared in the word "Yisrael",
researchers counted every twenty-second letter from left to right
and found the tragic phrase
"re'tzach alm" describing the terrible sufferings of the Jews during
the Holocaust, which
translated as "a people cry murder, slaughter". I have often been
asked by Jews about why the
Bible's prophecies do not say anything about the Holocaust, the
worst event in the history of
God's Chosen People. Now we can see that God included these coded
words beneath the text of
the Bible describing this terrible time of persecution. 

Skip           Word(s)
-------------------------
50             the Holocaust 


Found in the passage of Deuteronomy traditionally quoted as
foreshadowing the Holocaust- "and
I will hide my face on that day because of all the evil that you did
for you turned to other gods
..." (5 31 16). 
                      Other close word-pairs found on Hitler
                   Word(s)
                                                      Skip 
                   Germany
                                                      153 
                   Berlin
                                                      -4 
                   the troubler 
                                                      9 
                   Nazi 
                                                      12 
                   he was a great hunter 
                                                      1 
                   the breaking of the Jews 
                                                      153 
                   Hitler
                                                      -31 
                   Nazi 
                                                      -1 
                   the butchery 
                                                      14 
                   for the heart of a man is evil from his youth 
                                                      1 
                   Auschwitz
                                                      119 
                   the Holocaust 
                                                      -2 
                   Holocaust