Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Marcio L Redondo <mredondo AT liverpool.ac.uk>]

I would like to say a few things about secret codes and gematria.

One's methodology is crucial to ascertaining whether secret codes do exist in 
the Bible or not. How can we know there are or there are not hidden codes in 
the biblical text? In my opinion there are two methods which seem most 
appropriate: a) trying to apply the same "decoding technique" to 
non-religious texts, and b) trying to extract opposite results from the 
Hebrew Bible.

If the same technique gives a similar result in texts other than the Bible, 
then what should we conclude? These "codes" are pure chance. Just it.

And if it gives counter-examples in the form of absurd theological statements 
(e.g., God is a liar, god doesn't exist, etc.), the conclusion is that they 
contradict and thus weaken enormously the claims that the "secret codes" are 
real.

Tsadowq (would you mind using your real name when posting to this list?) 
wrote:

>The "evidence" provided on the "Moby Dick--Assassination" 
>website, if *actually* and *truly* investigated, is more of 
>a farce than ELS is.

Such a statement without any further evidence being provided is unscientific. 
I would like Tsadowq to tell us of any *actual* and *true* investigation (by 
him/her or anyone else) which proved it is a farce. I am interested in 
knowing both their method and results.

A couple of paragraphs earlier s/he wrote:

>Indeed-- all we have seen to date, are posts which point to 
>a website and say, "Here, go to this website, they will 
>prove these so called Bible Codes wrong".

Well, I went and was convinced. I should say I have no problems with being 
referred to websites. I myself prefer to go to good websites, where their 
authors have taken the time to write down their ideas. In a list (like this 
one) many of us simply don't have the time to put into words things that we 
believe others have already done well. 

Some websites are very good, including the one on Moby Dick 
(http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/moby.html). (By the way, thanks to whoever 
told the list about the Moby Dick website.) 

Now about gematria. It is one possibility in the Bible (as in many other 
books). But we must be aware of numerology and cabalism, because they are 
unscientific. In my opinion, gematria are marks that an author's leaves on 
his writings. It has nothing to do with meaning. It displays one's competence 
as an author. But unlike chiasm, parallelism, and many other features, I 
can't consider it a literary device.

By the way, Muslims claim there are secret codes and gematria in their holy 
book, the Quran. There are sites on the net dedicated to it. One I have just 
checked is http://www.submission.org/ . There you will find the Muslim 
version of both the so-called secret codes and gematria.

Shalom,


Marcio

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Marcio L. Redondo

E-mail:  mredondo AT liverpool.ac.uk
Fax:     +44  151  794 2226
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         Liverpool L19 4TX
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