Biblical Hebrew Forum

[schmuel <schmuel AT nyc.rr.com>]

Hi Folks,

Chris Kimball
> "Bible codes" can lead to problems for scholars of biblical Hebrew. 
> Finding hidden messages in Bible text is a big business and can lead 
> to fame and fortune. This motivates individuals to search out 
> messages depending on small changes to the text such adding or 
> removing vav or yod.  A change of this type would be hard to detect 
> and, if detected, the change would be claimed to "restore" the text 
> to its original version. This poses the problem that undocumented, 
> willfully-modified texts may be distributed so than proponents of 
> "Bible codes" can find valuable messages in them.

Steven
In computer generated code systems there would be no need for small 
tweaks to the text.  Everything desired can be found through 
methodology, larger matrixes, flexible searches, words spelled the 
way you want. (Anything you want at the Bible Codes Restaurant.)

There may be a choice of one Torah text over another in certain 
systems, however there really would be no need to tweak the 
text.  For computer codes anybody who claims to use texts for the NT 
is just playing games, and in the Tanach even anything other than the 
Pentateuch is quite dubious, due to textual variants.

There have only been a few hand systems of note, like Ivan Panin and 
Yaacov Rambsel, the gematria-style of the earlier theomatics.  Panin 
ended up rigging his own text to match his systems, essentially 
voiding his labors, nobody reads a Panin text today.  Rambsel was 
working in local areas with known texts, it is highly unlikely that 
he would have any influence to change a manuscript, although he might 
have chosen one he likes for the hand system.

The concern expressed by Chris is understandable theoretically, 
practically I doubt that it is an issue.  Plus today texts can be 
much easier checked than in earlier years against standards, eg. by 
confirmation testing on a computer.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
Queens, NY