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  • From: schmuel <schmuel AT nyc.rr.com>
  • To: "b-hebrew-lists.ibiblio.org" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] Community risks of "Bible codes"
  • Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2011 10:00:27 -0500

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





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