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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Community risks of "Bible codes" - THREAD CLOSED

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  • From: Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Community risks of "Bible codes" - THREAD CLOSED
  • Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2011 21:25:27 +0200

People, Kirk has already closed this thread. Changing the subject line and
going ahead is NOT acceptable.

Yigal Levin

Co-moderator,

B-Hebrew

-----Original Message-----
From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of schmuel
Sent: Saturday, January 15, 2011 5:00 PM
To: b-hebrew-lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [b-hebrew] Community risks of "Bible codes"

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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