From: Christopher Kimball <transcriber AT tanach.us>
To: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [b-hebrew] Community risks of "Bible codes"
Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2011 07:14:15 -0500
"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.
Chris Kimball
West Redding, CT
USA
[b-hebrew] Community risks of "Bible codes",
Christopher Kimball, 01/15/2011