"The Bible 'Codes': A Textual Perspective" (1999)

THE BIBLE "CODES": A TEXTUALPERSPECTIVE

Jeffrey H. TigayUniversity of Pennsylvania

October 13, 1999

In the 11th or 12th century, a Jewish woman in Byzantium named Maliha wroteto her brothers in Egypt that she wanted to come visit them, but that when shelooked into a Torah scroll she found a bad omen forecasting failure if she were tomake the journey.1 Something in the passage that caught her eye seemed topresage evil. Maliha was practicing bibliomancy, fortune telling by opening thepages of a sacred book at random and spotting a message there -- a practicewidely known in the classical, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim worlds.2

In recent years, bibliomancy has been resurrected in a more contemporary form,based on finding hidden patterns and messages in the Hebrew text of the Torah,patterns and messages so sophisticated that most of them can be recognized onlyby a computer. The method involves finding words formed of letters that areequidistant from each other -- for example, 7, or 53, or 4772, or any other numberof spaces apart. These sequences of letters are known as equidistant lettersequences, ELSs for short, and proponents of the method use them to argue thatthe Torah contains various significant patterns of letters and often alludescryptographically to historical events that took place long after the Bible, down tomodern times.

There are three types of such arguments.

(1) The simplest is to find words of related significance in close proximity toeach other. For example, in Exodus 11:9-12:13 (see Fig. 1), the Hebrew title ofMaimonides' Code -- Mishneh Torah -- is found by starting with the M in Moshein 11:9 and counting every fiftieth letter until the word "Mishneh" (M$NH) isspelled out, and then starting with the second T in 12:11 and counting every 50thletter three times until "Torah" (TVRH) is spelled out. Between the first letter ofMishneh and the first letter of Torah there is a gap of 613 letters, equal to thetraditional number of the Torah's commandments, which the Mishneh Torahexplicates. What is more, one of the verses in this gap, 12:6, mentions the 14thday of the month (of Nisan), Maimonides' birthdate. To top it off, although thefollowing point is not based on an ELS, the last four words of 11:9 begin with the

The Bible "Codes" -- A Textual Perspective http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jtigay/codetext.html

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letters R, M, B, and M, which form Maimonides' acronym Rambam (forRABBENU MOSHE BEN MAIMON), and the clause containing the acronymmeans "that My marvels may be multiplied in the land of Egypt," and 11:3, a fewverses earlier, says "Moses was much esteemed in the land of Egypt amongPharoah's courtiers and among the people." These two verses can be taken notonly as allusions to the Biblical Moses but to the achievements and public statureof Moses Maimonides, who was court physician in Egypt.3

Fig. 1. "Maimonides" in Exodus


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(2) Much more computer-dependent is the discovery of hidden messages andpredic-tions in the Torah, spread over such large segments of the text that theycannot be spotted merely by eyeballing the text. For example, the Americanreporter Michael Drosnin, in his book The Bible Code,4 observes that if you lookfor the name Yitzhak Rabin, you will find it by starting with the first Y inDeuteronomy 2:33 and then reading every 4772nd letter, ending with the first Nin Deuteronomy 24:16 (see Fig. 2). If you then lay out all 304,805 letters of theTorah5 in an array consisting of 64 rows of 4772 letters, so that the name YitzhakRabin appears in a vertical row, it will be found to intersect with a Biblical phrasefrom Deuterono-my 4:42, ROCEAX 'ASHER YIRCAX, "a murderer whomurders." Drosnin, who renders the phrase as "assassin that will assassinate,"takes this as a prediction that Rabin would be assassinated.

Fig. 2. "The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin" in Deuteronomy

(3) Finally, the most sophisticated and computer-dependent of all are suchphenomena as the "famous sages" experiment, whose proponents -- Prof. EliyahuRips of the Hebrew University Mathematics Department, along with DoronWitztum and Yoav Rosenberg -- argue that one can find ELS-coded references tothe names of several dozen medieval rabbinical sages and, nearby, in statisticallyimprobable proximity, their dates (Hebrew month and day) of birth and/or death.6For example, the first name and the acronym ("Maharshal") of Rabbi ShelomoLuria and the date of his death (12 Kislev), all composed of ELSs of variouslength, can be found near each other in an array comprising the text of Genesis20:9-22:2 (Fig. 3).7


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Fig. 3. "Rabbi Shelomo Luria" (the Maharshal) in Genesis

To be fair, we should distinguish between what the different proponents of thecodes claim. The lecturers at the "Discovery" seminars sponsored by the AishHaTorah yeshiva; Rips and Witztum in their publications; and Moshe Katz in hisbook Computorah8 hold that the Torah encodes references to persons and eventsfrom long after Biblical times, such as Maimonides and the other famousmedieval sages, the Holocaust, the 1991 Gulf War, and numerous other events.Some of these proponents use the codes to prove the divine origin of the Torahand thereby win Jews over to Orthodoxy. Others, however, especially Drosnin,have gone much further, arguing that the Torah codes can be used to predict future events. He claims to have warned Rabin of his assassination before ithappened, to have predicted Benjamin Netanyahu's election, to have warned of afuture atomic attack on Israel by Libya from Jordan, and of numerous otherdisasters. Rips and Witztum have disowned this soothsaying use of their work.

In what follows I argue that the entire enterprise of the "Bible codes" is specious.It is undercut by what we know about the history of the Biblical text, by flaws inthe "famous sages" experiment, and by the arbitrariness of the methods by which


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the decoders identify which letters belong to the alleged patterns and messagesand then proceed to interpret them.

THE TEXT OF THE TORAH

Whatever the purpose for which they use the alleged codes, their proponentsdepend on the assumption that the text of the Bible on which they base them isuniversally accepted among Jews and is completely identical to the original text.9It is essential for them to insist on these points because the code consistsprimarily of finding words formed of letters that are equidistant from each other-- ELSs. What turns these words into messages, or at least mean-ingful patterns,is the fact that when the text of the Torah is laid out in a grid whose dimensionsare determined by the size of the ELS that forms these words, they appearunexpectedly close to, and sometimes even intersect in crossword fashion with,other words -- either real words (with no letters skipped) from the Biblical text orother words formed of equidistant letters. This makes it obvious why proponentsof the codes must assume that their text is accurate down to the very last letter,for if the spacing between letters in a "message" or in some meaningful patternformed by equidistant letters is changed by even one letter, the equi-distance, andhence the message or pattern, is destroyed.

The edition of the Hebrew Bible used by the decoders is the popular Korenedition, published in Jerusalem in 1962. It is distinguished by its beautifulHebrew font. But the history of the Biblical text shows that without specialpleading it is practically inconceivable that this text, or any other known text ofthe Torah, is identical to the original text, letter for letter. While there was anideal of an unchanging text, identical in all copies, this ideal was not achieved inpractice as far back as manuscripts and other evidence enable us to see. 10

It is not that we lack good texts. All forms of the Tanakh used today are forms ofwhat is known as the Masoretic Text, abbreviated "MT," named after themedieval scholars (the Masoretes) who labored for several centuries to producethe most accurate text they could. The MT in use today is based on Masoreticmanuscripts of the ninth and tenth centuries C.E., themselves based on oldermanuscripts. It has been largely unchanged since late Second Temple times (ca.the third century B.C.E., as reflected in the earliest of the Dead Sea scrolls fromQumran).11 But although the text has been largely unchanged, there is a largenumber of variant readings, most of which do not materially change the meaningof the text, but drastical-ly affect the number of letters it contains. In fact, in theoldest complete manuscript of the entire Bible, Leningrad Codex B19A which


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was finished in 1009 C.E., the Torah has some 45 letters more than the 304,805 ofthe Koren edition.12 Furthermore, the text of the 3rd century B.C.E. was itselfseveral centuries younger than the original, which was composed over thepreceding several centuries -- mostly between the thirteenth and seventh centuriesB.C.E., though some books of the Bible were composed a few centuries later. Inthe centuries between the composition of the Biblical books and the earlyMasoretic text of the third century, many changes had befallen the text.

These changes are primarily of two types: spelling differences and other types oftextu-al variants.

1. Spelling differences. The differences in spelling involve the way the textindicates vowels. As is well known, the Bible contains two different systemsfor indicating vowels. The fullest and most precise of the two consists of vowel"points" (nequdot), various configurations of dots and lines which stand for the different Hebrew vowels. This system, introduced in the Middle Ages, is usedtoday in printed Bibles where it is superimposed on the older system, the oneused in synagogue scrolls. The older system uses the consonants ' (aleph), H,V, and Y to indicate certain similar groups of vowels (e.g. V represents u and o;Y represents i and long e); when functioning as vowels these letters are calledvowel letters or matres lectionis (Hebrew 'immot qeri'ah), literally "mothers of reading." These letters are not used with perfect consistency. "David," forexample, can be written DVD or DVYD and $omer can be written $MR or$VMR. Spelling with the vowel letter is called "full" spelling," and spellingwithout it is called "defective" (the latter term does not imply anythingerroneous). The use of the vowel letters is attested in the oldest known Biblical manuscripts, the Dead Sea scrolls from the third and following centuries B.C.E., though not always in exactly the same places where they areused in the Masoretic Text of today. Moreover, archaeological evidence indicatesthat this system of spelling developed gradually; the evidence available indicatesthat it was not developed until after the time of Moses.13 The adoption of this system naturally affected the text of the Bible and the number of letters itcontains.

2. Other variant readings. In addition to changes caused by the evolution of thespelling system, manual copying of texts naturally created variants, some by errorand some intentional. This happens with virtually all texts. We are not evencertain, lehavdil, of the exact wording of the Gettysburg Address which wascomposed hardly more than a century ago (1863), let alone of the original text ofShakespeare's plays. Even printed Bibles contain typographical errors. SomeEnglish printings have acquired humorous nicknames because of the typos: one


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edition of the King James Version is called "The Printers Bible" because it reads"printers [instead of: "princes"] have persecuted me without a cause" (Ps.119:161); another, printed in 1631, is called the Wicked Bible because in it theseventh commandment omits one word and reads "Thou shalt commit adultery"(the printers were fined heavily for their mistake!).

In the case of the Hebrew text of the Bible, we can see textual variants clearlyenough when we compare texts that appear twice in the Bible. For example, oneof the Psalms appears both in 2 Samuel 22 and Psalm 18 with numerousdifferences: one word is replaced with another, words are present in one versionbut not in the other, and there are spelling differences (for example, many wordsthat are spelled defectively in 2 Sam. 22 have the fuller spelling, with matreslectionis, in Ps. 18).14

Ancient manuscripts of the Bible also contain numerous readings that differ fromthose in the Masoretic Text. These include manuscripts from the Dead Sea region(mostly from prior to 70 C.E.), the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Torahmade from a Hebrew original in the third century B.C.E.), and the Torah of theSamaritans. The vast majority of differences are insignificant variations inspelling and grammar which do not affect the sense of the text but do affect thenumber of letters in each verse. Most of these readings are scribal errors orrevisions made for the sake of greater clarity, particularly in spelling (asmentioned in note 13, the matres lectionis were introduced gradually and withoutperfect consistency). Some call attention to the fact that certain phrases may havefallen out of the MT, such as the missing "And God saw that this was good" inGen. 1:7-8 (present in the Septuagint), "the offspring of your cattle" inDeuteronomy 28:18 (contrast verse 4; present in the Samaritan Pentateuch andsome medieval Hebrew manuscripts of the Torah), and Cain's words to Abel inGenesis 4:8 (the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Septuagint, and some of the Aramaictargums supply "come let us go out into the field," though they may have guessedthese words from the context).

A particularly interesting variant involves Deuteronomy 6:20, in which the childasks: "What are the decrees, laws, and rules which the Lord our God has enjoinedupon you ('TKM)?" As is well known, this verse is the basis for the question ofthe wise son in the baraita cited in the Haggadah shel Pesah. It has caused no endof headaches for commentators because the child's statement that Godcommanded "you," instead of "us" ('VTNV) makes his question seem as bad as that of the wicked son who asks (following Exodus 12:26) "What is this rite toyou (LKM)?" after which the baraita states that the pronoun is the offensive part


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of his question. In the Septuagint to Deuteronmy 6:20, the son actually says "us,"and that is the reading found in the Talmudic sources of the baraita, namely theMekhilta and the Jerusalem Talmud, as well as manuscripts of the Haggadah.14aIn other words, this was the reading found in the Torah texts quoted by the rabbiswho first taught this baraita, and with this reading the question of the wise soncauses no problems.

The preceding example is one of scores of passages in Talmudic litertature thatquote Biblical verses with wording or spelling that differs from the MT.15 It isconceivable that some of these variants are due either to the rabbis citing versesfrom memory or to scribal errors in the copying of the rabbinic texts. Butsometimes these variants agree with other ancient witnesses to the text, such asthe Septuagint or the Dead Sea scrolls, proving that they are based on actual textsof the Bible.16 And, most significantly, sometimes the Talmud bases laws on thespelling of particular words (e.g., the number of compartments required in thehead tefillin),17 yet the spelling differs from that found in the MT. In such cases,the Talmudic rabbis were obviously confident of the accuracy of the reading theyrelied on, and none of their colleagues challenged it. This is an important fact: theKoren Bible and all other texts in use today contain readings that differ fromspellings which the Talmud was confident were correct.18 As far as the numberof letters and words in the Torah is concerned, it is also worth noting thefollowing: a very puzzling passage in the Babylonian Talmud states thataccording to the "first scholars," called soferim ("Scribes"), the middle letter inthe Torah is a particular letter in Leviticus 11:42 and the middle pair of wordsappears in Leviticus 10:16. However, in Koren and all the other texts used today,the middle letter appears 4830 letters earlier, in Leviticus 8:28, and the middlewords appear 933 words earlier, in Lev. 8:15.19 There have been numerousfar-fetched attempts to explain this descrepancy between the Talmud and the MT.Unless the tradition of the "first scholars" is based on erroneous calculations, itseems to imply that they were referring to a text of the Torah that was either of adifferent length than today's text or had the pertinent passages in Leviticus in adifferent order than they are today.20

It is, of course, true that the predominant view in the Jewish tradition is that theTorah has remained completely unchanged, letter for letter, since it was given byMoses.21 But this is not the only position that has been considered possible, andseveral contemporary Orthodox scholars who are critical of the codesacknowledge certain changes in the text of the Torah.22 Earlier, no less a figurethan Rabbi David Tsvi Hoffmann, in writing of his conviction of the integrity of


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the MT, acknowledged that the variants implied in Talmudic sources mayindicate that the MT did not completely escape scribal error, although heinsisted, against modern emenders of the text, that there is no way for scholars toconfidently restore the original reading.22a

Several traditional sources acknowledge that there have been changes.

a. Talmudic-midrashic and medieval sources list between 7 and 18 Biblicalpassages containing "corrections of the scribes" (tikkunei soferim). The sourcespreserve two traditions as to what these corrections involve: some sourcesdescribe the corrections as euphemisms in which the Biblical text used aseemingly incongruous phrase to avoid using an expression that might seemdisrespectful toward God; other sources hold that the text originally did contain aseemingly disrespectful phrase and that the scribes changed it to avoiddisrespect.23

b. Dots appear above certain letters in the Torah. Avot deRabbi Nathan indicatesthat the dots were placed there by Ezra the scribe who explained that if Elijahshould challenge his having written those letters, Ezra would point out that hehad dotted them, and if Elijah should say that he was right to have written thosewords, he would then erase the dots.24 In other words, Ezra was uncertainwhether the letters in question belonged there or not. His practice corresponds tothat of Alexandrian grammarians who used dots to indicate doubtful passages.25

c. There is a talmudic report that three scrolls containing variant readings werefound in the Temple court.26 The differences were resolved in a mechanical wayby adopting the read-ing found in 2 of the 3 scrolls. The need to resort to thismethod implies that there was no sure knowledge of which readings were correct;hence there is no certainty that following the majority necessarily resulted inrestoring the original reading.

d. The MT includes the kere and ketiv system, in which marginal notes indicatethat certain words are to be read differently than they are spelled in the text, orthat certain words in the text should not be read at all, or that certain words not inthe text should be read there. Various explanations have been suggested for thissystem. The medieval grammarian and commentator Radak (Rabbi David Kimhi,1160?-1235?) explained that this system was created because Bible texts werelost during the Babylonian exile and the best scholars died. The later scholarswho re-established the text found different readings in the surviving manuscriptsand accepted the reading found in the majority of manuscripts, but when they


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couldn't make up their minds about a reading they indicated both possibilitieswith these marginal notes. Kimhi's explanation of the kere and ketiv system,which like the preceding item (c) also implies that we are not sure which are theoriginal readings, is not the only possibility, but for present pur-poses it isnoteworthy that he considered it likely and that his religious faith did not preventhim from holding this view.27

Medieval Jewish authorities were well aware of these textual phenomena.

a. The variant readings in Talmudic quotations of the Bible were well known toJewish authorities throughout the Middle Ages. As the Tosafists (disciples ofRashi) put it: haShas shelanu xoleq al hasefarim shelanu, "Our Talmud disagreeswith our Bibles" (at B. Shabbat 55b, s.v. McBYRM). From the 13th through the19th centuries, major rabbinic authorities insisted that Torah scrolls be correctedto adopt the Talmudic readings, at least in passages where a law was based on aparticular reading, but they insisted to no avail. To this day, all Jewish Bibles,including the Koren Bible on which the codes are based, contain the readings thatare inconsistent with those quoted in the Talmud.28

b. Discrepancies between good copies of the Masoretic Text were recognizedand discussed throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. The Talmudic passage inKiddushin 30a identifying the middle letter, words, and verses in the Torahconcludes with statement that it is impossible to determine whether the middleletter belongs to the first half of the Torah or the second half because "we are notexpert on full and defective spelling" (that is, the use of vowel letters). Thatpassage was cited often in the Middle Ages to explain discrepancies betweenmanuscripts and as the reason why a Torah scroll should not be declared unfit foruse solely on the basis of discrepancies in full and defective spelling.29 Masoretictreatises such as Minhat Shai (1626) -- which is still commonly printed inrabbinic Bibles (Mikra'ot Gedolot) -- regularly discussed spelling differencesbetween model texts.30 It was only with the rise of printing that greater textualuniformity was achieved, but even today, there is no universally agreed-uponversion of the Masoretic Text.31 Yemenite Torah scrolls differ from the Korenedition in the spelling of nine words. Their readings are adopted in the editionedited by Rabbi Mordechai Breuer and published by the (Orthodox) MossadHarav Kook (see Fig. 5a). These readings -- which reduce the total number ofletters in the Torah by four -- agree with the Aleppo Codex,32 whichMaimonides, in the Twelfth Century, said was considered the most reliable textin his time.33 This is a point for the decoders to ponder: they are relying on a text


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that not only disagrees with the Talmud, but also disagrees with the text used byMaimonides, arguably the greatest authority on Jewish law in history.

In sum, apart from the archaeological evidence about the history of Hebrewspelling, and manuscript evidence about the history of the Biblical text, explicitstatements in Talmudic and later Jewish sources make it crystal clear that presentcopies of the Tanakh are not identi-cal to the original text. Even the editors of theKoren edition have stated as much. When this edition was first published in 1962,at a public program celebrating its publication one of the editors who preparedthe text stated: "We do not claim that we have established our edition on the basisof the tablets that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai."34 He was absolutelycorrect.

Of course, one might claim that whatever may be the prehistory of the MT andthe computerized version of the Koren text, in the latter the codes do work!Perhaps the Koren editors were miraculously guided to produce the text that doescontain the revealed code. It is beyond me why God would have allowed theTalmudic rabbis to base laws on a text that He knew He would eventually change.In any case, whether the "codes" really work is also highly dubious, as we shallsee.

THE FAMOUS SAGES EXPERIMENT

Advocates of the codes make much of the "famous sages" experiment in whichWitztum, Rips, and Rosenberg (henceforth: WRR) claim to have foundELS-coded references in Genesis to famous medieval sages with their dates ofbirth and/or death nearby, closer than would be expected by chance alone. Theystudied two lists of sages, consisting of 34 and 32 individuals, respectively, andpublished the results, based on the second list, in the journal Statistical Science in1994. In an accompanying note the editor of the journal stated:

Our referees were baffled: their prior beliefs made them think the bookof Genesis could not possibly contain meaningful references tomodern-day individuals, yet when the authors carried out additionalanalyses and checks the effect persisted. The paper is thus offeredto...readers as a challenging puzzle. (p. 306)

This experiment is controversial among mathematicians and other scientists.35 Arefutation has been written by Profs. Brendan McKay, a mathematician in theDepartment of Computer Science at the Australian National University inCanberra; Dror Bar-Natan, of the Department of Mathematics at the Hebrew


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University of Jerusalem; Maya Bar-Hillel, of the Department of Psychology andthe Center for the Study of Rationality at the Hebrew University; and Gil Kalai,also a mathematician at the Hebrew University (henceforth: MBBK).36 Since Iam not a mathematician, I cannot comment independently on the mathematicalaspects of the debate, but in all other respects it is clear to me that MBBK'sargument is persuasive.

In WRR's experiment, everything hinges on the claim that the sages appear "inclose proximity" to their dates. It is noteworthy that "close proximity" does notnecessarily mean what laymen are likely to think it means. As Rips stateselsewhere:

We have chosen for our analysis a specific pattern, namely, proximity(in a certain technical sense [emphasis mine -- JHT]) of related wordsappearing as ELSs. Thus, everything is reduced to a statistical analysisof the significance of such proximity patterns.37

Since "proximity" is meant only in a technical sense, readers should not expect tofind the names and dates of the sages in actual passages on real pages of theTorah. The letters of their names and dates are drawn from different chapters ofthe Torah, often many pages apart. Any proximity between them is found only ongrids created by computer from ELSs. Perhaps this is why WRR do not show intheir article any of the textual arrays in which the sages and their dates appearnear each other (an example would be Fig. 3, above).38 Instead, they illustrate thephenomenon of ELSs with a few simple arrays containing words of relatedmeaning (such as the Hebrew words for hammer and anvil and some names thatare related to each other) and for the sages experiment they publish the lists of thesages and dates whose ELSs they consider to be unexpectedly close to eachother.39 The closeness itself is displayed by mathematical tables and formulasrather than pictorially. It is virtually impossible for non-mathematicians toexamine their evidence. In response to my question about this, McKay explained:"The pictorial evidence in the form of letter arrays is irrelevant to themathematical question. What matters is only the numerical 'distance' computedaccording to WRR's complicated definition."

Interestingly, however, McKay continued as follows:

WRR don't actually claim that all the rabbis appear close to their dates. All they claim is that they are a little closer than expected on average. This slight statistical trend needs a careful test to detect. Some rabbis


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are far from their dates...and in fact most of them are closer to the datesof some other rabbi than to their own dates.40 Here is a summary Imade for WRR's second list, using the smallest distance from any nameof a rabbi to any of his dates.

McKay's summary is as follows:

Rabbi Comment

1 Close to many dates but closest to the right date. 2 Closer to at least 8 wrong dates. 3 Closer to at least 3 wrong dates. 4 No date used (claimed to be uncertain) 5 No ELS for the date exists. Not close to anything. 6 Closer to at least 5 wrong dates. 7 Closer to at least 15 wrong dates. 8 No dates used (uncertain). Close to 8 wrong dates. 9 Far from right date, close to 7 wrong dates. 10 Far from right date, close to 9 wrong dates. 11 Far from right date, close to 10 wrong dates. 12 Close to many dates but closest to the right date. 13 Far from right date, close to 15 wrong dates. 14 Far from right date, close to 9 wrong dates. 15 Closer to at least 2 wrong dates. 16 Far from right date, close to 11 wrong dates. 17 No ELS for the name exists. 18 No ELS for either name exists. 19 Closer to at least 19 wrong dates. 20 Closer to at least 7 wrong dates. 21 Closer to at least 9 wrong dates. (It seems the date is wrong; should be 1st Iyyar. The right date does even worse.) 22 Good match, equally close to two wrong dates. 23 Close to many dates but closest to the right date. 24 Closer to at least 5 wrong dates. 25 Far from all dates. 26 Closer to at least 7 wrong dates. 27 Closer to at least 12 wrong dates. 28 Closer to at least 9 wrong dates.


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29 No ELS for the name exists. 30 Good match, equally close to 1 wrong date. 31 Good match, equally close to 1 wrong date. 32 Far from right date, close to 3 wrong dates.

It is instructive to note that the rabbi contributing most strongly to theStatistical Science result is #27.41

From a layman's point of view, then, even using WRR's "technical" definition ofproximity, the correlation of sages and their dates is actually poor, even though onaverage it is not quite as poor as one might have expected from chance; that iswhy mathematicians and other scientists find it interesting. But from a theologicalpoint of view, why should one be impressed by correlations that are surprisingonly "on average," and not in every case?

The same point may be illustrated another way. According to MBBK,42 in orderto test whether there was an extraordinary closeness between the sages' namesand dates, WRR compared the distances in the list of 32 sages and their datesof death to 999,999 alternative control lists in which each sage was paired not with his own date of death but rather with a date chosen randomly from the list(random pairings would more often than not pair a rabbi with the date of someother rabbi). The assumption was that "if there is anything special in the Book ofGenesis and the sages' names really appear exceptionally close to their dates ofdeath, then the distances between correct name-date pairs should be, on average,closer than between random name-date pairs." Accordingly, 999,999permutations of the list were chosen. In each, every sage was paired with the dateof a sage chosen randomly from the list, and the distance between the names andthose dates was computed. When the original, correct list of distances wascompared to the 999,999 random lists, "the correct list achieved one of the firstplaces" (fourth place, according to WRR) in this race among one millioncontestants. This means that three of the lists in which the sages were mostlypaired with the wrong dates did better! In those three lists, the sages and the dateswere closer than they are in the correct list. From a mathematical point of view itis interesting that the correct list did as well as it did (better than 999,996 otherlists), since there was no a priori reason to expect it to do so. But from atheo-logical point of view, a test in which mostly incorrect lists perform betterthan the correct one seems meaningless. If God arranged the text so as to pair thesages with their dates, why would He have paired most rabbis more closely withincorrect dates than with correct ones?


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Returning to the subject of textual criticism, MBBK re-ran WRR's experiment onthe list of 32 sages based on the text of Genesis in the Koren edition and then onsix other editions of the MT whose differences from Koren were listed by Prof.Menahem Cohen of Bar Ilan University (Cohen's list is posted on BrendanMcKay's website; see note 30). Their results are as follows:43

Differences Rank

Koren 0 6 Yemenite 3 19 Sassoon 11 2308 Venice Mikra'ot Gedolot 15 16608 Leningrad 22 12528 Jerusalem 35 19075 Hilleli 43 6411

"Differences" is the number of places where the other texts spell a worddifferently than Koren. The numbers under "Rank" mean that if one compares thecorrect dates to 10,000,000 random permutations of the dates, the correct datesperform 6th best, 19th best, 2308th best, etc. (for greater accuracy, MBBK givethe ranks out of 10 million permutations, instead of the 1 million used by WRR).Note that the other texts do much worse than Koren, but that even in Koren thecorrect dates do not perform best. In other words, there is no known text of theTorah in which the list with the correct dates does best!

Given the fact that all of these editions of the MT are so much later than theoriginal text of Genesis, it is also important to consider the much earlier Hebrewcopies of Genesis from Qumran. Fragments from 14 different manuscripts ofGenesis have been found at Qumran, from the last two centuries B.C.E. and thefirst century C.E. They differ from the MT in different degrees. Extrapolatingfrom variants in these fragments, each of the manu-scripts when complete wouldhave differed from the MT by hundreds of letters.44 This number of differences isenough to completely obliterate the codes. As MBBK explain:

Clearly an ELS is destroyed if any letter is inserted or deleted within itsoverall span. The ELSs giving the strongest contribution to WRR'sresult together span most of the text. Experiments show that deletion of10 letters in random places is enough to de-grade the result by an


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average factor of 4000, and 50 letters are enough to eliminate itcompletely.45 Of course, the effect has a very large variance, as itdepends on which of a comparatively small number of important ELSsare "hit" by a deletion. WRR's first list [the 34 sages - J.H.T.] is evenmore sensitive to the effects of corruption, as its important ELSs havegreater skips. Ten letters deleted in random places are on averageenough to eliminate its significance altogether.

Considering that even the Qumran scrolls are centuries later than the traditionaldate of the Torah, MBBK conclude:

if the text of Genesis were to be consistently spelled in the style of theinscriptions closest to the time it was traditionally written, thedifferences would number in the thousands (even without any changeof meaning). This conclusion has catastrophic consequences for anytheory that "codes" in the original text have survived until today.

MBBK argue that WRR's results, to the extent that they seem interesting at all,are due to flaws in their research methods. There are numerous possible forms ofeach rabbi's name and acronym that could have been used,46 and numerouspossible ways to write their dates.47 MBBK argue that WRR chose only alimited number from among these possibilities, without any valid scientificreason for their choices, and that this strongly affected the outcome; had the testbeen run with other, equally valid choices, the results would have been worse.This strongly suggests, they argue, that WRR's choices may have been made notin an unbiased way, but precisely in order to enhance their results.

Much more material is available in MBBK's full article, cited in note 36. Part ofthat material includes patterns and "codes" found in other texts, such as theChristian Scriptures,48 the Qur'an, and Poe's "The Raven." McKay showed thatone can also find "encoded" references in Melville's Moby Dick to variouspolitical assassinations, such as those of Leon Trotsky, John F. Kennedy, andMartin Luther King, Jr. He and Bar-Natan also ran a version of the "famoussages" experiment on the first part of the Hebrew translation of Tolstoy's War andPeace, equal in length to Genesis. They followed the procedures used by WRR onGenesis, and achieved the same degree of success. That such results can be foundin so many texts, including texts for which no one claims divine authorship, is notunexpected. It has long been known that striking pat-terns can be found in allkinds of large masses of data.49


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INTERPRETIVE METHODS

Apart from the mathematical aspects of the decoders' work, many other aspectsof their method are also questionable. The basic method, as mentioned above,consists primarily of finding words formed of ELSs. "Interpreters" such asDrosnin then read the ELS-based words in conjunction with words, or parts ofwords, that are nearby or that intersect with them crossword fashion. Whatusually happens is that the computer will be "instructed" to look for a word.When the word is located, it is found to consist of letters spaced at equidistantintervals. As mentioned, the name Yitzhak Rabin is formed by letters appearing4772 letters apart. Then the computer is instructed to lay out all the 304,805letters of the Torah (Koren edition) in an array consisting of 64 rows of 4772letters, so that Rabin's name appears in a vertical row. Then the computer displaysthe nearest segment of the array, a square consisting of ca. 15-20 rows of lettersboth horizontally and vertically. This segment resembles the grid of a "WordHunt" puzzle (see Fig. 6), and the task of the researcher is then to find otherphrases nearby that combine with it to form a message. Since the horizontal linesconsist of Biblical verses, they can be searched by the naked eye. That's how thephrase "murderer who will murder" was found. But the codes aren't limited towhat can be noticed with the naked eye. For example, if one asks ask thecomputer to find the name of Rabin's assassin nearby, it will do so a mere twolines above -- but with two hitches. As one can see from Fig. 7, the letters of theassassin's name (Amir) are a mere 9 spaces apart, not 4772, and -- they spell hisname backwards! What is more, if one changes the width of the array, the phrase"murderer who will murder" will still be found in its place, but Rabin's name willnow appear in a diagonal line with the letters separated from each other by twohorizontal columns and one vertical (see Fig. 8). And if one does this, one willalso find nearby the name of Netanyahu and the phrase "all his people to war," anominous prediction of what Netanyahu might do. This willingness to change thedistance between letters for different parts of the same message, to read wordshorizontally, vertically, diagonally, upside down and backwards, all within thesame message -- procedures that are found on every page of the Bible code books-- gives the impression of arbitrariness and manipulation of the data. Nowhere dothe decoders show these choices to be based on any objective, systematic method.


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Fig. 6. A "Word Hunt" grid

Fig. 7. "Rabin's assassin" in Deuteronomy


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Fig. 8. "Benjamin Netanyahu" in Deuteronmomy

Another key element of the procedures is to ignore the spaces between thewords. By running all the letters of the Torah together, they can then be redividedinto different words to produce new messages. For example, in Fig. 9, the words"fire, great noise [literally, thunder]" ('E$, RAcAM, spelled '$ RcM), allegedlydescribing a bus bombing in Jerusalem, are produced by redividing the letters ofthe words "which is near" ('A$ER cIM, spelled '$R cM) in Genesis 35:4. In anarray that spans Exodus 19:12-Deuteronomy 4:48, some letters are lifted fromparts of the words in God's declaration "You will be My people. I am the Lordyour God" (Leviticus 26:12-13) and are taken to mean "July to Amman" --Hebrew YULI LE-cAMAN, formed from the last two letters of the Hebrew wordfor "will be" (YU) plus the word for "My" (LI) and the word for "as a people"(LE-cAM) plus the first two letters of the word for "I" ('AN) (see Fig. 10); this"phrase" is taken to predict a trip to Amman planned by Netanyahu for July, l996(it was ultimately delayed until August).50 Just how much mischief can be doneby this method was shown to me when I was in Hebrew high school by a teacherwho pointed out that the words "In the beginning God created" (Genesis 1:1)could be redivided into "At first the god of the sea created himself" (see Fig. 11).Truly, by such methods one can produce messages not only undreamed of by theTorah, but contrary to its most fundamen-tal, monotheistic, teaching.


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Fig. 9. "Bus bombing" in Genesis

Fig. 10. "July to Amman" in Leviticus

Fig. 11. "The God of the Sea" in Genesis 1:1

Likewise problematic are other methods used in interpreting these allegedmessages. First, the messages consist of disconnected words and phrases with nosyntactic connection, which leaves them equivocal. For example, the intersectingphrases "Yitzhak Rabin" and "murderer who will murder" could mean "amurderer will kill Rabin" or "Rabin is a murderer." In fact, since the Hebrewgrammatical particle 'ET that usually precedes the direct of object of a verb is notpresent before Rabin's name, Rabin is more likely the subject of the verb than itsobject, and the message more likely means that he is a killer than that he will bekilled. Another message consists of the phrases "Hitler," "evil man," "Nazi andenemy," and "slaughter." In a somewhat lighter vein we have this message:


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"Watergate," and "Who51 is he? President but he was kicked out." And here is athird message: "Einstein," "science," "he overturned present reality," "they52prophesied a brainy person," "a new and excellent under-standing." Thesedisconnected phrases make the author of the codes sound like an incoherentbabbler.

Then there are messages that do not come true. In time-honored fashion, they arera-tionalized or reinterpreted. Near the supposed prediction of Rabin'sassassination Drosnin found the words "all his people to war," which he took topredict an atomic holocaust after Rabin's death (pp. 54-58). Eventually, he settledfor the 1996 bus bombings as the fulfillment of the prediction "all his people towar" (p. 69). Drosnin found another message with the phrases "atomicholocaust," "Libya," and the date 1995-96, which he took as a warning of anuclear attack on Israel by Libya in that year; the closest thing he can report toconfirmation is the fact that in 1996 the Libyan leader Muammar Kaddafi calledon all Arab countries to acquire nuclear weapons. But Drosnin is also protectedagainst this problem because he even-tually "realized" that not all predictions aredefinite, and that the Hebrew letters that spell out the Hebrew equivalent of1995-96 (HT$NV) also spell out a word meaning "Will you change (it)?"(HATE$ANNU, pp. 59, 83).

Finally, those parts of the messages produced by reading the letters of thehorizontal lines in their actual sequence are not produced by equidistant lettersequences, but by arbitrari-ly selecting certain letters as part of the message andignoring the rest. This is a very important point: the choice of which letters andwords to include in a message is not based on an objec-tive, scientific method,such as considering only words composed of equidistant letters -- it is, rather,subjective and arbitrary. For example, citing again the passage intersecting withRabin: that passage is from Deuteronomy 4:42, but Drosnin ignores the wordsimmediately following "a murderer who will murder." What comes next is thephrase "unwittingly" (biveli da'at). This is because the verse deals with the citiesof refuge where accidental killers can find asylum. In this case, then, the messagewould refer to an accidental killing of (or by) Rabin and it would therefore bewrong. Another message (p. 71) supposedly contains a "complete" description ofthe terrorist bombing of a bus in Jerusalem on February 25, 1996. It includes thephrase "fire, great noise," but overlooks the fact that the letters which make upthose two words are actually part of a larger phrase from Genesis 35:4 whichsays: "under the terebinth that was near Shechem." If the phrase does tell of a busbombing, why not take it to indicate that it would be in Nablus, the site of ancientShechem?53


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Of course proponents of the codes could argue that since Rabin was assassinatedand the bus was bombed in Jerusalem, that is what the codes must have meant.But if the very meaning of the messages is apparent only after the fact, of whatuse are they? What did their author hope to achieve by encoding them? Theybecome no better than the Delphic oracles who told Croesus that if he attackedthe Persians he would destroy a mighty empire. When he was defeated andcomplained to the oracles, he was told that if he had been wise he would haveinquired whether the Persian empire or his own was meant; he therefore had onlyhimself to blame for the result (Herodotus 1:53, 91).

* * * * *

As mentioned earlier, there are differences between the work of Rips andWitztum, on the one hand, and Drosnin on the other hand. On a personal level,Drosnin regularly insists that he is not religious and does not believe in God,which puts him in the bizarre position of wanting the Israeli government to act onthe disastrous messages that he finds encoded in the Bible while he personallydisregards the messages that are stated there plainly! (Perhaps this is connectedwith Drosnin's suggestion that the true source of the Bible is an advanced alien,extraterrestrial intelligence [pp. 96-98].) Rips and Witztum are religious Jewswho at least live in harmony with their theories. Furthermore, they vigorouslydeny that the Bible codes can be used to predict the future. But all of thesegentlemen base their computations on an unreliable textual base which evidencesuggests was not the original text of the Torah, and all of them strain thecredibility at least of the layman by changing the size of the ELSs for differentparts of each message or pattern, and by reading words horizontally, vertically,diagonally, upside down and backwards, giving the impression of arbitrarinessand manipulation of the data. Their case, therefore, is not convincing.54

NOTES

In transliterating Hebrew, I use the closest English equivalents. Special cases are:

' = aleph c = ayin V = vav C = tsadi X = het Q = qof T = tav or tet $ = shin

This paper is based on a lecture delivered as part of a panel on "The Bible Code:


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Criti-cal Perspectives" convened by Prof. Saul Kripke at the Princeton UniversityMath Department on April 28, 1998. In preparing and revising this paper Ibenefited from helpful suggestions and information kindly provided by Profs.Moshe Greenberg, Uriel Simon, Emanuel Tov, Shlomo Sternberg, Sid Z. Leiman,B. Barry Levy, Yeshayahu Maori, Alan Groves, Messrs. Scobie Smith and AlecGindis, my student Shawn Zelig Aster, and my fellow panelists Profs. BrendanMcKay and Maya Bar-Hillel.

1. Jacob Mann, The Jews in Egypt and Palestine under the Fatimid Caliphs(reprint New York: Ktav, 1970), 1:241; 2:307.

2. See J. Tigay, "An Early Technique of Aggadic Exegesis," in H. Tadmor andM. Weinfeld, eds., History, Historiography, and Interpretation (Jerusalem: TheHebrew University of Jerusalem. The Institute of Advanced Studies. MagnesPress, 1983), pp. 175-176. See also B.M. Metzger, "Sortes Biblicae," in TheOxford Companion to the Bible, ed. B.M. Metzger and M.D. Coogan (New York:Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 713-714.

3. Aish HaTorah's Discovery Seminar (no editor, date, or place of publicationlisted; the cover includes the name of the organization "Arachim" and states thatthe booklet is "Sponsored by the Dan Family of Canada"), p. 11; M. Katz,Computorah. Dr. Moshe Katz on Hidden Codes in the Torah (Jerusalem:CompuTorah [P.O.B. 23702], 1996), pp. 74-77. According to Katz, p. 74, and J.Satinover, Cracking the Bible Code [New York: William Morrow, 1997], pp. 2-3,85, this ELS was discovered by Rabbi Michael Dov Ber Weissman-del, while thediscovery of Maimonides' acronym is traced, perhaps apocryphally, to the VilnaGaon.

4. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.

5. This is the number of letters in the Koren edition of the Torah (Torah, Nevi'im,uKetuvim [Jerusalem: Koren, 1962 and frequently thereafter]). It agrees withJacob ben Hayyim ibn Adoniah's colophon in the Pardes edition of Mikra'otGedolot at the end of Deu-teronomy.

6. Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips, and Yoav Rosenberg, "Equidistant LetterSequences in the Book of Genesis," Statistical Science 9/3 (1994):429-38.

7. The year of the Maharshal's death (5334 [1573]) also appears in this array, butyears were not included in WRR's test.


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8. Katz, Computorah, pp. 150-155, 204-208.

9. Katz, Computorah, pp. 12-22; Drosnin, pp. 38, 194-95. Witztum resolved theques-tion of the accuracy of the text by simply consulting Rabbi Shlomo Fisher,who answered that "we could fully rely on our text" (Witztum, "The Seal of Godis Truth," Jewish Action 58/3 [Spring, 1998]:26; on p. 32 n. 2 he claims to havegiven a full treatment of this issue on his website [http://www.torahcodes.co.il];however, as of 17 August, 1998 and January 26, 1999, I could find no suchdiscussion in any obvious place on his website, and two e-mailed requests forclarification, sent to the address given on the website, went unanswered). Drosninstates that "all [Hebrew Bibles] that now exist are the same letter for letter" andthat "the Bible code computer program uses the universally accepted originalHebrew text." He states that the text "existed at least 1000 years ago, and almostcertainly 2000 years ago, in exactly the same form it exists today" (pp. 194-95).In fact, he assumes that it is identical to the text of the time of Moses, sincethroughout the book he keeps referring to the code's predictions as being from3000 years ago (e.g. pp. 39, 87, 90). The same assumption of textual accuracy isnecessary for a similar reason according to Nahmanides' introduction to theTorah, who refers to a tradition that "the whole Torah is comprised of Names of[God], and that the letters of the words separate themselves into Divine Nameswhen divided in a different manner" (Eng. trans. by C.B. Chavel, Ramban(Nachmanides). Commentary on the Torah [New York: Shilo, 1971] 1:13-15).

10. See Menahem Cohen, "The Idea of the Sanctity of the Letters of the Text andTextual Criticism," in U. Simon, ed., HaMiqra' vaAnahnu (The Bible and Us)(Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1987), 42-69. An English translation under a slightly differenttitle appears on Brendan McKay's website:http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/CohenArt.

11. For the history of the Masoretic Text see E. Tov, Textual Criticism of theHebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 22-79.

12. There are 304,850 letters in the Michigan-Claremont-Westminster (MCW)comput-erized text of Biblica Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS), which is the criticaledition of the Lenin-grad codex currently in use by most scholars (statisticscourtesy of Alan Groves, the final editor of the MCW text). C.D. Ginsburg'sedition of the Torah contains 304,807 letters ac-cording to the colophon at its end(C.D. Ginsburg, The Pentateuch [London: British and Foreign Bible Society,1926; repr. Jerusalem: Makor, 1970]).

13. All known Hebrew Bible texts, ancient and modern, use a system of spelling


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that is different from the one that was used in the days of Moses. Thearchaeological evidence shows that Hebrew spelling has gone through threestages.

(1) At first, Hebrew and the other West Semitic alphabets (such as Ugaritic,Phoenician and Aramaic) represented only consonants, and readers werenormally left to infer the vowels from the context. This was a problematic systembecause it left many words equivocal. It would be as if we wrote the Englishletters r-v-r and left the reader to decide whether they stood for river, rover, raver,revere, or Rivera. On rare occasions, certain long vowels were indicated. Toindicate them, a few of the consonants were used as matres lectionis to representthe vowels that sounded like those consonants; the consonant Y, in particular, wasalso used for the vowel sound /i/.

(2) In the second stage this sporadic use of consonants was expanded and fourdifferent consonants were used more frequently to indicate vowels. VAV,originally pronounced like a w, was also employed as a vowel to indicate certain/u/'s and /o/'s (e.g. LNV = LANU; XWRC = XOREC); ALEPH (pronouncedconsonantly as a glottal stop) represented certain other /o/'s and /u/'s (e.g. R'$ =RO$; H' = HU); YOD repre-sented /i/ and certain /e/'s (e.g. 'DNY = ADONI; BYT = BET); and HEH (pro-nounced consonantally as h) represented /a/ andcertain other /o/'s and /e/'s (e.g. HYH = HAYAH; cBDH = cABDO; ZH = ZEH).This stage began around the tenth century B.C.E. in Aramaic, and later spread toHebrew. It was a gradual development, used at first for long vowels at the end ofwords, and later, but less frequently, within words as well. This system was amajor help for readers, but it was imperfect for three reasons: first, there weren'tenough suitable consonants, so each of them had to represent more than onevowel; second, they were not consistently used -- sometimes a vowel would beindicated, sometimes not ("full" and "defective" spelling, as explained above);and third, those letters continued to represent consonants as well as vowels,creating a certain amount of ambiguity.

(3) Finally, much later, some time between the sixth and eighth centuries C.E.,the system of diacritical "points" -- dots and dashes above and below the letters --was invented to represent the vowels. This created a certain amount ofredundancy since the vowel letters of the second stage continued to be usedalongside the diacriticals, but it led to greater clarity.

Let me exemplify. In the Gezer Calendar, the oldest known Hebrew inscriptionfrom Biblical times, the word meaning harvest, QACIR, is spelled Q-C-R (seethe boxed word in Fig. 4). The internal vowel /i/ is not shown. In Masoretic Torah


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scrolls, it is spelled Q-C-Y-R, with the vowel /i/ represented by Y (see the boxedword in Fig. 5 left). In Bibles with diacritical vowel points, the same letters areused, but the diacrit-ical signs are added above and below the letters (see theboxed word in Fig. 5 right; all three types of spelling are represented in Englishcharacters in Fig. 4, lower right).

Fig. 4. The Gezer Calendar and the word QACIR ("harvest")

Fig. 5. Selection from a Torah scroll and a printed Bible with diacritical vowels and cantillation signs

Now the Gezer Calendar comes from the 10th century B.C.E., approximatelythree centuries after Moses. Its non-representation of the internal vowel ischaracteristic of the West Semitic writing that we know from that early period. Itis clear that the Bible texts we use today, which usually include matres lectionisto represent long vowels at the end of words and often within the words, reflect apost-Mosaic system of spelling (again, see Fig. 5). The spelling in manuscripts of Moses's time would have looked very different from that in the MasoreticText of today, which contains thousands of vowel letters that would not have been


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used in Moses's time.

For the history of the spelling system see F.M. Cross, Jr., and D.N. Freedman,Early Hebrew Orthography. A Study of the Epigraphic Evidence. AmericanOriental Series 36 (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1952); Z. Zevit,Matres Lectionis in Ancient Hebrew Epigraphs. American Schools of OrientalResearch Monograph Series 2 (Cambridge, Mass.: American Schools ofOriental Research, 1980); Tov, Textual Criticism, pp. 39-49; M. Greenberg,Introduction to Hebrew (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965), 17-23.

14. The two versions are laid out side by side, with differences highlighted, inAbba Bendavid, Makbilot BaMikra' (Parallels in the Bible) (Jerusalem: Carta,1972), p. 61-62. Kimhi held that such differences as Dodanim in Gen. 10:4 vs.Rodanim in 1 Chron. 1:7, and Deuel in Num. 1:14 vs. Reuel in 2:14 are due toconfusion of similar letters, but he held that the confusion took place inpre-Biblical texts and that the Bible intentionally preserved both forms to showthat they referred to the same peoples or persons; there was no confusion in thetransmission of the Bible itself (see his comments to Gen. 10:4 and 1 Chron. 1:7,and Uriel Simon, "Ibn Ezra and Kimhi -- Two Approaches to the Question of theAccuracy of the Masoretic Text," Bar Ilan 6 (1968):208-209).

14a. See Mekhilta Pish . a, 18 (ed. Horovitz-Rabin, p. 73; ed, Lauterbach1:166-167); Yerushalmi Pesahim 10.4, 37d; M.M. Kasher, Haggadah Shelemah3d ed. (Jerusalem: Torah Shelema Institute, 1967), p. 22; N.N. Glatzer, ThePassover Haggadah (New York: Schock-en, 1969), pp. 24-29.

15. Noted in Jacob ben Chaim's introduction to Mikra'ot Gedolot (1525; see C.D.Ginsburg, Jacob ben Chajim ibn Adonijah's Introduction to the RabbinicBible...1867; repr. New York: KTAV, 1968; see, for example, p. 42); Minhat Shai(1626); Rabbi Akiva Eiger, Gilyon haShas, Shabbat 55b; S. Rosenfeld, SeferMishpahat Soferim (Vilna: Romm, 1883); M.M. Kasher, Torah Shelemah 23(Jerusalem: American Biblical Encyclopedia Society/Makhon Torah Shelemah,1969), pp. 113-14 (for Genesis and Exodus); etc. The basic modern study is V.Aptowitzer, Das Schriftwort in der Rabbinischen Literatur (1906-15; repr. NewYork: KTAV, 1970, with prolegomenon by S. Loewinger), which focuses onJoshua and Judges. See also Y. Maori, "Rabbinic Midrash as Evidence for TextualVariants in the Hebrew Bible: History and Practice," in S. Carmy, ed., ModernScholarship in the Study of Torah. Contributions and Limitations. The OrthodoxForum Series. A Project of the Rabbi Isaac Elhanan Theological Seminary. AnAffiliate of Yeshiva University (Northvale NJ: Jason Aronson, 1996), pp. 101-29.On variant readings in Rashi's commentary, see Shnayer (Sid) Z. Leiman,


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"Yavneh Studies in Naso," in Yavneh Studies in Parashat HaShavua. Bemidbar(New York: Yavneh. The Religious Jewish Students Association, 1972), pp. 3-7.

16. For example, in Bavli Berakhot 61a R. Nahman bar Yitzhak quotes a passagethat is not present in the MT: VYLK 'LQNH 'XRY '$TV, "and Elkanah walkedafter his wife." This passage, if it existed, would have belonged in 1 Samuel 1 or2. It is also absent in the Septuagint and in the partially preserved fragments ofSamuel from Qumran. However, both of these versions of the text include otherextra phrases not found in the MT (in 1 Samuel 1:22 a Qumran fragment reads:"And I shall give him as a Nazirite forever all the days of his life," and in v. 18,after "the woman went her way," the Septuagint adds: "and entered the chamberand ate with her husband and drank"). This suggests that R. Nahman bar Yitzhakwas quoting from a text of Samuel known to him. (For the Qumran text see F.M.Cross, "A New Qumran Biblical Fragment Related to the Original HebrewUnderlying the Septuagint," Bulletin of the American Schools of OrientalResearch 132 [1953]:15-26.

17. The precept of tefillin is based on Exodus 13:9 and 16 and Deuteronomy 6:8and 11:18. The word totafot, "frontlets, headbands," referring to the tefillin wornon the head, appears in three of these verses. According to Rabbi Ishmael in theTalmud (Sanhedrin 4b and parallels), the suffix -OT is spelled defectively (that is,without the vowel letter VAV) in the first two occurrences and fully (with theVAV) the third time. This allows the first two to be read "as if" they weresingulars, implying one compartment each, and requires the third to be read as aplural, hence requiring two compartments, and thus indicating that the headtefillin must have a total of four compartments. However, in all known copies ofthe Bible, both ancient (with one exception, in Exodus 13:16) and Masoretic, thesuffix is spelled defectively all three times, and this is how Maimonides rules thatthey must be written (Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Tefillin 2:7, presumably followingthe Aleppo Codex). For the ancient manuscripts see J. Tigay, "On the Meaning of totafot," Journal of Biblical Literature 101 (1982):321. For other suchexamples see Leiman, cited in the next note.

18. Sid Z. Leiman, "Masorah and Halakhah: A Study in Conflict," in Tehillale-Moshe. Biblical and Judaic Studies in Honor of Moshe Greenberg, ed. M.Cogan, B.L. Eichler, and J.H. Tigay (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbraun's, 1997),pp. 291-306.

19. S. Rosenfeld, Sefer Mishpahat Sofrim (Vilna: Romm, 1883), 34-36, 100,who identifies the middle letter as the ALEPH in the word HU', in Lev. 8:28 (thesame is true for the Koren edition), and the middle pair of words as 'EL YESOD


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in Lev. 8:15. According to the Talmud, the middle letter is the VAV in the wordGAXON in Lev. 11:42, and the middle words are DAROSH DARASH in Lev.10:16. The inconsistency between the Talmudic passage and the MT of today isalso noted by Barukh HaLevi Epstein, Torah Temimah, at Lev. 11:42 and M.M.Kasher, Torah Shelemah 28 (Jerusalem: American Biblical EncyclopediaSociety/Makhon Torah Shelemah, 1978), pp. 286-289. In the Yemenite text themiddle letter is the L of LYHVH in Lev. 8:28; according to Alan Groves, in BHS,which has an even number of letters, the middle two letters are HX in HXZH,also in Lev. 8:28. Witztum claims to have dealt with the passage in Kiddushin30a on his website but, as noted above in note 9, I could find no such discussionthere.

20. For the latter possibility one may compare the Septuagint of Exodus 35-40,which is based on a Hebrew original that had many passages in a different orderthan in the MT. But if this is the case in the text to which the "first scholars" werereferring, it was, without the rabbis realizing it, from a textual tradition other thanthe one that was current in rabbinic cir-cles.

21. See Maimonides, Introduction to Perek Helek (Sanhedrin 10:1), EighthPrinciple; R. Joseph Albo, Sefer haIkkarim 3:22; Abarbanel, Introduction toCommentary on Jeremiah (Tel Aviv: Torah veDaat [n.d.]), pp. 298-99.

22. E.g., Shlomo Sternberg, "Snake Oil for Sale," Bible Review 13/4 (August,1997): 24-25; "Comments on The Bible Code, in Notices of the AMS 44/8(September, 1997):938-39. For other Orthodox scholars acknowledging changesin the text, see also Cohen (above, note 10; below, note 30), Leiman (above, note18) and Levy (below, n. 28). In view of the spell-ing variations in Torahmanuscripts, the late Rabbi Yaakov Weinberg, Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat NerYisrael, wrote:

Rambam knew very well that these variations existed...The words of AniMa'amin and the words of the Rambam [in his commentary on MishnahSanhedrin 10:1] "the entire Torah in our possession today" [is the one that Mosesreceived from God] must not be taken literally, implying that all the letters of thepresent Torah are the exact letters given to Moshe Rabbeinu. Rather, it should beunderstood in a general sense that the Torah we learn and live by is for all intentsand purposes the same Torah that was given to Moshe Rabbeinu.

Y. Weinberg, Fundamentals and Faith. Insights into the Rambam's ThirteenPrinciples, ed. M. Blumenfeld (Spring Valley, N.Y.: Feldheim: 1991), pp. 90-91quoted by M.B. Shapiro, "Maimonides' Thirteen Principles: The Last Word in


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Jewish Theology?" The Torah U-Madda Journal 4 (1993):203 (for our purposesR. Weinberg's view is important whether or not Maimonides intended his wordsto be taken literally). (Ironically, R. Weinberg's book is listed in "Aish HaTorah'sRecommended Reading List" http://www.aish.edu/learning/booklist.htm).

22a. See D.Z. Hoffmann, Sefer Vayikra (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1956),pp. 7-8; for an English translation see Hoffmann's "General Introduction toBiblical Exegesis," translated from the original German by Jenny Marmorstein,"David Hoffmann: Defender of the Faith," Tradition Winter 1966, pp. 99-100.

23. See Saul Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York: JewishTheological Seminary, 1962), pp. 28-37; Tov, Textual Criticism, pp. 64-67;Ginsburg, Introduction, pp. 347-363. Examples are in Gen. 18:22 (see also Rashi)and 1 Sam. 3:13, "committed sacrilege at will/for themselves" (LHM), whereRadak records a tikkun soferim to avoid saying "com-mitted sacrilege againstGod" ('L, or 'LHYM), as the Septuagint actually reads (Tanakh [JewishPublication Society] ad loc., note a-a). Lieberman shows that the views that thesereadings are original euphemisms (kinnah(u) hakatuv) and scribal corrections(tikkun soferim) are distinct and divergent traditions and should not beharmonized so that one becomes just another way of referring to the other. Theview that they are original euphemisms appears in tannaitic sources; the view thatthe scribes actually changed the original text is first expressed by Rabbi Joshua b.Levi (first half of third century): "It is a correction of the scribes; (the wordcYNW, 'his eye, in Zechariah 2:12) was (originally) written with a yod (i.e.,cYNY, 'My eye')" (Shemot Rabbah 13:1). Note also the Masoretic list cited byGinsburg, Introduc-tion, p. 351 n. 2, which explicitly states that in each casesomething else "was written" in place of the current reading in the MT.

The Talmud also lists 5 words containing "omissions of the scribes" (ittursoferim) in which the scribes omitted the one-letter conjunction vav (Ginsburg,Introduction, pp. 308-309; Tov, p. 67; see Tosafot, the Geonim, the Arukh andother views cited by Steinsaltz at B. Nedarim 37b).

24. Avot deRabbi Nathan, Version A chap. 34; Version B chap. 37 (pp. 101 and98 in ed. Schechter; for translations see J. Goldin, The Fathers According toRabbi Nathan [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955], pp. 138-39; A.Saldarini, The fathers According to Rabbi Nathan...Version B [Leiden: Brill,1975], p. 224); see also Bemidbar Rabbah 3:13.

25. Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, pp. 43-46.


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26. See Lieberman, Hellenism, pp. 21-27; S. Talmon, "The Three Scrolls of theLaw that Were Found in the Temple Court," Textus 2 (1962):14-27.

27. For Kimhi's view on textual criticism see U. Simon, "Ibn Ezra and Kimhi --Two Approaches to the Question of the Accuracy of the Masoretic Text," Bar Ilan6 (1968):191-237.

28. Leiman, "Masorah and Halakhah." The struggle is traced in great detail in aforth-coming book by B. Barry Levy, Fixing God's Torah. The Accuracy of theHebrew Bible Text in Jewish Law, kindly shown to me by the author in advanceof publication.

29. Shulhan Arukh, 'Orah Hayyim 143:4, Isserles; cf. Kasher, Torah Shelemah28:229-30, note 258.

30. For a list of discrepancies cited by Minhat Shai in Genesis and Exodus, seeKasher, Torah Shelemah 23:109-111 (a fuller list of variant readings for Genesis,prepared by Menahem Cohen, is found on Brendan McKay's website at:http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/cohen_heb1.html (see also C.D. Ginsburg,The Massorah, 3:23-36, 106 etc.). Mordechai Breuer presents a list of over 200orthographic differences between six important versions of the MT (five ancientmasoretic manuscripts and the text in Mikra'ot Gedolot); see his The AleppoCodex and the Accepted Text of the Bible (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook,1976), pp. 68-94 (in Hebrew).

31. A list of discrepancies in spelling and conjunctions in the first 19 printededitions of the Torah is found in Torah Shelemah 23:111-112.

32. The readings are at Gen. 4:13; 7:11; 9:29; Exod. 25:31; 28:26; Num. 1:17;10:10; 22:5; and Deut. 23:2. See M. Breuer, Hamishah Humshei Torah(Jerusalem: Horev, 5756/1996), Appendix "haNusah," p. 9; M.L.Katzenellenbogen, ed., Torat Hayyim (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1993),Vol. 5, Devarim, p. 447. The Yemenites regard these dif-ferences seriouslyenough that they consider non-Yemenite Torah scrolls to be disqualified forpublic reading. See Y. Kapah, devarim 'axadim, paragraph aleph, in Sefer KeterHaTorah. Ha"Taj" HaGadol, ed. Y. Hasid (Jerusalem, 5730/1970), p. 2. Therewere three additional variants in the Aleppo Codex not found in the Yemenitetext: Exod. 1:19 ('LYHN); Lev. 19:16: RcYK; Lev. 25:10 (or possibly 11 or 12)(HY'). See Menahem Cohen, Mikra'ot Gedolot HaKeter. Joshua-Judges (RamatGan: Bar Ilan University 1992), pp. 55*, 96* nn. 160-161, citing Joseph Offer,"M.D. Cassuto's Notes on the Aleppo Codex," Sefunot N.S. 4 (19) (1989), pp.


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309, 335.

33. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah. Hilkhot Sefer Torah 8:4.

34. M. Medan, "Al haNusah beMahadurat Koren," Beth Mikra 3 (15), Jan.1963:142. It is worth keeping in mind that the decoders do not work directlywith the Koren edition, but with a computerized version of its text, which couldcontain errors. There is at least as much room for human error in typing the textinto the computer as there has always been in copying texts manually (and insetting them in type). Anybody familiar with how frequently errors can still befound in Torah scrolls, even though they are written by experienced scribesfollowing exacting procedures, understands this. Rabbi David Greenfield of theVaad Mishmeret Stam in New York (an organization of scribes that checks Torahscrolls for errors) informs me that errors are found in more than half the scrollschecked, and in more than 90% of those written since World War II (the Vaadnow uses computer scanners to check for errors, and when it first received anelectronic text of the Torah to use as the standard, 10-15 errors were found in it!).A sobering case in point is an article published in 1981 by Gerard E. Weil, anexpert on the Masorah who edited the Masorah of BHS. Weil's article, based on acomputerized version of the text that he prepared, gives the total number of lettersin the Leningrad Codex's text of the Torah, and the total number of occurrencesof each letter of the Hebrew alphabet ("Les decomptes de versets, mots et lettresdu Pentateuque selon le manuscrit N 19a de Leningrad," in P. Casetti et al. eds.,Melanges Dominique Barthelemy [Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ru-precht, 1981],pp. 651-703). But the Michigan-Claremont-Westminster (MCW) text of BHS,prepared independently of Weil's, gives different totals for the whole Torah(304,850 versus Weil's 304,848) and for 14 of the letters of the alphabet. AlanGroves, the final editor of the MCW, text tells me that in every case where aconsonantal difference was found between it and Weil's text, Weil's was found tobe wrong. Before concluding that the computerized ver-sion of the Koren textreproduces even Koren itself accurately, one would desire some evi-dence of howcarefully, and how many times, it was checked against the original Koren text.

35. A critical statement, signed by over 40 mathematicians, is published on theinternet at the following website: http://www.math.caltech.edu/code/petition.html.

36. B. McKay, D. Bar-Natan, M. Bar-Hillel, and G. Kalai, "Solving the BibleCode Puzzle," in Statistical Science, 14/2 (1999):150-173. The article is availableon McKay's and Bar-Natan's websites at, respectively http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/StatSci/StatSci.pdf and http://www.ma.huji.ac.il/~drorbn/codes


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/StatSci.pdf. An earlier, less technical paper was published by M. Bar-Hillel, D.Bar-Natan and B. D. McKay, "The Torah Codes: Puzzle and Solution," in Chance(A Magazine of the American Statistical Association) 11 (1998): 13-19. For thosewith the proper software, the paper is available on Brendan McKay's website(http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/Chance.pdf).

37. "Dr. Rips Responds to Professor Sternberg,"http://www.discoveryseminar.org/rresponse2.htm).

38. A number of arrays are shown pictorially in Doron Witztum, ha-Memadha-nosaf: 'al ha-Ketivah ha-Du-memadit ba-Torah (Jerusalem: Ka-tamar Yifrah,5749 [1988-89], pp. 101-131.

39. WRR, pp. 432, 433.

40. E-mail letter of 5 May, 1998. On the same date, Bar-Hillel, responded in asimilar vein:

[T]he result WRR published is not really that rabbis are close to theirdates, but rather that a large list of rabbis paired with their own datesare closer, on average [my empha-sis - J.H.T.], than lots and lots of listswhere rabbis were paired with someone else's dates. So it is acomparative assertion, not an absolute one. To be sure, their rationalerequires actual proximity, and they devised a complex measure ofalleged proximity, but the "miracle" is not in the absolute proximities,but rather in relative proximities. In other words, even though therabbis yield very few "pretty pictures" with their own dates, there maybe even fewer with other dates. Paradoxically, even that is not thecase...but as per the race they ran between lists, the correct list didalmost best. Poorly, by the measure of 'pretty pictures,' but almostbest."

41. McKay, e-mail letter of 7 May, 1998.

42. Bar-Hillel, Bar-Natan and McKay, "The Torah Codes: Puzzle and Solution,"in Chance 11 (1998):15.

43. E-mail letter of 26 May, 1998.

44. 4QGenesisb is a possible exception. It has one difference in the 1200


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surviving letters. If variants were evenly distributed through the entiremanuscript, this would imply a difference of about 65 letters in all of Genesis.This would make the scroll quite anomalous among the Qumran fragments, and itmay be that the surviving fragments are accidentally closer to the MT than therest of the manuscript was. But even assuming a mere 65 letters of differencefrom the MT, that is enough to completely obliterate the codes, as we shall seebelow.

45. According to cryptographer Harold Gans, 78 deleted letters are necessary tooblit-erate the statistical significance of the codes (Satinover, Cracking the BibleCode, p. 224). For present purposes, this makes no difference.

46. For example, Rabbi Hayyim Benveniste's name can be written: BNBN$TY,HRB HXBY"B, HRB XBY"B, RB XBY"B, or RBY XYYM. Other have evenmore possible appel-lations, including the names of their major books, sometimespreceded by BcL, sometimes not.

47. For example, ALEF TISHREI, B'ALEF TISHREI, ALEF B'TISHREI,B'ALEF B'TISHREI, ALEF L'TISHREI, B'ALEF L'TISHREI, ALEF SHELTISHREI, B'ALEF SHEL TISHREI.

48. Christians have also begun to claim that Christological messages can befound encoded in the Tanakh as well. For example, Grant R. Jeffrey, TheMysterious Bible Codes (Nashville: Word Publishing, 1998), chaps. 6-8, findsELS-based references to Jesus, Mary, and some of Jesus's disciples in Isaiah 53,Psalm 22, and elsewhere (ref. courtesy of Chanan and Yisrael Tigay).

49. See A.M. Hasofer, "Codes in the Torah: A Rejoinder," in B'Or Ha'Torah 8(1993/5743), pp. 121-131 (published by "Shamir," the Association of ReligiousProfessionals from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in Israel, POB 5749,Jerusalem, Israel).

50. Drosnin, The Bible Code, pp. 157-8. For this and other examples, see R.Hendel, "The Bible Code: Cracked and Crumbling," Bible Review 13/4 (August,1997), p. 23.

51. Who is "he"? The text never mentions Nixon's name! Actually, the spelling(MHV) would more likely mean: What is he/it?

52. Who? Drosnin never explains.


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53. On pp. 58 and 80, Drosnin's rendering "after the death of prime minister"ignores the intervening word 'B, "father," which would make the message mean"after the death of the father of the prime minister" (later in the book, on p. 161,he includes 'B, reading the passage as: "Another will die, Av [i.e., the Hebrewmonth of Av], prime minister." On p. 54 he ignores what follows "all his peopleto war": "to Jahaz, and the Lord our God delivered him to us and we defeatedhim..." (Deut. 2:32-33).

54. Sources of the illustrations are as follows:

Fig. 1. Katz, Computorah, p. 77.

Fig. 2. Drosnin, p. 15.

Fig. 3. Aish HaTorah's Discovery Seminar, p. 5.

Fig. 4. Drawing from J. Naveh, Early History of the Alphabet (Jerusalem:Magnes, and Leiden: Brill, 1982), p. 63; transliteration from R. Hestrin, et al.,Ketovot Mesapperot (Inscriptions Reveal). Israel Museum Catalogue no. 100.2d edition (Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1973), p. 18.

Fig. 5. Tikkun laKore'im. Revised ed. (New York: KTAV, 1969), p. 87.

Fig. 5a. The upper half of the figure, showing a standard printed text with theYemenite variant indicated in the margin at Genesis 6:29, is from Sefer Keterha-Torah. Ha"Taj" Ha-Gadol, ed. Y. Hasid (Jerusalem, 5730/1970), Vol. 1, p. 62;the lower part is from M.L. Katzenellenbogen, ed., Torat Hayyim (Jerusalem:Mossad Harav Kook, 1993), Vol. 5, Devarim, p. 447. [Fig. 5a is not yet loaded onthe web version of this paper.]

Fig. 6. Favorite Crossword Puzzles 32/1 (West Springfield, MA: QuinnPublishing Co., February, 1983). pp. 95, 189.





Fig. 11. By author.


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"The Bible 'Codes': A Textual Perspective" (1999)

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