A Brief History of the Bible Code

I was recently asked by a fellow employee at work, out of the blue, what I thought of the 'Bible Code'. The question was prompted by the recent publication (December 2002) of The Bible Code II: The countdown by Michael Drosnin. It's not always easy to come up with a straightforward, one sentence answer to a question like that, particularly when in the middle of preparing a set of accounts! I had read the first book by Michael Drosnin in 1997 entitled The Bible Code , but I had also read a couple of articles (one Christian, one non-Christian) refuting the idea of a code embedded in the Hebrew Torah (the first five books of the Bible).

What is the Bible Code?
For those who have not come across the idea, it is claimed that the Torah contains a complex code that reveals events that took place thousands of years after the Bible was written. Christians who believe in its veracity state that the purpose of the Bible Code is to show that the God of the Bible inspired the writing of all Scripture. This is proven, they say, by finding descriptions of people and events that happened after the Bible was written, encoded in the original texts. The code thus serves as God's signature.

The code itself is detailed, and mathematical in nature. It is based upon equidistant letter sequences (ELSs) that are arranged in two-dimensional arrays. Apart from extremely simple words, it is not possible to discover the code without a computer programme and a sophisticated understanding of complex mathematical principles. And that is where the controversy lies. It is dependent upon mathematical knowledge and computer programming ability. Thus it appears some mathematicians and some Christians believe the code truly exists, whereas other mathematicians and other Christians do not.

When was it discovered?
The 'Bible Code' was first made public in a paper Equidistant Letter Sequences in the Book of Genesis , by Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips, and Yoav Rosenberg, published in Statistical Science, Vol. 9 (1994). However, it was Michael Drosnin, a journalist and reporter, who popularised the theory in his first book on the subject The Bible Code (1997). He wrote for a general, non-mathematical audience, and it became an instant best-selling phenomenon.

The Bible Code questioned
Subsequent to this, David E. Thomas, a physicist, wrote a critique of Drosnin's book, and questioned the whole mathematical basis on which the code was supposedly based. This article appeared in the Skeptical Inquirer in December 1997. He also carried out his own study to find 'codes' in texts other than the Bible and found, among others, similar word links in Tolstoy's War and Peace .

In addition, Christian writers questioned the validity of the code. Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe wrote, "I oppose the search for hidden codes both on a mathematical basis and on a biblical basis. .With so much still to learn and understand and apply in the words of the Bible, who can afford to waste time and effort looking past those words?" Kenneth Samples, also of Reasons to Believe stated, "There are serious mathematical, biblical, and theological problems associated with the Bible Code theory", and Robert C. Newman wrote a detailed paper showing, among many other things, that he found 'code words' in the text of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address!

However, in May 1999, Statistical Science , the scientific journal which had originally set the ball rolling, published another paper entitled Solving the Bible Code Puzzle by Brendan McKay, Dror Bar-Natan, Maya Bar-Hillel and Gil Kalai. The journal stated: "A paper of Witztum, Rips and Rosenberg in this journal in 1994 made the extraordinary claim that the Hebrew text of the Book of Genesis encodes events which did not occur until millennia after the text was written. In reply, we argue that Witztum, Rips and Rosenberg's case is fatally defective, indeed that their result merely reflects on the choices made in designing their experiment and collecting the data for it. We present extensive evidence in support of that conclusion. We also report on many new experiments of our own, all of which failed to detect the alleged phenomenon."

By way of introduction, the original editor of Statistical Science stated, "When the (original) article..was examined by reviewers and editorial board members..none was convinced that the authors had found something genuinely amazing..it was offered to readers 'as a challenging puzzle'. Unfortunately, though perhaps not so surprisingly, many people outside our own profession interpreted publication of the paper as a stamp of scientific approval on the work."

Thus the only refereed scientific journal that has published a paper claiming to find evidence for the reality of the Bible Codes subsequently published a rebuttal, and although their case has been disputed by the original proponents, it is clear, even to a layman, that the case for the existence of a 'Bible Code' is far from proven. Highly qualified mathematicians are still working on the ramifications of the problem to date, and fresh data is still being produced. Anyone who is interested in the controversy has only to type in the words "Bible Code" as a search on the Internet, and a superabundance of information will immediately be available to them!

Conclusion
So, what should we conclude? Keith York in The Truth about the Bible Codes on the Internet states that "the Bible Code answers the question of God's existence with a definite Yes". He also states: "For the believer who believes in all of the Bible, but has been misled about the Bible codes, we hope that the codes strengthen their faith in the Bible, and provide them with evidence they can use in witnessing to others." He is well meaning, but is it wise to use something about which there is a great deal of controversy as a witness to our faith? How can we use the 'Bible Code' as a tool for witnessing, when mathematicians are still wrangling over whether it even exists?

For me, the creation all around us is a far more powerful testimony to the existence of a loving and omnipotent God, than the existence of a complex and controversial mathematical code.