Bible codes

scipio_major

Right because this is something that has interested me for some time and because there is no relgion board I'm starting this tread here as it required some math.

About two years ago "The Bible Code" was published. It described how if you arranged the Hebrew version of the bible in columns you could find certain events predicted. Basically you could see "Yitzhak Rabin" crossing the phrase "assassin will assassinate". The book claimed than many other events could be seen on top of relevent phrases, perhaps predicting future events.

Since it's publication however every cryptography book has slammed the Bible Code as a sham. Using the same technique Moby Dick can been shown to "predict" in a similar fashion. I've read that it can be done with almost any long work though in "The Bible Code" it claims that they were unable to find anything of the sort in the original or hebrew tranlations of any work.

I read The Bible Code when it came out and have since read another book (the name of which I can't remember), the author of this book also claimed to uncover hidden information in the bible (though only the King James Bible) his system required you to do something to the book of psalms. Once you had completely the alogrithm you got a list of illness and their herbal remedy. He had things to say about "The Bible Code", he claimed it was a stunt pulled by some organisation (The Freemasons and possibly the pharamaceutical companies) to distract attention away from his discovery.

Has anyone else read this other book? I've heard it was banned in Britain but I'm not sure, the copy I read came from the US. And more importantly has anyone heard of it being disproved?

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Scipio_major

bonkey

I havent read either book, but I have seen the same approach used to suggest that the works of Shakespeare were sunningly written by someone else (forget who) who hid his name amongst the text in a similar fashion to how you describe.

Of course, if you allow this, you also discover that about 30 people must have written Shakespeare's works - including several who were alive until centuries later.

So, anyway, as to this particular idea....personally I reckon its a load of guff designed to sell to sensationalism-hunters and the gullible.

I would first challenge the concept of "the hebrew version of the Bible". Which bible? There is no single definitive text.

Secondly, regarding Hebrew, I vaguely recall reading somewhere the Hebrew is a superb language for this type of thing, because vowels are frequently omitted in the writing. So, straight away, that gives us massive amounts of interpolation, based on the absence of key letters! I'd also be interested in knowing how spaces were treated. Were they also dropped in forming the "grid"?

Now, go one step further. You say that :

Yitzhak Rabin" crossing the phrase "assassin will assassinate".

OK - but to "cross" a phrase, implies one was written vertically, and the other horizontally. Which would require that one of these phrases actually already existed in the bible which kinda removes a lot of the credibility or unusualness - we now have one phrase existing, and one being constructed - the construction of which is 100% dependant on the restructuring rules chosen.

By the laws of large numbers, it is statistically probable that you would get some combinations of letters making meaningful phrases when reordering a book the size of the bible. Add to this the omission of vowels, and the probabilities drop to nothing spectacular for evn large numbers of "matches"

Now, if there was some way of showing that a section of the bible itself provided the key for the restructuring method in a reasonably unequivocal manner, then it might be interesting. If it could be further shown that no other organisation yielded anything meaningful, then you would have something interesting.

For me, this type of thing is similar to the idea of people believing in fate because "the odds of this happening are infintessimal". Its rubbish - because its not looking at the right odds. Allow me to illustrate with a simple example : a challenge if you will.....

What are the odds of someone winning the lottery. Assume 36 numbers, to pick 6. What are the odds? Anyone mathsy care to step up to the plate?

jc

Winning Hand

Originally posted by bonkey
What are the odds of someone winning the lottery. Assume 36 numbers, to pick 6. What are the odds? Anyone mathsy care to step up to the plate?

Cue nerdy snort-laugh.
The odds of taking the first number is 1/36, odds of the second number is 1/35, 3rd 1/34 etc.
Ergo the odds of getting all six numbers correct is 1/36
*1/35*1/34*1/33*1/32*1/31*1/30 coming out to be approx 2.4e-11. However Im not sure if the powerball screws up the calculation or not.

Gargoyle

Originally posted by Winning Hand

Cue nerdy snort-laugh.
The odds of taking the first number is 1/36, odds of the second number is 1/35, 3rd 1/34 etc.
Ergo the odds of getting all six numbers correct is 1/36
*1/35*1/34*1/33*1/32*1/31*1/30 coming out to be approx 2.4e-11. However Im not sure if the powerball screws up the calculation or not.

Winning Hand, I believe your calculation assumes that all numbers must be in exact order, not just have the powerball last.

bonkey

Originally posted by Winning Hand

Cue nerdy snort-laugh.
The odds of taking the first number is 1/36, odds of the second number is 1/35, 3rd 1/34 etc.
Ergo the odds of getting all six numbers correct is 1/36
*1/35*1/34*1/33*1/32*1/31*1/30 coming out to be approx 2.4e-11. However Im not sure if the powerball screws up the calculation or not.

Way off

First off, you are counting 7 balls, not 6. Secondly, order doesnt matter - so you must multiply by 6! (6 factorial) to remove the ordering issues. Put a different way - any of your 6 balls must match the first selected. So thats (6/36). For the second ball chosen, any of your 5 remaining must match the one chosen, or 5/35. Continue for all 6 balls and you get :

( 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1) / (36 x 35 x 34 x 33 x 32 x31)

That corrects the basic maths, resulting in a figure of 1 / 1947792 (I think) when choosing 6 of 36 numbers.

This would appear to be the answer - but its not what I asked.

The odds I asked for are ((1 / 1947792) * x), where x represents the number of unique entries into that draw. I didnt ask for the odds of a specirfic entry to win the lotto, I asked for the odds of the lotto being won - of *someone* winning it.

So, if we have 1,000,000 unique entries, the odds are about 1:2 that someone will win. In short, the odds of someone winning the lotto is dependant on the number of unique entries. The odds of someone in specific winning the lotto is dependant on the number of entries they put in. The odds of a specific 6-number combination winning the lotto are huge.

Now - lets put this in context. The bible is a massive work. Allow for "amiiguity" of interpretation due to lost vowels. Allow for being able to selectively choose your "grid structure", and you pretty much end up with a set of odds massively in favour of you finding hidden meanings.

In short, the laws of large numbers simply means that there are so many combinations and permutations available, that it would be almost impossible *not* to find hidden meanings in any work of such a size.

jc

scipio_major

Yes Bonkey everything you said about messing about with the Bible in hebrew as it is done in "The Bible Code" is true. Yes, there is a huge number of possible combinations you can try. Yes, in Hebrew they often left out the vowels. I don't think anyone could accept that this "decoding" is in any way sound.

My question was in regard to the Other Book, it used a different system (Something like in Psalms 7:14, you take the 7th letter, then the 1st one after that, then the 4th one after that, then the 7th then the 1st and so on until you get to the next verse. It isn't that but it's like that.). I was wondering if someone could tell me if this system has been debunked.

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Scipio_major

Bob the Unlucky Octopus

I've read the Bible Code by Michael Drosnin, it offers some interesting if farcical conclusions. The approach is mathematical, however, using the same series of combinatory steps I could prove that this week's issue of Playmate contains the key to preventing global catastrophe. It's a corruption of mathematics towards popular 'non-fiction' placed in quotes because on a scientific scale it more closely represents a work of fiction by Crichton. It's an interesting read nonetheless, and though it has heavy theological bias, it draws its limited conclusions within the scope of a shrug at the scientific inadequacies of the method used.

Don't take it seriously, but if you're after a bit of pop science/math manipulation and a few interesting coincidences, by all means spend that $10 or so.

Occy