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Home Front
Pentagon seeking Bible Code?
2003-04-15
Say it ain't so, Rantburg!
On the eve of war, military brass listened intently as Michael Drosnin expounded the Bible code
this is a bucket of salt, no?
I'd call it an "Ohfergawdsake!"
Among the hundreds of meetings and briefings that took place in the Pentagons bowels in the months leading up to Operation Iraqi Freedom, one earned the fleeting disdain of The New York Times, whose columnist, Bill Keller, sniffed that "several man-hours of valuable intelligence-crunching time" had been "consumed [by a writer] who claims — I am not making this up — that messages encoded in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament provide clues to the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. "Maybe we're all a little too desperate these days for a simple formula to explain how our safe world came unhinged," Keller said.

The gathering, which reportedly took place Feb. 21, was said to have been convened by Paul Wolfowitz, the hawkish U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defence, and attended by 10 top military intelligence officials, including Vice Admiral Lowell "Jake" Jacoby, director of the massive Defense Intelligence Agency, and Wolfowitz's deputy, Linton Wells, who is in charge of the Pentagon's nerve centre, known as 3CI (Command, Control, Communications).
"Hey, guys! Guess what I've lined up for our lunch hour today?"
"One of those card trick magicians? Ewww!"
"Another hootchy-cootchy dancer, Paul?"
"Nope! This one's even better!"
On the eve of war, the military brass listened intently for a full hour as Michael Drosnin expounded on his two brisk-selling volumes on the Bible code. Drosnin argues the Hebrew Torah — the first five books of the Old Testament — were intentionally encrypted, by a higher power, with prophetic warnings that have accurately predicted the Great Depression, the Second World War, the Kennedy assassinations, the moon landing, Watergate, and 9/11 — and foretell the fall of Saddam Hussein and the precise location of bin Laden.
Can it tell me how to get next to Patty Ann Brown? (Pant!)
The Americans "took it very seriously," Drosnin says. "They're practical people and I wanted to give them something of practical use."
"Yeah. Well. Okay. Thanks fer the info, Mr Drosnin. We'll get back to you..."
As a result of the meeting, Drosnin says U.S. and Israeli intelligence forces are hot on bin Laden's trail in that very place the Bible mentions, "right as we speak." Of course, he would not divulge where that place is.
Damn. And neither Gog nor Magog has returned my call yet...
As for Saddam Hussein, the Bible's embedded code ponders, "Who is destroyed?" and then, in the same matrix, answers, "Hussein," with the following number crossing his name: 5763, the Jewish year that corresponds to 2003. "That foretells the outcome of this conflict," Drosnin says confidently. "It might be obvious now, but it wasn't when I told them."
Oh, certainly not...
It could be that the U.S. defence establishment is grasping at straws, or that more and more people in Washington are motivated by a White House that frequently invokes God and religious imagery. Drosnin discounts the religious angle. "This is not based on faith. This is based on experience. The code keeps coming true."
Yeah. I lost my car keys the other day. Looked all day, until I decided to have a look in Leviticus...
Drosnin is a nut secular Jew, a former police reporter for the Washington Post and former writer for The Wall Street Journal. To be sure, his books, The Bible Code (1997) and last year's sequel, Bible Code II: The Countdown have been used by various fundamentalists, prophets of doom and supermarket tabloids as sure signs the Good Book knows all and that the end is nigh. Detractors point out the code violates the Bible's own ban on soothsaying.
Does he get checks from Weekly World News when they use that stuff? I mean, I've got a few prophecies tucked away in my underwear drawer, but I'm not letting them out until I've got cash in hand...
Drosnin himself says he did not fully believe the code's power until Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was murdered in November, 1995. Having learned Hebrew and the computer program that searches for hidden words, he found "Yitzhak Rabin" intersected with the letters that formed "assassin that will assassinate." Drosnin says he warned the doomed leader in a letter in September, 1994, that the Bible predicted he would be assassinated during that Jewish calendar year.
Say it isn't so, please... I have horrible thoughts of Reagan's astrologer...
Posted by:Anon1

#20  The Bible Code is real, and can be proven if you understand statistics. If you want to believe in it, it's easier because you'll make the effort. If you think it's bunk, you'll need a different dose. I recommend reading ALL the text on the www.biblecodedigest.com website. If you're not taken to reading, the History Channel has an excellent video on the Bible Code for sale and have asked the producers to create additional programs. While this video gives only a fair-minded presentation--allowing the viewer to side with the skeptics--I'm certain the follow-up programs will use the proofs that now exist for the code. The code is real. Granted you can find related words in any text, you'll never find multiple recurring and meaningful sentences and phrases such as these in any other text on Earth:


• If the Friend of Evil will Thirst for the End of My Innocence, His Home is an Urn. Let Judas Have His Day. To Me, the Exalted One, They Fasted. Where are You? Its Content will be Written from My Mouth. Father, Indeed You will Raise the Dead Over There
• There is Quarrel in His Speeches. A Living Brother Uttered Words to Them and to Me. And Zubaidah Turned to His Sea, Without Then Lying for a Whole Week. Oh, the Mountain of Her Interior Will Bear a Testimonial to Her Name.
• Or Come Down, for the Father of Destiny will Make You Rejoice. Who is Jesus?... Our Master Over Death. Prevent My Fever for Him. And Who is God?... Who, Like Their Nation, Has Crushed You?
• The Island was Restful, Elevated, and it Happened. Where is Libya? And You Have Disrupted the Nation. She Changed a Word, He Answered Them with Combat. Why the Navy and the Smell of the Bottom of the Sea?
• The Trouble of the Newborn One is Vigilant and Honest because of the Ruin. Get Out as if Iraq had been Sent Out. The Majority is Aware that, Rest in Peace, You will come—the Villainy with Light. You will Understand the Heart of Granite.
• For Where Has God Consumed from You? And In It Are Stones of Substantial Sickness for Us. You Will Indeed Delay Their Diagnosis, Because of His Own Reflection in the One Who Solves.
• The Public Representative Will Deliver the Will. My Son, 'Tis the Season for Him to Strike, Predicting the Shocks of Tora Bora. Where is My Fear? So I Will Multiply It Ten-Fold By Striking Whom?
• Let the Oppressed be Congratulated, Saturated from Him at 2001. And Let Them be Guarded by the Echo of the Father's Son, Supported by the U.S. I Will See but He has the Knowledge.
• If Indeed All the Detail of This One is a String, Does Peter Detest the Burden of the Extra Ships? And Does My Throne Rest? So Spoke God's Poor
• Rabbi, Behold! The Temple Mount is Dormant. And He Will Deliver the Fallen, as well as My Mother, as She Will See. She Will Lead a Dried Out Enemy With Her Guilt Offering
• He Calmed Down from His Imperfection, Lost His Way in It. And in It, the Inner Radiance was Similar to a Beautiful Tea from Among Them, in V.I. Lenin, in Me.
• Imprison Your Burden There, to Immerse Her Distinct Feature, and in My Waters to Anthrax, King of All. Embrace It in the Sea.
• God and a Sovereign Day Will Express an Echo. Let the Rule of the World’s Poor Have Its Season. It is Finished and Will be Realized.
• Hussein is a Vapor. Like a Guarded Lamb, God is Keeping Jews and Levites Whole. And the Cell Inside Your Dwelling will become a Torture Chamber.
• From the Salt of Betrayal and from Fire, a Sand Dune Provided the Foundation for a Peace Treaty. Yahweh—indeed God—Came to the Heights of the Mountain.
• Indeed I Will Strike Among You. The Rest of Me is Getting Lost. Iran Has Wailed. His Flame Will Become a Father, and My God Will Whisper.
• His Generation Since the Brother Counts 140. The Interior of Armageddon is Truth. They Will Perish. And Enough with the Lie. God is in the Given
• Third Temple, the Fullness of the Illness will take Place. And a Land will Emerge from a Tight Place. God is Lofty, and it is Time for a Prince.
• God Delivers the Joyous. I Will Indeed Inflict Pain Upon the Rock. I Am the God Who Strikes. They Wiped Out the Nakedness.
• Ascension, be a Cause for My Heart, and Render My Father Transformed. I Will be Ashamed, and Will Divide the Temple of the Messenger..
• The Dwellings of Jesus the Son of God, Lamb of Tishri. You Will Mourn Because of Him and Them, and at the Command, “To God.”
• And God from God is a Light that God Brings. The Light of God Will Arise and be bestowed upon Melchizidek.
• Gushing from Above, Jesus Was My Mighty Name, and the Clouds Rejoiced.
• He Wove the Light to Be My Might, A Living Sacrifice for Him to Put On.
• Here is a Hidden Cornerstone+ Here Raise the Gift That is Hers.
• And Only Messiah: Dwell in Those Words That He Taught on High As Our Prince.
• Please Be Merciful, Miracle of God. Rule Gently. The Son Soars from on High.
• God Will Make Them See Her Crying, and The Gentle Rock Will Be Lofty.
• You Will Crush the Guilty Saddam and the Month of Iyar (May in 2003) Will be Restful
• God is Like Fire, Tyrant Saddam!
• A Bush will Rush. There She is. Provide a Complete Peace
• Provide a Picture of Terminal Illness. The Days of Saddam Are Over
• Hussein is Making Gestures to Me due to the Pressure
• And When Hussein Will Recognize the Checkmate, there will be Wine in Them
• The High Official Will Answer the Anti-Semite. My Joy Will Be Pure
• Woe, N. Korea, My Protection Has Drowned and Died
• The Newborn One is a Father with no Yesterday. His Name will melt as Bait.
• Deal with the Secret of the Anger of the Living. Terminate Anti-Semitism
• The Lamb, the Captain of the Lord's Army, is Mourning
• Babylon has Fallen
• I Will Cool the Priest from the Faith. Since Babylon has Fallen, His Lamb is in the Storm.
• He Ran. It was Finished. But al Qaeda is Awake. Render Him Disabled with a Spike/Stake, and Let Him Expire.
• You Will Spit at Tradition, al Qaeda. And You Will Triple What Belongs to Her—the Multiple Moustaches.
• Shame on the Judgment, says Judge Moore. They Close Their Eyes When it Comes to Religion.

Posted by: prometheus genius   2003-11-30 10:28:24 PM  

#19  FormerLiberal: Heh. I don't bet on sports. My wife's the sports nut...
Posted by: Ptah   2003-04-15 19:39:24  

#18  Actually, the amount of textual "drift" in the Hebrew texts is a lot less than one would think. The Hebrew scribes used a form of checksumming (counting the number of each letter in copied sections of the text and comparing them against known values), and double verification (another scribe did the letter counting), that are used to ensure integrity of transmitted messages as well as ensure quality work in various manufacturing processes. The number of errors between the received Isaiah text and the Qumran Isaiah text was "a handful" that didn't change the meanings of that many words.

Old Spook's references are more promising: To me, the main selling point was that the Bible Codes were unique to the Torah. If other texts generate the same results, then its a textual phenomenon that isn't unique.

*scratches head* Now, I recall that there is some american novelist in the early 20th century that never had the letter "R" in his books, but I'm darned if I could remember his name.
Posted by: Ptah   2003-04-15 19:30:04  

#17  And, oddly enough, Tom Clancy has come as close as any fictional author I know to having predicted the events of 9/11 onward, including the way Gulf 2 would go.
Posted by: Chuck   2003-04-15 15:32:34  

#16  I had read several years ago, around the time that The Bible Code first came out, that you could follow the same procedure with any text of signifigant length. I believe that they had used a Tom Clancy novel to confirm the predictions of The Bible Code.
Posted by: B W   2003-04-15 14:56:22  

#15  Here you go:

(note: I'm a pretty much devout Catholic, coming to this beleif late in my life. IMHO, stuff like this is bogus and contrary to the core of the Christian religion: *belief*. This code stuff is just so much distraction and extraneous to the religion. Its more of what I call "Indian Jones & the Ark of the Covenant" type theology.)


Word clusters such as mentioned in Witztum's and Drosnin's books and the so called messianic (Bible) codes are an uncontrolled phenomenon and similar clusters will be found in any text of similar length. All claims of incredible probabilities for such clusters are bogus, since they are computed contrary to standard rules of probability and statistics.

(undersigned by many PhD mathematicians)
http://math.caltech.edu/code/petition.html

A brief summary of the codes claims is that the Hebrew text of the Bible (especially of the Torah, the first five books) contain intentional coincidences of words or phrases that appear as letters with equal spacing.

The most serious claim of scientific evidence for the Codes was made by three Israelis: Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips, and Yoav Rosenberg (WRR). They claim that biographical information about medieval rabbis is "encoded" in the Hebrew text of Genesis. Specifically, the rabbis' names and other appellations are claimed to be encoded closer to their dates of birth and death than should be expected by chance. WRR's "experiment" appeared in the respectable journal Statistical Science in 1994.

The first serious attack on WRR's paper was published by mathematicians Dror Bar-Natan and Brendan McKay. They found that a small change in the choice of appellations for the famous rabbis can lead to War and Peace performing just as well as Genesis.

An extensive refutation of the famous rabbis experiment, and of many other alleged experiments, was published by the same journal that published WRR's paper. The paper, by Brendan McKay, Dror Bar-Natan, Maya Bar-Hillel, and Gil Kalai, appeared in the May 1999 issue of Statistical Science (printed in September).

Here are some links

http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/StatSci/

One of our favourite reactions to WRR's "experiments" is to produce similar-looking "experiments" in War and Peace

One of the links is here:

http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/rosh/

Moby Dick predicts assasainations per the "Bible Code" methods.

http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/moby.html


In summary, the Bible Codes are just pseudo-scientific trash thats put together by perhaps well meaning individuals, but has been perpetuated to sell things to the ignorant.
Posted by: OldSpook   2003-04-15 14:46:34  

#14  We'll read the Bible, Anonymo... suppose you learn to spell?
Posted by: Sgt. Mom   2003-04-15 14:05:11  

#13  So, anyway, Ptah. How'd you do on the Final Four?
Posted by: FormerLiberal   2003-04-15 13:24:56  

#12  wow! you american's are too far out man,try reading the bilebal, and realise that it's all just a big con, to keep suckers like yourselves in your obidient places!!
Posted by: Anonymo   2003-04-15 13:20:58  

#11  Another trouble with the codes is that they only "work" if one can say decisively which of the extent texts and scraps of texts are the real, official, first-drafts-as-they-came-from-the-pen-of-the-prophets (and/or scribes). When one considers how many thousands of texts there are to choose from, well, good luck.

And, Anonymo, since this thread is regarding ancient texts: Do you have any idea how many different versions of the Koran there have come to be over the centuries? You'll need more than ten fingers to figure it out.
Posted by: FormerLiberal   2003-04-15 13:17:10  

#10  your lives are lost, nailed to that cross, dead on foriegn soil for your god. [and their oil!]
Posted by: Anonymo   2003-04-15 13:09:08  

#9  Old Patriot's got it right: You must learn about something first before you can say that it won't work for you.

The bible codes are interesting, but not the sort of thing I'd hang my faith on: For my part, I'd like to confirm that the phenomenon does NOT exist in other, non-biblical texts, before I'd say it was a strong indicator of the Verbal Inspiration of the Bible, a la Evangelical Fundamentalism. I suspect a lot of it has to do with properties of the typography of the Hebrew language that do NOT exist in other languages (I.e. no written vowels).

Posted by: Ptah   2003-04-15 12:54:49  

#8  Honestly, you'd think the government would have learned something when the Belloq (a frenchman, of course) and the Nazis tried to open the Ark of the Covenant.
Posted by: FormerLiberal   2003-04-15 12:46:44  

#7  You can't refute something you cannot understand, or don't have first-hand knowledge of. I'm sure the Pentagon has been deluged with emails, phone calls, and snail mail about the "Bible Codes". This is a nice way of saying "Yes, we know about them, and we're taking the matter under advisement." It DOESN'T mean they're taking it serious (although it's possible, but not very probable). Since the head of DIA and 3CI were both there, it's also possible they were looking for information that someone was using the "Bible Codes" to pass intelligence. ANY book can be used for a "Book" code, as long as the books used for encryption and decryption are identical. BTW, 3CI is "Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence".
Posted by: Old Patriot   2003-04-15 10:59:05  

#6  *rolls eyes* put this in the same category as Blue Book, Area 52, and black helicopters. I don't think, personally, that the phenomenon of the Bible codes can be disputed: there are programs available for download that anyone can use to verify the phenomenon itself, its clearly refutable, and nobody's refuted it yet.

Problem is, they're strictly ex-post-facto: none of the "predictions" have dates attached, and you have to know the event to supposedly "find" it in the text. Its a squirrely form of "prophecy" that a really serious student of Bible Prophecy wouldn't consider being the real thing.

What you should take with a grain of salt is that the government itself is taking it seriously. I think there may be some government officials who, taking advantage of the current climate, wanted to talk to the guy for their own personal satisfaction, and who used their position to get him to speak to them. Senators on committees get to meet celebrities using the same trick.

Are the bible codes valid? I think so. Can they be used to predict events? Definitely not. Is the government interested in the bible codes? Some government officials are interested, but to the same extent that they're interested in UFO engine technology.

Posted by: Ptah   2003-04-15 10:45:33  

#5  Guffaw! If there was some truth to this he would be predicting the performance of the Dow, not hunting for terrorists.
Posted by: penguin   2003-04-15 10:30:58  

#4  Maybe Mr. Drosnin was sent in as a comic.
Posted by: mhw   2003-04-15 10:27:35  

#3  (inhale) Oh, wow man! That's some heavy shit! (exhale)
Posted by: Steve   2003-04-15 10:20:09  

#2  Just re-read that.Must appoligize to the Muslems.
Sounds more like some ignorant fool,maybe a child.
Posted by: raptor   2003-04-16 10:42:33  

#1  wow! you american's are too far out man,try reading the bilebal, and realise that it's all just a big con, to keep suckers like yourselves in your obidient places!!

Considering the Old Testament is 3,000 years older,and the New Testament 1,000 years older than the Koran speaks alot about the legitamasy of the Koran.
At least I can question what I read in the Bible,how about Muslems.The way I understand it if a Muslems questions anything in the Koran they are beaten or killed.That speaks volumes about the legitamacy of Islam.

Posted by: raptor   2003-04-16 10:27:41  

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