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It's Baaaaack - The Bible Code III

DaveThomasNMSR

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DaveThomasNMSR
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I heard from SI's Ben Radford today that there's a full-page ad in the NY Times for Michael's Drosnin's latest sequel to the Bible Code.

In this new book, the reporter-turned-delusionary-megalomaniac thinks he alone can save the world, by getting Oprah to give his urgent message to President Obama.

Here's the cover:
BibleCodeIII.jpg


An excerpt from the book appears on Drosnin's site, specifically here.

As I've done with the first two Bible Code books, I downloaded Drosnin's excerpt, and began using my own code application to search for Bible Codes therein.

And I found some good ones in only a few minutes!

The entire except is a whopping 3,681 characters in length after stripping spaces and punctuation, or just over one percent of the Torah's length (and codes improve greatly with text length).

Even though the chapter is short, it teems with amazing "Bible Codes".

One new result shows hidden codes for VAIN and HOAX appearing in Drosnin's new book, in excellent code style (which is supposedly found ONLY in the Hebrew Torah!).

vainhoax.jpg


A second shows "MEGALO" nearby "MANIA". The hidden word "MEGALO" is quite a find in itself, since I estimated it would only be found once in every 35 similarly-sized excerpts (or so).

megalomaniac.jpg


Do these codes mean anything? Of course not! They just serve to show how easily hidden messages can be produced in any text, not just the Torah.

I searched for MEGALO-MANIA because I suspect that Bible Code III will be just more of Drosnin's megalomania that was so overdone in Bible Code II.

The man really thinks he's the one individual who can save the World!

I've a succinct write-up of Bible Code silliness from my TAM4 talk, here.

Cheers, Dave
 
DaveThomasNMSR said:
Ben Radford has also posted these hidden words from Drosnin's latest book at LiveScience.com, in the "Bad Science" topic area, here.

Cheers, Dave
Click to expand...

Love the first sentence:

CHAPTER ONE: Obama

On May 28, 2008, six months before the election, I sent Barack Obama a letter through Oprah Winfrey stating three predictions:
Click to expand...

He might have had better luck if he'd used the USPS.
 
In his last Bible Code book Drosnin posited time-traveling space aliens as the source of the encrypted prophecies. He also credited them with creating life on earth by directed panspermia. He even went to Francis Crick to get support for this theory.

He claimed in that book to have found, before the fact, that Yitzhak Rabin was going to be assassinated and said he tried to warn Rabin. He gave no supporting evidence to back this claim. I would be impressed if Drosnin could actually make a claim in print of a future event that was later proved to be true - specifically one that anyone would be unlikely to predict based on logical extrapolation. However, I doubt we'll see that in this or any other book he writes in order to keep milking the cash cow of popular credulity.
 
stripping spaces and punctuation
Click to expand...
Don't you get to strip the vowels too? This is oh so handy to create whatever you want to say.

If you ever have the time, I would love to see the New Testament Writers thread in history/literature given the treatment. If you like massive amounts of texts, that is your huckleberry.

There would even be extra equidistant letter arrangements because DOC reposts the exact same stuff endlessly.
 
Wolrab said:
Don't you get to strip the vowels too? This is oh so handy to create whatever you want to say.

If you ever have the time, I would love to see the New Testament Writers thread in history/literature given the treatment. If you like massive amounts of texts, that is your huckleberry.

There would even be extra equidistant letter arrangements because DOC reposts the exact same stuff endlessly.
Click to expand...


I don't strip vowels from English texts. However, doing so would make it much more like Hebrew. The implied vowels in Hebrew make it ever-so-much-easier to find equidistant codes.

For example, when Drosnin found "Shoemaker-Levy" in his first Bible Code book, it was much easier than finding a match for the 13-letter English word SHOEMAKERLEVY. Instead, Drosnin used the much more compact Hebrew spelling, with the eight letters Shin,Waw,Mem,Kaf,Reish,Lamed,Waw,Yud (
shoemakerlevy.jpg
).

(the letters read right-to left, starting with pitchfork-resembling shin).

A basic rule of Codes is longer names are harder to match, as explained here.

In short, good point!

Dave
 
I wonder, assuming I could set up the matrix right, if I could find in the Bible Code the words: "Drosnin is blowing smoke up my ***." I'll settle for equidistant spacing of "Drosnin . . . blow . . . smoke . . . up . . . ***."
 
Wolrab said:
Don't you get to strip the vowels too? This is oh so handy to create whatever you want to say.

If you ever have the time, I would love to see the New Testament Writers thread in history/literature given the treatment. If you like massive amounts of texts, that is your huckleberry.

There would even be extra equidistant letter arrangements because DOC reposts the exact same stuff endlessly.
Click to expand...

TimCallahan said:
I wonder, assuming I could set up the matrix right, if I could find in the Bible Code the words: "Drosnin is blowing smoke up my ***." I'll settle for equidistant spacing of "Drosnin . . . blow . . . smoke . . . up . . . ***."
Click to expand...

OK, I downloaded ONE page of the NT thread (of 427) that Wolrab suggested, and found the message Tim thought might be lurking there!

drosnin_ass.jpg

Thanks, folks!
 
DaveThomasNMSR, that PDF article is really excellent!

But there are two points that I don't feel you covered much in it. First, if you decide to search for a specific word by ELS-ing any text, you have a poorer chance to find it than a general word related to the topic at hand.

Example: you can search for "Nazi", but your chances of finding it are less than searching for any word or phrase that could be even remotely connected with the Nazis, such as Hitler, SS, holocaust, WW2, Himmler, 1939, etc.

Much like the interpretation of Nostradamus, the results can be used to "prove" pretty much whatever you want if your original goal is loosely defined.

Second, I suspect that there are more versions of any part of the bible than just one, even the oldest Torah text. Do 100% of all existent, reliable copies agree 100% with every single letter, number and space? I doubt it.

If even one letter were added or omitted from a version, this would make the ELS process totally different if any skip spanned that letter, and wipe out all words claimed to have been found. Pretty critical, I'd say.
 
Sherman Bay said:
DaveThomasNMSR, that PDF article is really excellent!

But there are two points that I don't feel you covered much in it. First, if you decide to search for a specific word by ELS-ing any text, you have a poorer chance to find it than a general word related to the topic at hand.

Example: you can search for "Nazi", but your chances of finding it are less than searching for any word or phrase that could be even remotely connected with the Nazis, such as Hitler, SS, holocaust, WW2, Himmler, 1939, etc.

Much like the interpretation of Nostradamus, the results can be used to "prove" pretty much whatever you want if your original goal is loosely defined.
Click to expand...

A good point! If you can't find NAZI, just look for EVIL, or REICH, etc.

Second, I suspect that there are more versions of any part of the bible than just one, even the oldest Torah text. Do 100% of all existent, reliable copies agree 100% with every single letter, number and space? I doubt it.

If even one letter were added or omitted from a version, this would make the ELS process totally different if any skip spanned that letter, and wipe out all words claimed to have been found. Pretty critical, I'd say.
Click to expand...

Another good point, and one ignored by Bible Code proponents. Turns out that there are many variations in the Masoretic text, as this article shows:
Kennicott and de Rossi have published much of this variant evidence, based upon extensive collations of Masoretic manuscripts available to them in the eighteenth century. In hundreds, perhaps thousands, of places these Masoretic manuscripts differ among themselves with regard to minor details.
Click to expand...

A change of even one letter can obliterate a Bible Code find, and the large-skip matches are the most vulnerable.

I once was unable to replicate Brendan McKay's find of "CLINTON" in the English (King James) version of Genesis, so I asked for a copy of his text to compare to mine. Comparing the two independent versions, letter by letter, I found they both had multiple errors (in different places), explaining the difference in our results. I used the two versions and the error comparison to make a third version, relatively error-free.

So, yeah, Bible Codes are inherently fragile

Cheers, Dave.
 
Vague Bible Code Format

The Bible Code Format discussed here is a vague format indeed.

The True Bible Codes are a different kettle of fish.

There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We can reduce the focus to a soft blur, or sharpen it to crystal clarity. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to... The "OUTERSECRETS".

PLEASE STAND BY.
 
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MINISTERofTRUTH said:
The Bible Code Format discussed here is a vague format indeed.

The True Bible Codes are a different kettle of fish.

There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We can reduce the focus to a soft blur, or sharpen it to crystal clarity. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to... The "OUTERSECRETS".

PLEASE STAND BY.
Click to expand...


If I'd gotten a dollar for every letter to me starting with "I agree with you that the Bible CodeTM is bunk, but not so my Bible Code...", I'd be much richer.

Just answer me this, "MinisterofTruth":
Are the "True Bible Codes" the same ones predicting nuclear attacks in Manhattan by Thursday or Saturday of this week?

Our latest date for the start of the Great Tribulation, which we now understand to be the second fire sign of 1Kings18, which is a terror attack in New York, is 2010Tebbeth6-7, which is 2010 December16-18. This is when the Winter of our discontent will begin.
Click to expand...

Dave
 
Are there any actual rules to this whole "Bible Code" thing? It looks like you can take any angle, any number of spaces apart, as long as they are in a straight line. With rules like that it seems to me that it would be nearly impossible to NOT find something in a large enough text block.

And what is he using as his base text? The Torah in Hebrew? And then using the Hebrew characters to make words in whatever language is convenient? This is just...wow...it's really bad.
 
Weak Kitten said:
Are there any actual rules to this whole "Bible Code" thing? It looks like you can take any angle, any number of spaces apart, as long as they are in a straight line. With rules like that it seems to me that it would be nearly impossible to NOT find something in a large enough text block.

And what is he using as his base text? The Torah in Hebrew? And then using the Hebrew characters to make words in whatever language is convenient? This is just...wow...it's really bad.
Click to expand...


It's called "EQUIDISTANT LETTER SEQUENCES" (ELS). Basically, you strip all punctuation, numbers and spaces from the Text, leaving only alphabetic characters. The Code is supposed to work only in the Pentateuch (1st 5 books of the Torah), but many coders use the whole bible.

In an ELS, the code letters are separated by the same number of intervening letters. For example, the English word "generalization" has encoded inside it the word “NAZI,” using every third letter, as seen here:
GENERALIZATION​

Typically, Bible "Codes" are found with thousands of characters intervening, not a couple as shown above.

Is it really, really Bad? Yes.

Many additional details are provided here.
 
My favorite Bible Code is "assassin will assassinate". I always found that cute.
 
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I'm still waiting for this Bible Code nonsense (or Nostradamus) to accurately predict a significant event that nobody else predicted. Until that happens, nobody should take this crap seriously.
 
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