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The Bible Code:Hillary to win and Barack....well,maybe you should just read?

michael_33

By michael_33
in The Tailgate

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techboy

techboy

Posted
Posted

The Bible Code is garbage. Check out this excerpt from Dr. Jeffrey A. Tigay's THE BIBLE "CODES": A TEXTUAL PERSPECTIVE :

Whatever the purpose for which they use the alleged codes, their proponents depend on the assumption that the text of the Bible on which they base them is universally accepted among Jews and is completely identical to the original text.9 It is essential for them to insist on these points because the code consists primarily 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 dimensions are determined by the size of the ELS that forms these words, they appear unexpectedly close to, and sometimes even intersect in crossword fashion with, other words -- either real words (with no letters skipped) from the Biblical text or other words formed of equidistant letters. This makes it obvious why proponents of 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 pattern formed by equidistant letters is changed by even one letter, the equi-distance, and hence the message or pattern, is destroyed.

The edition of the Hebrew Bible used by the decoders is the popular Koren edition, published in Jerusalem in 1962. It is distinguished by its beautiful Hebrew font. But the history of the Biblical text shows that without special pleading it is practically inconceivable that this text, or any other known text of the Torah, is identical to the original text, letter for letter. While there was an ideal of an unchanging text, identical in all copies, this ideal was not achieved in practice 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 of what is known as the Masoretic Text, abbreviated "MT," named after the medieval scholars (the Masoretes) who labored for several centuries to produce the most accurate text they could. The MT in use today is based on Masoretic manuscripts of the ninth and tenth centuries C.E., themselves based on older manuscripts. 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 from Qumran).11 But although the text has been largely unchanged, there is a large number of variant readings, most of which do not materially change the meaning of the text, but drastical-ly affect the number of letters it contains.

Emphasis mine.

Short and sweet: As I have written here many times, the texts we have are virtually identical to the originals, especially in the New Testament. The minor variations are mostly spelling errors and the like, and no major doctrine has ever been in question because of the few non-trivial (in the sense of not being about spelling) issues we know of.

This is not to say, however, that the texts are completely identical to the originals. They're not, as Dr. Tigay notes.

Thus, the "Bible Code", even if it existed in the original, could not possibly have survived, since unlike standard religious doctrine, it does rely on perfectly precise spellings and wording.

There's also the fact that anyone can find anything if one looks long enough, and of course, it's a really bad idea to seek hidden meaning in plain text, but as far as I'm concerned, the textual issue is a slam dunk.

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skinfan133

skinfan133

Posted
Posted
We Americans really seem to fancy ourselves as pretty important, ehh?
funny right? there isn't a shred of a mention of America even figuring into world events during the end of days in Revelation.

o and btw, the author of that junk has exactly 22 hours to pray real hard and make these ridiculous predictions come true. its liek the whole "1980 reasons why Christ will return in 1980" followed by the hot offf the press sequel "1981 reason why Christ will return in 1981." reason 1981? he didn't come in 1980 :laugh:

seriously folks, it clearly said no man will know the year, day, or hour of Christ's return. not even the Angel's know, only God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Ghost have knowledge of what is to transpire. so live your lifeas God would want and stop guessing and worrying (see the Sermon on the Mount for further clarification).

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The Sisko

The Sisko

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Posted

Several things here. First, I dislike Hillary as much as the next guy. However, imagining her as the Antichrist? :no: I'd say the same thing if I actually believed in such a thing.

Second, was this a bid for longest post to ever grace ES? I mean that thing practically took up a whole page by itself.

Finally, techboy's post alluded to this but I'm going to put it in layman's terms. The idea of a Bible Code falls on its face because of the language difference. That is, languages never, ever are direct word for word translations of each other. If you don't believe me, find any ____ to English dictionary and find the idioms section. What you'll find is that common words and/or phrases in one language often have no direct translation into another language. This would obviously throw off the code analyzed in English, for example since the technique is based on examining every nth word for patterns.

Total foolishness.

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Califan007 The Constipated

Califan007 The Constipated

Posted
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I wish I knew Honorary Hog...I wish I knew...

I have no idea how they come up with this info or how they have cracked the code so to speak....

I do know I will be keeping an ear out on the City of Philly for the next week as it says there will be an EBOLA attack on that City...either on May 11th or the 16th of this year...

If this bible code comes true,I guess it deserves it's own sticky.... :(

If there WAS an Ebola attack in Philly, there's no way in hell Hillary Clinton would be elected president, or Barack Obama for that matter.

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Califan007 The Constipated

Califan007 The Constipated

Posted
Posted
Several things here. First, I dislike Hillary as much as the next guy. However, imagining her as the Antichrist? :no: I'd say the same thing if I actually believed in such a thing.

Second, was this a bid for longest post to ever grace ES? I mean that thing practically took up a whole page by itself.

Finally, techboy's post alluded to this but I'm going to put it in layman's terms. The idea of a Bible Code falls on its face because of the language difference. That is, languages never, ever are direct word for word translations of each other. If you don't believe me, find any ____ to English dictionary and find the idioms section. What you'll find is that common words and/or phrases in one language often have no direct translation into another language. This would obviously throw off the code analyzed in English, for example since the technique is based on examining every nth word for patterns.

Total foolishness.

If there really WAS a "Bible Code", though, I would imagine God would be able to create that code to survive translations and multiple languages.

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techboy

techboy

Posted
Posted

Finally, techboy's post alluded to this but I'm going to put it in layman's terms. The idea of a Bible Code falls on its face because of the language difference. That is, languages never, ever are direct word for word translations of each other. If you don't believe me, find any ____ to English dictionary and find the idioms section. What you'll find is that common words and/or phrases in one language often have no direct translation into another language. This would obviously throw off the code analyzed in English, for example since the technique is based on examining every nth word for patterns.

Actually, that's not the problem. The "Bible Code" is in Hebrew, not English. The problem is that while that Hebrew is very, very good, it's not perfect, and while spelling issues don't affect theology, they do affect substitution schemes, like this.

I say "the" problem, but it's one of several, really.

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PeterMP

PeterMP

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Posted
Actually, that's not the problem. The "Bible Code" is in Hebrew, not English. The problem is that while that Hebrew is very, very good, it's not perfect, and while spelling issues don't affect theology, they do affect substitution schemes, like this.

I say "the" problem, but it's one of several, really.

The problem with the Bible code is the multiple testing issue. If you simply ONLY read the thing backwards or orthogonal to normal reading (is Hebrew read left to right, right to left, or up and down?), then you'd have some chance of caculating probabilites of finding such phrases from the text to know whether you were looking at "real" things or just things found from random combinations of letters.

But they don't do that, they look backwards, across words, up and down, diagonally, and all of those combinations with skipping letters (e.g. every third or fourth letter on the diaganol can be taken to "make" a word). Looking at that many combinations makes it essentially impossible to asses any probability to phrases that are found AND makes it very likely that you will find something that seems to be relevant.

The odds of flipping a coin five times in a row and having it come up heads are low, but if I flip enough sets of 5 eventually it'll happen. The odds of Hillary and President occuring in close proximity in the Bible are probably pretty low, but if I look at enough combinations and enough character combinations it will happen.

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The Sisko

The Sisko

Posted
Posted
The problem with the Bible code is the multiple testing issue. If you simply ONLY read the thing backwards or orthogonal to normal reading (is Hebrew read left to right, right to left, or up and down?), then you'd have some chance of caculating probabilites of finding such phrases from the text to know whether you were looking at "real" things or just things found from random combinations of letters.

But they don't do that, they look backwards, across words, up and down, diagonally, and all of those combinations with skipping letters (e.g. every third or fourth letter on the diaganol can be taken to "make" a word). Looking at that many combinations makes it essentially impossible to asses any probability to phrases that are found AND makes it very likely that you will find something that seems to be relevant.

The odds of flipping a coin five times in a row and having it come up heads are low, but if I flip enough sets of 5 eventually it'll happen. The odds of Hillary and President occuring in close proximity in the Bible are probably pretty low, but if I look at enough combinations and enough character combinations it will happen.

I actually missed that this was what they were doing to arrive at their "messages". That makes it even sillier in my book. I just can't believe they can actually find anyone to buy into this.

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Jumbo

Jumbo

Posted
Posted
I just came across this and wanted to show it to you guys...

Please don't ever waste so much space pasting stuff again. Next time you have that much material, please paste a representative excerpt and a link. :)

Now that this has run its course, please go back and edit that...stuff...down to an excerpt of reasonable length and a link, or a few excerpts and links. Thank you. :)

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Corcaigh

Corcaigh

Posted
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What would you say if this stuff comes true though? Its some pretty freaky ****.

:doh: Haven't you read the rebutals in this thread?

Is there anything you won't find credible?

I watched a show on the History Channel and it showed you how they found this stuff out....some fascinating stuff

It's not fascinating. It's bull****. You can find 'codes' in any book such as Moby Dick or any other novel.

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33

33

Posted
Posted

I found a code on ES that says long blocks of quoted text are wrong, sometimes leading to banning. There have been others, too.

Just follow the orange text in between the ~'s

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The Brave Little Toaster Oven

The Brave Little Toaster Oven

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:doh: Haven't you read the rebutals in this thread?

Is there anything you won't find credible?

Did I say it was credible?.... :doh:

It's not fascinating. It's bull****. You can find 'codes' in any book such as Moby Dick or any other novel.

again, if you had seen the episode on the History Channel, you would have known that they discussed that.

Its still pretty cool

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