I enjoy watching the history and discovery channel (as aposed to reality shows, they disturb me a little). I keep seeing programs on "the bible code". I know there are 8 books, so there are a lot of pages and a lot of words. I had assumed that with that many books, and so much text from a statistical stand point your bound to find about anything lined up in certain orders. I must concede however that some if it is rather strange.... I dont know ANYTHING about it and i personaly dont care if its true or not (i personaly think its not true but what do i know?). I just wanted to hear (read) some input and see if others have more info about it then im aware of.

I enjoy watching the history and discovery channel (as aposed to reality shows, they disturb me a little). I keep seeing programs on "the bible code". I know there are 8 books, so there are a lot of pages and a lot of words. I had assumed that with that many books, and so much text from a statistical stand point your bound to find about anything lined up in certain orders. I must concede however that some if it is rather strange.... I dont know ANYTHING about it and i personaly dont care if its true or not (i personaly think its not true but what do i know?). I just wanted to hear (read) some input and see if others have more info about it then im aware of.

I'm uncertain as to what you mean about "8 books." If you are talking about the books in the Bible, your number is WAY off.

Both the Roman Catholic and Protestant Bibles have thirty-nine books in the Old Testament and twenty-seven in the New. The difference is that a Roman Catholic Bible has an additional eleven books inserted between the Testaments called the Apocrypha.

But if you're talking about some other books, I have no idea what you mean.

I know nothing about the whole bible code shenanigans beyond what I have read about how wrong it is. Eseentially that argument is that because you are using programs to decode the bible, you can, by choosing your parameters, get it to spit out just about any predictions you like. Some scientists did the same processing that the bible code people did, and used Moby Dick instead. I believe they got some really accurate predictions from it. Maybe Herman Melville was divinely inspired?

the idea behind the bible code is that the original hebrew texts can be used to find historical data.

the way hebrew is written in the OT is such that the letters line up nice and straight like soldiers standing in line.

using skip sequences (imagine a tic tac toe board), some folks have found amazingly detailed descriptions of people, places, and events.

i personally believe it is true, but that doesnt make it empirical. :D

keep on truckin!
:m:

It's a complete sham. Take any text which is long enough, such as "Moby Dick" and you'll be able to find "predictions" about all kinds of things using exactly the same method the Michael Drosnin used. In fact, a statement that the Bible Code itself is false has been "decoded" from the bible, if my memory serves me correctly.

The Hebrew bible, by the way, is written without any vowels, so Drosnin's bible code just selects out a bunch of consonents, inserts some well-chosen vowels, and then makes its spurious "predictions". Those "predictions" are actually "retrodictions", too. The Bible Code has never accurately predicted any future event. Only stuff we already know about.

Apparently (according to the bible code) the world ends this year, on the 6th of June. 06/06/2006. Why it did not end in 06/06/1006, or won't end in 06/06/3006 I cannot fathom. We shall see what happens, at any rate.

I'm willing to bet a large amoung of money that the world will NOT end this year.

Any takers?

I'm with James R on this one. I bet all my earthly possesions that the world does not end this year.

James R:

I don't have a large amoung of money. How about a large amount?

You guys are going to feel so silly ( and broke ) if it ends on schedule, and you have to pay off next day!

Yes. We will feel very silly if the world ends and we thus lose the bet. *cough*

Wouldn't it make more sense for it to end in 06/06/0606? Or rather, 06/06/606 as it would more likely be written. But yeah, it seems pretty likely that the world will end in a couple of months because some people picked and chose some consonants out of a book.

Why isn't this in pseudo science or religion?

I'm uncertain as to what you mean about "8 books." If you are talking about the books in the Bible, your number is WAY off.

Both the Roman Catholic and Protestant Bibles have thirty-nine books in the Old Testament and twenty-seven in the New. The difference is that a Roman Catholic Bible has an additional eleven books inserted between the Testaments called the Apocrypha.

But if you're talking about some other books, I have no idea what you mean.
As a matter of fact, The Bible Code is specifically supposed only to be found in the Torah, which I understood to mean the books of Moses. Eight books would include Joshua, Judges and Ruth, but that's only in Christian bibles. But like I said, I believe the Bible Code is based on the Torah only (and that, of course, in Hebrew).

Here's my debunking of the method.

http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?p=663379#post663379

contrary to popular belief, the torah DOES have vowels. they just arent used in the same way that we use them in english.

Yes, Devil, but the BC uses only the regular 24-letter Hebrew alephbeth of consonants. All the diacritical marks are ignored.

:)
i am a scholar of the hebrew language and religion.
you mean 22 letters, of course.

:o Of course!

hehe.