Before I even get into the nitty gritty I’d just like to point out something about what you are going to read. It envolves Religion and religious beliefs. I know alot of people take their beliefs to the utmost degree and would like to say I am not attempting to make any judgment or mockery of your faith(s).
A few days ago I stumbled across an intriguing piece of television. It discussed The Bible and how it has affected the lives of those who read and attempt to live by it. But what if this ‘devine literature’ were able to tell us of events that might shape the future as we know it? This particular programme discussed at length the work of a Mr Michael Drosnin, author of the bestseller ‘The Bible Code’. Michael Drosnin’s work consists of taking sequences of letters in the bible text and using them to predict the fufure.
Just a little bit strange I’m sure your thinking! Well let me go into slightly more detail about how he uses the bible to do this. Many individuals have taken it upon themselves to try and ‘de-bunk’ the bible, most even dedicating their lives to it. One example of this is Sir Isaac Newton who of course went on to discover the theory of gravity whilst staring at an apple tree, he himself spent many years attempting to find hidden codes in the bible and whilst not completely fruitless (no pun intended) his efforts did not come to any firm scientific conclusion.
However an Israeli Mathetician named Dr Eliyahu Rips too has dedicated his work to unlocking the mysteries of the bible. He uses a technique called ELS (Equidistant Letter Sequencing) to find hidden passages in the Torah (Hebrew Bible). This technique consists of taking a single letter as a starting point and then counting a set number of letters ahead (say 50) and using that as the next letter of the sequence. So he counts 50 letters and uses each Fiftieth letter to form a grid, similar to a word search puzzle and begins to search for words attributed to world events, such as 9/11 etc etc,
Using this technique Rips & Drosnin have found many startling ‘coincidences’. Within a small margain of pages they were able to such words grouped together as “Kennedy” – “Dallas” and “Assasination”. They also found “Twin Towers” – “New York” and “September 2001” extremely close together. These events obviously could not have been known by the writers of the bible over 2000 years ago! Now these discoveries have many people doubting the relevance of finding old events so Drosnin used his technique to predict something in the future…. and it worked!
He predicted that former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin would be assasinated precisely one year before it happened. Naturally he warned Rabin of this but to no avail and he was shot during a peace rally in 1995.
Surely this is the biggest discovery of all time? Well maybe not quite.
Whilst many scientists have attributed to Drosnin’s discovery claiming that the words found such as for instance “Kennedy, Dallas & Assasination” are too close together in the text to be coincedence, many are still very sceptical to this technique.
They liken his methods to that of a tarot card or palm reader who will take small pieces of personal information and attempt to tell you a story. Your mind will fill whatever blanks are left by what they are telling you and will make it relevant to yourself. Many claim that Drosnin is doing the same as the discoveries are not conclusive enough (enough detail such as exact dates etc). Another who was famous for this is Nostradmous who predicted many modern events such as the rise of Hitler and possibly 9/11 but again was this luck or a mind trick?
One sceptic even went as far as using Drosnin’s own technique against him by decoding Moby Dick. He found similar coincedences as Drosnin did in the Bible.
So is it possible that God left us clues in the Bible to help us survive worldly catastrophy? Or is it a case of scientists forever more attempting to be bigger than the holy faith? Personally I cannot decide, I want to believe Drosnin so very much it’s scary! But logic tells me this surely cannot be!
Whichever we choose to believe it just goes to so even in the modern world how much of an impact the bible still has on us all. We should also perhaps take heed of Drosnin’s most shocking discovery…. the end of the world by Nuclear Holocaust in 2006. Live each day as if it’s your last I say!
The Bible Code by Michael Drosnin can be purchased from Amazon by clicking here.
2 replies on “Enjoy The Silence 6”
let me just tell you that I have taken a ridiculous amount of religion classes in my life as well as religious philosophy and ethics class. I have read the bible in it’s entirety several times and closely studied many of the books.
for one, most of my teachers/professors do not know many people who find this man credible. at least intellectuals in the feild of theology. the idea is a big joke to the educated theolgian.
i am not going to ramble on about my own ideas on this ridiculous matter. but let me just point out, as i see it, the strongest arguments against these
bible codes:
THE BIBLE WAS NOT, NOR WAS IT EVER INTENDED TO BE WRITTEN IN ENGLISH! so unless these “letters” are being brought from the original hebrew trying to translate something like this is nearly impossible. In fact there are many discrepancies over regular biblical exegisis (interpretation) due to translation issues…. so how on earth is this letter system suppose to work??
and second, the bible was composed (i realize this is somewhat contravercial among biblical purists) by a series of authors over thousands of years. esp. the old testament, which was in fact an oral tradition before it was ever written down. therefore many of the stories have changed naturally over time and in being scribed by different authors naturally differ even from page to page. so how is it even possible (never mind probable) that in this situation a “secret code” could arise in an ancient language that would predict, i’m not versed on this…. but, not the millions of atrocious things that have happened before the new testament was even concievable, the bad things that happen, conviently within our own century and are infamous only in modern society.
i just cannot understand how anyone can believe this crap.
Wow Bell, you obviously feel very strongly about this and rightly so, and all the points you raise are totally accountable, however Drosnin did use the Torah (Hebrew) for his methods but your absolutely right about how these are translated, I believe I am right in saying that there are many variations in how to spell certain words in Hebrew (more characters etc) so that is why there are so many sceptics, and of course the slight variations in text over the millenia,
I’m not saying I believe it at face value at all, I just want to believe though