The Bible Codes

Are Bible Codes Real?

The idea is simple: If one takes every 7th letter or every 10th letter or every 231st letter of the Hebrew text of the Bible (generally meaning the traditional Masoretic text used in most synagogues), these letters themselves sometimes may spell out words, either in Hebrew or in Latin, Greek or English or other languages. Frequently such words can be found "clustered" in a "design" around a topic that ties them all together, such as, for example, the murder of JFK or the birth of Jesus.

The key to everything is the traditional "Masoretic" Hebrew text. The Masorete story begins after the burning of the Temple by the Romans. Rabbis took steps late in the first century to preserve a true copy of their Bible. Within a few decades a system for copying the text began to emerge. This system was perfected by the 3rd century by a scribal family known as "Masoretes." All of these efforts were based upon an official Hebrew text rescued from Jerusalem in 70 AD. That text had been officially copied from the authoritative index scrolls kept at the Temple since the days of Ezra, under whom the Scriptures had finally been completed and canonized.

The only break in this history occurred during those few years between Antiochus Epiphanes and the Maccabees, less than a decade. During that time the sacred scroll was identifiable by some "astrological" symbols written on the outside. This text was rescued by the Maccabees and actually carried into battle because it was deemed so holy and sacred it was thought to have magical power to defeat the Syrians. The man who carried it was later made High Priest when the Maccabees restored the Temple in the miraculous events commemorated by Hannukah. This feast was honored and kept by Jesus [Jn 10:22].

The system developed by the Masoretes is extremely important to the debate over the codes. When any copy of the text was made, it was virtually like a photo-copy. Each page was identical to the one being copied: Every line was identical, beginning and ending with the same words as the original. And to make sure that no errors could slip by, there were "test letters" in each line of text. These were to be counted off so that a particular letter had to be, for example, the 17th letter from the left of a given line and, say, 21st from the right end of that line. Each line had to have a certain number of letters. There were test letters for each line. Every page had to have a certain number of lines.

What all this produced was a text that was so uniform from one copy to the next that any errors would not make a major change in the over-all distance from the correct parts of the text to other correct passages. There were exactly the same number of letters between these correct portions of the text, even though a letter might be off here and there.

Now it should be obvious that even though some errors might be in the text, they would have relatively little effect on the distances between letters on average. And equally important, if more than three errors were found in a scroll, it was considered unacceptable for use in a synogogue.

Thus, the likely effect of an error in the Masoretic copies would be to eliminate a code that might already be there, by changing a single letter that would have been needed to form one Bible Code word. Far less likely would be an error that created a fake Bible Code word.

To generate Bible Codes by such errors, one would be required to have such a massive number of miscopied and faulty words that the Hebrew text would be reduced to an incomprehensible string of gibberish. The reason Bible Codes could only be generated by massive errors of this kind is that genuine codes contain several long words in a contiguous matrix or design that is statistically not reproducible by chance. To have such a complex set of "hits" result requires a large number of errors placed in the text at just the right intervals. To generate a hundred or more such codes (and the Bible Codes are way beyond that total) would so pepper the Hebrew text with errors that it would become unreadable. This is because the codes only sample a tiny portion of the text at any given time. To create even a few codes, the number of errors needed would be enormous.

Jewish statisticians have verified that some codes do in fact exist in the text at levels above chance. The fact of such encoding cannot be refuted by reference to errors in the Masoretic text. The number of errors we need to find to destroy the statistical validity of the codes would be larger than any Masoretic variations we have found in any copies of that version of the text. Indeed, it could be argued that the number of errors needed would be so great that the resulting text would frequently be impossible to read at all.

The Critics Chief Arguement

One of the main issues about Bible Codes is the claim that they are based upon the complete reliability of the Hebrew text, which the critics dispute. Their claim is that the Hebrew Bible exists in "thousands" of different versions. It would take only a few variations in a text to destroy the code patterns, they claim (in spite of the undeniable evidence just cited to the contrary).

To support their contention, they cite all the various Dead Sea Scroll versions of the Bible, and several kinds of text related to the Septuagint Greek translation. The critics also cite a medieval version similar to the basic Masoretic text synagogues use, but which has a number of different readings. Moreover, variant wordings are found in certain references in the Talmud and other rabbinical commentaries. In addition, one can infer alternate text readings from some Bible quotations in the New Testament.

Is all this a serious problem for the codes?

Hardly. First, there are NOT "thousands" of different versions of the Hebrew Bible with a historic basis for any ancient heritage. Not one document among all the Biblical manuscripts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls can be traced back historically to a known authoritative source. No one really knows where these fragmentary and often impossible-to-read manuscripts came from. One theory is that they are the "library" of a heretical Jewish sect of Essenes. This would certainly not be an official Jewish Temple source, and therefore, it could not be traced to any authoritative origin. We simply do not have a sufficient history of the Essenes to provide such documentation for any text these people might theoretically have used. Tracing texts to the Essenes is tracing texts to a people whose historical link to the official Biblical text of the Temple cannot be verified at all.

If anything, these heretical Essene communities are not to be trusted to have an accurate text tradition. The very fact that the Dead Sea texts do have so many variations is absolute proof that these texts did not represent such an official and authoritative canon. If these Dead Sea texts were the work of the Essenes, that may be one reason they had been rejected by the Temple authorities: The Essenes were not sticking to the official ancient text used by the priests.

But there is another possibility about where these Dead Sea texts came from. Before the Essene theory arose, one leading explanation was that the caves were a "genizeh," or sacred permanent storage site for Scriptures and texts that contained mentions of "YHWH"--the sacred name of God. The rule is that such a text cannot be burned or discarded, but must be preserved in a special sacred storage place.

The genizeh problem for the Bible Code critics is a major one: One of the uses for such storage areas was for the disposal of faulty copies of the Bible, produced by a novice scribe learning his craft. In other words, it is possible some of the differences in the texts cited by the critcs are merely scribal errors deliberately discarded in the Dead Sea caves because they did not meet the high standards of the Masoretic version.

In a debate on the Art Bell show, the argument was put forth that the Dead Sea texts are "older" and, therefore, more likely to be "closer to their original composition." But the Dead Sea texts, being in conflict with each other and from an unknown source or sources, cannot be put in the same category as the far better documented history of the Masoretic text.

It was also stated that the Dead Sea texts had inserted standard Hebrew letters for "vowels"--whereas these aren't found in the Masoretic texts, which uses a system of dots and dashes to indicate vowels. The critic of the codes, Michael Heiser, insisted that "Medieval rabbis had removed these Hebrew letters and replaced them with vowel-points."

Heiser, of course, has no proof for this claim. It is in fact, quite unlikely to be true. The assertion that it was Medieval rabbis--as opposed to the original Masoretic scribes not long after the destruction of the Temple, that is, around the 2nd century--who invented vowel-pointing is most doubtful, and is not the accepted scholarly view.

Moreover, the vowel-points are an extremely cumbersome apparatus, subject to error, and it would be surpassingly strange for the offical Masoretic scribes to have adopted this system, IF THE TRUE TEXT ALREADY HAD REGULAR HEBREW LETTERS IN USE FOR VOWELS. Given the extreme effort these scribes employed to preserve the accuracy of their text, it would have been out of character for these men to have arbitrarily discarded supposedly genuine Hebrew 'vowels' in a true text in order to use error-prone vowel-points.

The Masoretes would have been horrified by any attempt to discard Hebrew letters from the text in this manner.

Heiser's proposed historic scenario makes no sense out of the evidence at hand. The Masoretes would never have participated in such a wholesale corruption of the text. And there is no rational reason for them to have done so, quite the contrary. They did everything they could think of to preserve the text, as we have shown.

It should be obvious that the extra "vowel-letters" in the Dead Sea versions were added to help non-scribes who wished to read the scrolls. And who were these non-scribe readers? Probably ordinary Jewish men in the synagogues. The text Heiser cited was Isaiah, and that was the very scroll Jesus stood up to read in the Nazareth synagogue.

These synagogue scrolls may well have had extra letters added to make them easier for laymen to read, much as we use transliterations of Hebrew and Greek words today.

So Heiser's "original" scrolls were not original at all, but were almost certainly the tranliterated versions with extra added Hebrew letters to simplify reading by laymen in synagogues, discarded in the caves (ie, a genizeh).

As for the Septuagint text, ALL ancient sources are in unanimous agreement that this translation was done under the command of the pagan gentile king Ptolemy II of Egypt. It is hardly to be expected that a translation done for the gentiles would be perfectly accurate. Indeed, rabbis down to this day consider this translation one of the greatest tragedies ever to befall the Jewish people. In fact, according to Jerome, in his introduction to his translation of Ezekiel, it was forbidden for some parts of the Bible to be discussed with any person outside of strict rabbinical control. The Septuagint, in fact, was officially condemned as faulty and inaccurate--as a bad translation, in other words--by Jewish authorities in the second century.

It is offensive to believing Jewish people to place this faulty Septuagint text on a par with the Masoretic version. They would never take seriously this argument by the critics.

Inferring Hebrew texts from translated commentaries, or other such secondary sources like the Talmud, is a really risky venture. It has little value for establishing any kind of authoritative text because one can never be sure whether the writer is paraphrasing or what their sources were, or how accurately the transmission has been.

Finally, there's a Hebrew manuscript that is supposedly based upon the Masoretic version, but has several textual differences. The problem with this copy is that there is no historical link that carries its heritage back to known schools of Masoretic copyists. It floats in a historical vacuum, unconnected to the official Masoretic tradition.

In sum, there are simply no real serious competitors to the traditional Masoretic text, which is the only text being used by the Bible Code researchers.

By the Numbers

The other critical issue is calculating whether codes are appearing by chance, or at a rate so far beyond chance that some intelligent Source must be considered. Only if the latter is true in the specific code being cited can it be considered a genuine Bible Code, that is, an inpired one. Proving that there is a general validity to these codes is NOT proof that ALL codes one might "find" were put there by God (as we shall demonstrate below).

Statisticians are currently debating this issue based upon pre-set standards. They decide to look for a certain kind of information and then calculate the odds of finding it. Then they see how often it appears in codes or they try to measure how "tight" the cluster of words is.

Unfortunately, what these code studies are not looking at is the ability of the designs to introduce novel words and phrases into a topic: Unexpected elements that no one anticipated or knew might be connected, but which prove to be extremely relevant. An example would be a code about the JFK murder in Dallas that includes a name that no one had heard about, but which later emerges as someone quite important to the crime.

Some code-hunters have started using two-letter codes that supposedly represent "UN" or "US" or "NY" or "LA" or other such abbreviations. Yet many of these do not match the Hebrew letters used for them. But worse, there is NO STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE in two-letter codes: ANY code of two letters (or two digit numbers) will be present in ANY HEBREW TEXT (or Greek, for that matter, Biblical or not), if the entire Hebrew alphabet is present in the sample.

EVERY SUCH 2-LETTER CODE IS A FAKE. Those who use them either do not know anything about statistics or are lying about their expertise or motives in presenting such fake codes as genuine.

Not one two-letter code is a true Bible code, for all such two-letter combinations can be found in every text, even modern Jewish newspapers! They have no statistical value whatsoever. In fact, you can find every single one of the Postal Service's two-letter state-codes in every English text that has all 26 letters of our alphabet. If you doubt this, simply glance down at your computer and look at the keyboard.

Three-letter codes are borderline: It is about even odds that many such codes will appear in a sample, if a three-letter word uses common Hebrew letters. Many new codes now appearing on the Internet are mostly two- and three-letter codes of no statistical significance. This was the case with the notorious "Y2K" codes some people claimed to find back in 1999.

Genuine codes have words of at least four letters, and these are usually inter-connected in designs and patterns that form pictures or graphics. Typical fake codes make a pretense at forming a "cluster," but rarely show words intersecting each other in a meaningful way. Most of the words in fake codes are scattered around the page in very random ways.

Fake codes often have a pre-set political or relgious agenda. The fake code "hunter" uses a computer to "find" things they were looking for all along. In real codes, there is usually a surprise factor.

True code-hunters find words and phrases that appear strange or out-of-place. Only after independent analysis do they discover the unexpected words and phrases are not only relevant, but often absolutely essential to the full meaning of the design. The "GREEN MAN" codes found by researcher Tom Mack are an example of this phenomenon. Tom had assumed they were about Al Gore. But as you will see, the real topic was far more important.

Before we investigate the "GREEN MAN" codes, we need to see the reverse side of the coin: A code that is not really there. Some people are "finding" codes where none exist. But others find legitimate codes and try to make them say more than they ought to. An example of this latter problem is the "CHRISTMAS" code, where overzealous researchers jumped to a totally unfounded conclusion:

The "Christmas" Code

Taking advantage of the Christmas season, a Bible Code critic turned code magazine publisher, sent an internet press release out which claimed that the term "CHRISTMAS" had been found in a favorable usage in a set of Bible Code references to the birth of Jesus.

Since Jesus was not born at any time near the Christmas season, but in early September (as we discussed in a large article elsewhere on this website), we naturally wanted to see this use of the word "CHRISTMAS" in a Bible Code.

However, when we examined the claimed text in detail, we discovered that the supposed use of "CHRISTMAS" was totally absent from the code in question. The word does not appear in the code at all. The pattern does refer to aspects of the birth of Jesus, but the word "CHRISTMAS" is not in it.

"CHRISTMAS," or December 25th, is actually the birthday of Horus and Osiris, hence of Cain, whom we have identified as Lucifer, the spawn of Satan. It is hardly likely that a Bible Code would honor this pagan day in any way. We know that many are already using this false Bible Code claim to argue for the celebration of Lucifer's birthday as if it is a day honoring Christ.

The creators of this "Christmas Code" claim are profiting off their "discovery" by selling subscriptions to their code magazine. We consider this claim highly suspect, and quite unjustified. Although other related codes do appear linked to the birth of Jesus in this pattern, the use of the word "CHRISTMAS" is definitely NOT endorsed or promoted by this or any other Bible Code we know of. For those desiring to decipher it themselves, here is the claimed "CHISTMAS" code:

"Sh-Y-L-W--L-A-M-Ch--G-H-M--W-L-D"

This might mean, "Shiloh for a mother, cures even Lud." Their rendering is, "CHRISTMAS is a gift to him and to her." The "Shiloh for a mother" is about as close to a Nativity as we could translate it, but it hardly justifies the use of a word like "CHRISTMAS" in their rendering. Presumably there is some explanation for their version hidden away in their magazine, but we see no reason to pay for further insights of this kind.

The Cain Codes

At a completely different website, unconnected to the above "CHISTMAS" code claim, another researcher has found something of far more significant value.

Newly-discovered Bible Codes about "The Green Man" are being attributed to "Al Gore" as an "Environmentalist." But we believe these codes are about Osiris (ie Cain) and are an extraordinarily important new finding.

Tom Mack, the researcher who discovered these really fascinating "Green Man" codes, has seen them as referring to current political matters involving Al Gore (who may have dropped out of sight entirely by the time you read this article). While Gore endorses the "Green" philosphy and this does vaguely link back to the ancient belief in "The Green Man," the connection is very weak. In ancient times, the "Green Man" was the "Corn King" or the "god" of AGRICULTURE...and he was not really an evironmentalist at all. In fact, Genesis says he spread environmental devastation--perhaps by soil-depleting farming methods.

One of the problems in the whole Bible Codes business is the SUBJECTIVITY of how the various Hebrew letters are interpreted. Tom seems to have gotten caught up in all the year 2000 election excitement and was looking for insights into Al Gore. We're glad he was, because he accidentally uncovered something far more interesting.

For example, take the Hebrew letters "Aleph-Lamed-Gimel -Yodh-Resh" ("A-L-G-I-R"). Are they spelling "Al Gore" or "El Giyr"? The former is merely an American politician who had been popular for a while. But if "Al Gore" were meant, then why use a "yodh" where an "ayin"["o"] would have been expected? Should it not read "A-L-G-O-R"?

Yet the actual wording found in the text--"El Giyr"-- can mean "STRANGE GOD" or "BURNED TO LIME." These are far more likely meanings, are spelled correctly, and fit the overall sense of the codes Tom found in this passage:

Just who is this "Green Man"?

Code researcher Tom Mack has found several other related codes. One of them also speaks of "the Green Man" and links him to:

We have long argued that Cain is Lucifer, the son of Satan, and that he is also Osiris, well-known as 'god' of agriculture in ancient Egypt, whose face was often painted green in hieroglyphs. This "GREEN GOD" and the related gods of Bacchus, Dionysus, Pan, Hearne, and so on, were extremely famous and widely-beloved 'deities' of the harvest like the GREEN CORN KING. As recently as the Middle Ages, he is found in tales of a GREEN KNIGHT.

British pubs and inns have been named after him. Much of Sir George Frazier's THE GOLDEN BOUGH is devoted to the myths, legends, and customs of this "GREEN MAN."

The GREEN CORN KING and his GREEN WITCH QUEEN were remembered in rituals in August, the month of the corn harvest that pagans began by celebrating the feast of "Lug Nasa" or "Lucifer the Prince." It is also LEO's month, the DOG days of Sirius (the star of Isis rising) and the last hot solar month of the year before autumn.

So the feasts of THE GREEN MAN are directly related to LEO, the LION, and to LUCIFER, the PRINCE. Moreover, we have also identifed LUCIFER as CAIN who becomes the BEAST of Revelation who will revive and be destroyed in the End. [See our articles on Lilith and The Jaws of Death, where we link Lucifer to Cain.]

Tom Mack's third "GREEN MAN" code has these words in its design:

Tom has stumbled upon a breathtaking set of codes about the famous GREEN MAN of the ancients, the one who taught the world agriculture. It was not Adam, but Cain who did this, traveling the world as he who was condemned to be a WANDERER, the original "Johnny Appleseed" of myth, planting his "seed" wherever he went. Called by many names in the lands he "saved" with his agricultural technology, Cain became a hero to the pre-flood world. Every culture recalls him.

His color was GREEN, not only for the GRAIN he grew, but because he was also the lord of the DEAD, having been the first to kill a man.

Tom Mack found "EL GIYR" lurking in yet another code. Here are the designs he found this time:

CAIN is the one person who ties all these codes together. Son of Satan, the raging LION, CAIN is also the SATYR GOAT, brother-mate of LILITH. They are now haunting EDOM, Isaiah says. OSIRIS was said to have come with ISIS/LILITH into Egypt out of the land of INDIA, HIN'DI, H'NoD-ia, or The Land of NOD, which were both geographically defined as all lands east of the Great Rift Valley and the Jordan River.

The legends of CAIN say that when he turned back and went WEST, past EDEN, into Egypt, he and his wife LILITH/ISIS found the Nile Valley suffering famine, consumed with cannibalism. He taught them to farm, then went on a world tour to establish a legacy for himself, hoping to change his "image" from that of a wandering killer to that of agricultural savior. He would no more be seen as a CURSED BEAST, but as THE GREEN CORN KING.

When he returned to Egypt, he was cut in pieces with the sword of Seth, his half-brother, out on a mission to avenge Abel, whose heir he was. But ISIS used witchcraft and enchantments to revive OSIRIS=CAIN, in the body of her cloned son HORUS, born on December 25th, the traditions claim.

CAIN/OSIRIS was founder of the first of the seven heads of the BEAST: Egypt. This head received a mortal wound by sword, yet was healed by Thoth/Raphael under ISIS's control. He was the founder of the BEAST, yet he is not now "alive," although he is preserved so he can be revived, by the magical arts of Egypt. A twin of CAIN, an Image of the BEAST, can be cloned again, as with HORUS, and his spirit, which still haunts the stones of EDOM, can take possession of this new body.

The whole world would wonder at the BEAST CAIN, his angelic, glowing face and Satanic horns, as he returns to rule the earth again, and to inherit the throne of his father RA, that is, Satan, the angel of MARS...

The Mars Code...

Now that we have seen examples of a misconstrued code and one that contains far more than initially realized, it is time to look at a code that has both factors at work: The "MARS" code.

To see the full code, go to pages 154 and 155 of The Bible Code, Volume I by Michael Drosnin, the book that popularized the subject back in 1997.

At first glance, Drosnin has found three separate codes about three separate "comets" that he thinks are going to hit the earth in 2006, 2010 and 2012. But as you examine the three designs Drosnin presents, notice the Hebrew words in them: They are all the same text!

Moreover, the word he translates as "comet" appears but once in this design. What makes it three events, or so he assumes, are the three dates.

Now here's the curious part. Right in the center of the design, in the midst of the dates, is a seemingly "out-of-place"--but unmistakeable--name: "M-A-R-S."

What is more scary is that the word "MARS" is crossed by another unmistakaeable term: "H-E-R-Tz" which is the standard Hebrew spelling for "THE EARTH."

Drosnin has not even noticed this intersection between MARS and THE EARTH right in the midst of his design about the years 2006, 2010, and 2012, even though "MARS" and "THE EARTH" are both but one letter from the date 2012. Drosnin has a "collision" between two planets staring him in the face and does not notice either word!

What makes this all the more strange is that Drosnin does find a confusing phrase he struggles to explain, but includes anyway:

"IT WILL BE CRUMBLED, DRIVEN OUT; I WILL TEAR IT TO PIECES!" This is found touching the date 2012.

Now consider this: The "skip" pattern for the letters in "THE EARTH" matches this phrase exactly, while the skip rate for "MARS" matches Drosnin's "COMET" exactly.

The implication is that "THE EARTH" will tear "MARS" to pieces, but that the "COMET" will "CRUMBLE" (FRACTURE?) Mars and "DRIVE IT OUT" of orbit into the Earth's path, where Mars will finally be destroyed when it is pulled apart by the Earth's gravity.

One detail that sounds familiar: When "THE EARTH" is crossed by "MARS" in this design, Mars 'cuts off' exactly a third of "EARTH"... The Book of REVELATION, chapter 8, describes an encounter with cosmic upheaval that shortens the days by one-third.

Crunched into that one-letter "gap" between the "MARS" and "THE EARTH" designs and the date "2012" is the word: "Y'KOB" ("JACOB"): The time of "Jacob's Trouble."

Michael Drosnin may have found one of the most amazing of all Bible codes, but he overlooked the most astonishing part of it: An immanent near-collision between the Earth and the planet Mars that will destroy the Red Planet.

Only time will tell if this code is valid, but what is unsettling is that it fits so well into Bible prophecies about the beginning of the Tribulation.

For information on The Secret History of the Bible click here.

[See links below for details about the "CHRISTMAS" and "GREEN MAN" codes.]


Decode or not Decode; You Choose: