I have a quick question: Are the controversial Torah codes a reality or are they just a hoax? I've heard quite a bit about this discovery in our beloved Torah, but I really can't imagine as to why Hashem would encode hidden messages in Her. I read where one man compared The Torah to a complex computer program, yet others claim that these alleged codes are all a hoax. It angers me to think that there are those who would "use" The Torah in such a manner. I'm sure there are many here who know much more about this code than I do. Is all that they say about The Torah codes a reality?
May G-d Bless,
Avi

There are non-Jewish books that purport the codes to be of Yoshka and such and is of course a hoax!!!

There are Kosher books published, and one of them is called "Between The Lines - Secrets of the Torah Codes" Authors: Dr. Robert Wolf and Joel Gallis. With haskomas/approbations by Rabbi Shaya Cohen the Dean of "Priority-1" and of Rabbi Rephael B. Butler of the OU or Orthodox Union.

For more information about the book you can link here: Between The Lines - Secrets of the Torah Codes

Hope this helps.

<<I've heard quite a bit about this discovery in our beloved Torah, but I really can't imagine as to why Hashem would encode hidden messages in Her>>

I, for one am pretty convinced of their veracity, as done by reputable people, such as those folks at Aish HaTorah. They have a great deal of information about them and give seminars called Discovery Seminars that explain them.

The best way to describe the codes is that they are simply a fingerprint. G-d's fingerprint. You cannot predict the future with them, that is a fallacy of logic and those who purport to do that are disingenuous at best.

The way it was explained to me years ago after I attended a Discovery seminar, it that they give you "permission to believe". For me, it was the last little push I needed to believe totally in Torah and that it truly is from Hashem becausde there is no way it could have been written by any human being.

Why in the form of codes that could only be discovered by computer? 3,300 years ago fire on a mountain and all the events described as happening at Sinai were impressive to those people at that time...today we are impressed by technology....that which can be proven by technology makes an impact....just goes to show you that G-d knows what he's doing!! <vbg>

These are miracles that could be seen today with today's technology....G-d fingeprint, so-to-speak!

Robby

Sam and Robby,
Thank you both for giving me such wonderful "detailed" information. Both of you gentlemen seem to always have the answers to my questions.
G-d Bless,
Avi

As something of a mathematician, not to mention something of a skeptic, I am compelled to declare most emphatically that the Bible Codes are, for want of a better word, ridiculous.

There are over 300,000 letters in the Beloved Torah (the exact number escapes me), and it isn't too hard to find a few criss-crossing words, twist their meanings and dress it up as some sort of "prophecy" or "finger-print."

I'm sorry, but not only are the Bible Codes completely unnecessary, but they are also rigged. Sorry to burst any bubbles.

<<As something of a mathematician, not to mention something of a skeptic, I am compelled to declare most emphatically that the Bible Codes are, for want of a better word, ridiculous.>>

Anything more than that to back up your claim???

<<There are over 300,000 letters in the Beloved Torah (the exact number escapes me), and it isn't too hard to find a few criss-crossing words, twist their meanings and dress it up as some sort of "prophecy" or "finger-print.">>

Actually there are 304,805 letters in the Torah.

And if by the term "criss crossing words" you are referring to equidistant letter skips, I think there is a quite a bit more to it than you are inferring.

In 1983 a mathematician by the name of Prof. Eliyahu Rips began to conduct quantitative research into the subject of Equidistant letter skips (ELS) in the Torah. He primarily investigated the occurrence of words as ELS's clustering at an appropriate place in the text. An example of his work appeared in the periodical, "Journal of the Royal Statistical Society", Series A, Vol. 151, Part I ('88), p 165.

Further work was done and the results of this were published in "Statistical Science "
1994, Vol. 9, No. 3, 429-438 (abridged)

A copy of this article can be found at:
http://www.torahcodes.co.il/wrr1/wrr1.htm

A website with good information on the "real science" of Torah codes is:
http://www.torahcodes.co.il/

...a good source for more information

<<I'm sorry, but not only are the Bible Codes completely unnecessary, but they are also rigged. Sorry to burst any bubbles.>>

I'm afraid you are going to have to provide significantly more credible information other than your opinion as "something of a mathematician", to burst my bubble.

Regards,
Robby

quote:

Originally posted by Avraham Parkinson:
Sam and Robby,
Thank you both for giving me such wonderful "detailed" information. Both of you gentlemen seem to always have the answers to my questions.
G-d Bless,
Avi

Avi, you're quite welcome.

Well, in England, according to the dear old profs at Trinity College Cambridge (the mathematical ability of whom I doubt you have grounds to dispute), I have one of th top 50 mathmatical minds in the country for my age group. Furthermore, at the age of ten i became the British Youth Pi Memorising Champion. But that is hardly relevant.

304,805 - shall remember that, thank you.

Giving it an official sounding name such as "Equidistant Letter Skips" doesn't make it legitimate - let us think about this logically. I could do skips of anything between one and 100,000, or even more. Furthermore, I can start from any place I like. I can even do it backwards. And then if it happens to cross, or even appear relatively close to, a phrase to which I can find some feeble connection through mistranslation or some other dodgy trick, Kaboom, there's my Bible Code.

And if that wasn't enough to "burst your bubble," the whole concept of a Bible Code is inherently ridiculous due to the fact that the Torah we have today is not the same one as was given to us by Horachmonoh on the 6th Sivan all those years ago. As such, it wouldn't really be God's fingerprint even if they do exist.

one final point: merely because someone gets his work published, it doesn't lend it credibility. I'm not sure why you thaought that was relevant.

Faithfully yours,

Leiser.

<<one final point: merely because someone gets his work published, it doesn't lend it credibility. I'm not sure why you thaought that was relevant.>>

It is relevant because "Statistical Science" is a peer review journal published by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.

FYI, "peer review journals" are scientific publications whose articles are reviewed by a "peer review editorial Board" made up of relevant experts in the particular field of the article submited for publication. This helps insure that the articles published have their scientific credibility judged by those who would be in the best position to know...other experts in the same field.

Regards,
Robby

<<Furthermore, at the age of ten i became the British Youth Pi Memorising Champion. But that is hardly relevant.>>

BTW....Have you actually read any of the articles I cited?

Robby

My dear Robby,

I do believe you are under the mistaken impression that a published article must be correct. The fact that the "peer review editorial Board" of which you speak put the article in, even if the article did have to go through them, that doesn't mean it was correct. The principle of free speech means that even if the article doesn't seem to be quite right, you still publish it to let others in the field make up their own opinions.

You have said that some "experts" say it's true; many more "experts" say it isn't. If these experts in the field think that the Bible Codes are true, then why aren't they (the "other experts in the same field") religious Jews as well? Or maybe they are, in which case they are hardly unbiased.

What I think perhaps you neglected to mention was the nuumber of experts who wrote in to the Journal, saying how ridiculous they thought the Codes are. But those experts aren't as expert as your experts, I see.

For example, you have neglected to mention the follow-up experiments which showed that Moby Dick had similar "patterns" in English, and also War and Peace in Hebrew. They even found them in the Quran.

So now what? Our codes are superior?

TO conclude: I couldn't help but notice that you haven't answered my point that:

quote:

the whole concept of a Bible Code is inherently ridiculous due to the fact that the Torah we have today is not the same one as was given to us by Horachmonoh on the 6th Sivan all those years ago. As such, it wouldn't really be God's fingerprint even if they do exist.

quote:

Well...?

I await your response eagerly,

Leiser

<<For example, you have neglected to mention the follow-up experiments which showed that Moby Dick had similar "patterns" in English, and also War and Peace in Hebrew. They even found them in the Quran.
So now what? Our codes are superior?>>

Of course there are patterns found in many other books, that is to be expected, statistically expected, in fact. As a matter of fact, they can statistically predict just how many of these "patterns" one might expect to find in a particular text.

However, the "patterns" found in the Torah far exceed those that would occur naturally and randomly. In fact, many of the "patterns" you refer to, or ELS as they are called, have astoundingly remote chances of ever appearing, yet they do, again and again and again.

I will address your other question concerning the veracity of the Kasher Torah scrolls we use today separately, as it is quite an involved discussion.

Regards,
Robby

Is this a joke? Our Codes far exceed other codes...becasue they are more numerous? More detailed? Your logic is warped - in the Torah, the words are less likely to appear than in Moby Dick, a far, far shorter book? Even though in Hebrew there are less letters and you can make up the vowels?Let's us take an excerpt from your post:

quote:

Of course there are patterns found in many other books

quote:

45 letters. Now, I could start on the first letter, then go every 2, 3, 4 etc. letters on. I could do the same, starting on any one of the first few letters, and reasonably expect to find a pattern. not comapre this to the Torah, 6773 times longer than that little quote. How hard can it be, statistically speaking, to find some kind of ELS. You seem to be contradicting yourself when ou say that the ELS in the Torah have astoundingly remote chances of ever appearing, whereas patterns in other books are to expected. Fascinating.

As I said, something being published is no indication of viability. You may know that several articles about nuclear fusion have been published in several prestigious articles. All have been discarded by the scientific academic community. Things get publishedso that they may be presented to the academic community at large so that they may draw their own conclusions from it. If every expert in a particular field agreed oneverything, academic debate would be non-existent.

Besides, if, as you claim, the "experts of the field [of statistics, one assumes]" were convinced of the Bible Codes' veracity, then surely they must have become religious, observant Jews? No? That's strange...

I am intrigued by this:

quote:

I will address your other question concerning the veracity of the Kasher Torah scrolls we use today separately, as it is quite an involved discussion.

quote:

Where, exactly?

Leiser

Furthermore, are these statisticians, the expertise of whom I do not doubt, Torah scholars? Certainly not.

<<Your logic is warped - >>

This is going nowhere.

You are beginning to bring this discussion down to a very low level...creating as machlokes that is not productive...not LeShem Shemayim.

I think you will find ample sites with detailed articles discrediting the torah codes.
I read the original articles and I can only conclude that the Encyclopedia Judiaca is divinely inspired.
The authors changed their code for the second article and the editors missed it. This was unacceptable. I will not accuse anyone of fraud but any mathemetician or statistician can show the fallicy of the original papers. If our rabbis don't know which words are full or shortened, how is a computer suppose to know.

Now the adaption of the torah codes by Aish hatorh and the premise that is somehow a torah learning method is mind boggling. How can anyone claim to have a new approach to Judiasm that has no precedent.

Books on astrology will always outsell books on astronomy.

Aryeh Shore

quote:

Books on astrology will always outsell books on astronomy.
Aryeh Shore

Aryeh Shalom

Would you then dismiss Gematria as just so much Jewish Numerology?

ilan

I think that the problem lies in that the xtian interpretation of the codes as I mentioned in an earlier posting, is a hoax, has been partly a cause for those that have come to discredit the Jewish - and Kosher - line of thinking.

If you have a a known Orthodox Rabbi giving an approbation for a book on the codes [See my earlier posting] does it mean something? I think so, and that focusing on the negative is closing one's mind to the good and postitive!

quote:

Originally posted by ilanavraham:

quote:

Books on astrology will always outsell books on astronomy.
Aryeh Shore

Aryeh Shalom

Would you then dismiss Gematria as just so much Jewish Numerology?

ilan

The Baal Haturim on Chumash - a lot of it is Gematrios!

Gematria is a well established Jewish form of learning. But as our Rabbis say in the talmud, Gematriot are like the desert, they are not the real meal.
The German mystical numerologists carried gematriot to extremes. Their method of calcultion (backwards, fill in, esbas, close enough) makes the bible codes seem almost logical. However, other than the baal haturim, most knowledgeble Jews are unaware of the permutations today. Incidently, the gematriot in the mikriot gedolot are just the introduction to the baal haturim. The actual perush does not appear.
Skipping words and lining up the text by computer is not gematria. It has two inherent dangers, one if you are going to rely on science to prove divine inspiration, what do you do if the same science shows that the premise is false. The second problem, as mentioned before, it is not a good idea to introduce new methods as torah inspired, as can be seen by the christians using the same methods, and we have no previous authority to discredit it. Maybe we can try transdental meditation or yoga. It really clears your mind to direct your prayers. After all the kabbalists were heavy into meditation.
As for a recognized Rabbi giving approval to such activities, I would have to write him and ask him. These things are not as simple as they seem as we saw with the recent unpleasantness with Rav Slifkin and the more dangerous statements attributed to R. Shapiro.

Aryeh Shore