Bible codes

Bible codes are various kinds of patterns identified in the subtext of the Bible which some Christians and Jews think were put there deliberately, for a purpose, by God or by the writers of the original texts.

All human languages have patterns, and, when put into written form, many of these patterns are easily noticed. But, among those who believe that at least some of the subtextual patterns in the Bible are unique to literature, there is the contention that one or more profound dynamics are uniquely involved in these patterns in the Bible. On the conservative side, there is a wide acceptance of the idea that some of these patterns were created by the original Hebrew scribes in order to help preserve the exactness to which the texts were copied, and to detect inferior copies that might be made by ignorant or nefarious persons. But, on the side of some ‘Bible Code’ zealots, there has been every manner of attempt to create a stir in favor of the idea that at least some of these patterns constitute a kind of high-tech mechanism for predicting any number of trivial and non-trivial future events.

Kinds of Bible codes

. A kind of 'Bible code' made popular in the last century is that found by equidistant letter sequencing, or ELS. Papers on these 'ELS codes' were published in recent decades by various mathematicians, including Israeli Eliyahu Rips and Doron Witztum.

. For many people, the most interesting subtextual pattern in the Bible is that found by listing, in chronological sequence, the meanings of the names of the antedeluvian patriarchs given in Genesis chapter 5.

. A complex set of interconnecting subtextual patterns is that based on the number 144 (the number of hours in the six days of the Creation Week. 144 is 'visually' coded as 930 (Adam's age at death), by observing the sum of the three digits (1, 4, and 4), and then observing the differences, or 'distances', between the contiguous digits (1-4, 4-4). This 'visual' encoding is similar to how a perfect circle is visually observed to state pi. 930 is the unique number of the man who represents all of humanity, and is found at the 111th verse (Genesis 5:5). The unit of 111 verses (an Equidistant Verse Sequence, or EVS) is found to be the key to pinpointing both explicitly and implicitly prophetically pivotal passages in the plain text of the Pentateuch. So, the 111-verses unit may be called an 'EVS code'. (A criticism of the idea that the Bible contains 'EVS codes' is that the original texts had no explicit verse divisions. But, while it is true that no explicit verse divisions existed in the original texts, and that any such divisions were made only recently in world history, the text itself is not comprised either of random or indifferent linguistic sets. Furthermore, the standing verse divisions are, in general, superior for the purpose of general reference than are all other possible verse divisions.)