Articles On The Bible Code
Introduction: What's the Bible code about, and why are people STILL making a fuss about it? Good questions. In this introductory article on the Bible code, I explain what it's all about.
About Terrorists: I rarely comment on current events and the Bible code. (Until 9/11, I would have said I never comment on current events and the Bible code). However, immediately after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, I saw a flood of traffic on my web site and received a number of email queries from anxious readers. I therefore broke with my long-standing policy and wrote a brief article on Terrorism and the Bible Code. I hope this will set your heart at rest, if you are anxious about such things.
About the Bible Code Debunkers: On the last page of my book Who Wrote the Bible Code?, (which went to press in June, 1999), I mentioned that a group of code-meisters were preparing a major new article on the Bible code. On September 10, 1999, a press release appeared in headlines around the world announcing the results of Brendan McKay, Dror Bar-Natan, Maya Bar-Hillel, and Gil Kalai. These are some of the best-known codes debunkers anywhere, and they've done an excellent job. Their work is technical and detailed, and some of it may be hard to follow for non-experts. Read this article to see my summary of their work, with a few of my comments.
About the Proximity Issue: Soon after my book came out, Professor Robert Haralick posted a review of my book on the Aish HaTorah web site. While he agrees that my calculations are correct, he believes that it is possible to encode information in such a way that my software would miss it. I exchanged a large pile of email with Professor Haralick at one time, and the bottom line is that I disagree with him and (remarkably enough) he disagrees with me. Our discussion centered on what I'll call the "proximity" issue, because it has to do with encoding words "near" other words, as in the Great Rabbis Experiment. I have written a not-too-long and not-too-technical article on the proximity issue which you may find enlightening. I will note that in the years since then, a number of codes proponents have begun publishing "long ELS codes" which do not require proximity. As many people have noted, the analysis in my book applies very directly to these alleged codes. For those folks who initially claimed that my analysis was "not relevant" (including Dr. Haralick, who has been very active in looking for long ELSs) this is a deliciously ironic twist.
About Personal Bias: A common tactic of many of those in the debates on the Bible code is to claim that their opponents are "biased". The anti-codes people have noted correctly that most of the Bible coders are either Orthodox Jews or conservative Christians. The pro-codes people have noted that many of the anti-coders are atheists or agnostics. (However, a number of those who disbelieve in the codes are Orthodox Jews or conservative Christians, which annoys the pro-coders mightily.) As should be obvious, researcher bias can be a major problem in work on the Bible code. The problem is that everybody has intellectual biases, and some also have strong emotional biases. It is possible to compensate for the intellectual biases, and I discuss how in Chapter 5 of my book, Who Wrote the Bible Code? I've written a short article on bias which you may find interesting.
