The Discovery Seminar
A Review Of: The Discovery Seminar, by Aish HaTorah
The Discovery Seminar covers a lot of ground. The seminar is sponsored by Aish HaTorah, a rabbinical college based in Jerusalem. The purpose of the seminar is to educate Jews about their religious heritage. What's the relevance of Judaism to modern Jews? What reasons can one give for being an observant Jew? Why believe that God exists? These are the kinds of questions the Discovery Seminar tackles.
One topic that Discovery covers is the Bible code. Some people have claimed that the codes are the only thing Discovery talks about. Wrong. I've been to a Discovery Seminar here in San Diego and enjoyed it. Of the six talks, only one covered the Bible code. I gather from the Aish HaTorah web site that this is a typical percentage. You can check them out yourself by clicking on the link at the bottom of this review.
[One aside here: If you're a Christian (as I am), and if you decide to go to a Discovery Seminar, you may hear some things you disagree with. Do yourself a favor. Zip your lips and just LISTEN. Go there to learn, not to teach. Jews have been getting plenty of unwanted instruction from Christians for the last couple of millennia, sometimes at swordpoint. You probably won't have anything new or profound to say. One Christian who went to the seminar here in San Diego got a bit obnoxious, and made a fool of himself to boot. Just for one day, shut up and learn. Please.]
I won't review the whole Discovery Seminar here. Mainly, I want to discuss their coverage of the Bible code. In a word, it was quite good. The main defect was that we lacked time to really get into the subject in depth. An hour and a half is too little.
At the seminar, you're provided with an 88-page booklet. For $5, you can take the booklet home with you. I think it's worth the price. The codes section covers from page 5 to 22. It has some information I haven't seen anywhere else. One problem with the book is that it doesn't really stand alone. In order to understand it, you need some oral instruction. (This is analogous to Jewish tradition, in which you need the Oral Torah in order to understand the Written Torah.)
You might think, for example, that the "Rambam code" presented on pages 6 and 7 are pretty strong evidence that God encoded a message in Exodus about the great Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (often called Maimonides or known by the acronym Rambam). This code is well known to Bible coders; you can read about it in Jeffrey Satinover's book or those by Grant Jeffrey.
Nothing in the Discovery book indicates that this code is not really statistically significant. However, your instructor will tell you that (if he covers this particular code). And he'll be correct. This code, including the nearby "Mishneh Torah" code, can not be defended statistically. (Mishneh Torah was the title of the Rambam's best known book.) Your instructor will do a good job of explaining in layman's terms just why this code carries no scientific weight. But the book won't tell you that.
Next in the book, we find the "Aharon code." ("Aharon" is a better transliteration than "Aaron" for the Hebrew name for the brother of Moses.) Bible code aficionados know that one short section of Leviticus (716 letters long) contains "Aharon" encoded in it 25 times at a number of different intervals! This is, in fact, quite remarkable. It's one of the most interesting arrows in the Bible coders' quiver. In a piece of text with 716 letters of Hebrew, one would expect to find about 8 occurrences of Aharon. If you're a technical type, you'll appreciate knowing that the "standard deviation" is about 3. So this observation is more than 5 standard deviations from the expected value. Very remarkable!
The book presents data from a few experiments that demonstrate just how remarkable this is. If you're not technical, these charts aren't going to make much sense to you. Even if you are (and I am), the data is presented in a way that's needlessly confusing. There just isn't enough information to make it clear. If your lecturer doesn't go through this material, it's going to be very hard to understand.
Next, the book takes a number of pages to discuss the Great Rabbis Experiment. This was published in the journal Statistical Science in August 1994, and has been very widely discussed. This is the strongest evidence for the Bible code. Those who believe in the Bible code generally point to this experiment as the next best thing to absolute proof. Those who don't believe in the Bible code have to explain away the remarkable evidence found in this experiment.
It's not for us to resolve the many technical issues in the Great Rabbis Experiment in this review. It's enough to say that the experiment is extraordinarily impressive at first glance, but that a number of very knotty questions have been raised by skeptics. You'll definitely hear how impressive the evidence is in the Discovery Seminar. You probably won't hear much about the difficulties with the experiment.
Depending on your lecturer, you'll hear more or less about these and other Bible code topics. The speakers appear to have a fair amount of autonomy in the choice of material and order of presentation. They're certainly in no danger of running out of things to talk about. The Bible code is a big topic. You couldn't cover it all, even if the whole day was devoted to the subject.
Should you go to a Discovery Seminar? I think you'll find it interesting. This is not a hard-sell seminar. You won't be asked to "make a decision for Moses." If you want to know about the Bible code, you'll have your appetite whetted at a Discovery Seminar, but probably won't get a full meal. (For that, try some of the books reviewed on this web site.) I found the seminar worth my time and money to attend. There's something to be said for hearing things in person from a real, live human being. The printed page just can't do that.
If you're interested in the Discovery Seminar, go. The Aish HaTorah web site has a page that lists upcoming seminars. One of them might be in a city near you.
But if you plan to go there with an agenda to convert some Jews, don't. You'll only cause more damage to Jewish-Christian relations. Go see Schindler's List instead, and then remind yourself that this happened in "Christian Europe." And have a nice day.
