The Bible Code Myth
A Review Of: The Bible Code Myth, by Michael Heiser
Q: Who is Michael Heiser, and why is he writing a book on the Bible code?
A: Michael Heiser holds a Ph.D. in Hebrew and Semitic Languages from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. An evangelical Christian, Mike has written a book, The Bible Code Myth, which was introduced on Art Bell's radio show in May of 2001. His reason for writing is that the community of Biblical scholars around the world haven't done a very good job of making their case against the Bible code public.
To be sure, a number of well-known Biblical scholars have weighed in on the Bible code over the past few years. Ronald Hendel (who wrote an article in Bible Review in 1997) and Jeff Tigay (who has written an influential article on the web) are two of the more prominent. But none of them have written a book on the subject. And let's face it -- the battle for public opinion on the Bible code has been largely fought in the book arena.
Michael Drosnin won that battle, of course, and laughed all the way to the bank, having made the Bible code synonymous with nut-quackery in the public eye. Jeffrey Satinover's book was too little and too late to rescue the codes from the general disrepute that Drosnin threw over the subject. To this day, for most people, the Bible code means a bizzaro sludgefest of predictions of nuclear holocaust, space aliens, and the Yitzhak Rabin assassination.
Mike Heiser's book is the first by a Biblical scholar, and it's about time. Because the fact is, the world of Biblical scholars is essentially unanimous in rejecting the Bible code. (If there's an exception, I can't think of one.) The reason is fairly simple. The history of the Biblical text shows conclusively that the Biblical texts we have today are substantially different from the original autographs. As I pointed out in my own book, Drosnin is flat-out wrong on this point, and Satinover was incredibly optimistic in claiming only 9 letter-variations among existing texts of the Torah.
But I'm no expert in Biblical manuscripts. Mike Heiser is. If you think he's one of those free-thinkin' liberal higher critics, please think again. Mike's an evangelical Christian and regards the Bible as the inspired word of God (that is, the original autographs are God-inspired). The fact is that our Torah manuscripts have suffered a number of small corruptions over the years. The great majority of these are spelling variants, but there are some suspect words and even verses.
I won't steal Mike's thunder here. He gives a short history of the Torah text, showing how it was transmitted during four major periods covering thousands of years. The actual reconstructed text we have these days is not greatly changed in meaning from the original. But there are a large number of variants in spelling. And nobody in the world knows what the original was.
It is certain that the version used by Bible coders, the Koren Publishing Company text, is not the original. The Koren version differs in a fairly large number of letters from the orginal.
How many letters exactly? Tough question, but it would appear to be hundreds. Most of these are completely irrelevant for understanding the plain meaning of the Torah. However, they would destroy most of the material encoded in the Bible, if there were any.
Satinover quoted the results of an experiment done by Doron Witztum and Eliyahu Rips which showed that 77 deletions of letters in Genesis would destroy the Bible code. Mike Heiser, in his book, therefore goes looking for evidence of at least that many letter-variants in the Torah -- and stops when he finds about twice the number he needs.
Note that this is not quite what he needs to kill the codes. Genesis is about a quarter the size of the Torah, so he would need at least four times the magic 77. Furthermore, not all letter-variants are created equal. A letter insertion or deletion has a much more disruptive effect on codes than a letter substition (which is a very common form of transmission error). So really, only insertions or deletions should be counted.
There is another logical problem here. The experiments Witztum and Rips did on corrupting the text began with the Koren text and worked from there. In their way of looking at things, even if the Koren text is corrupted by a few hundred variants, it still contains a residual code which requires another 77 deletions to destroy completely. So presumably, the real autographs could have had even more encoded material.
One could also argue, as Robert Haralick has on the T-Code web site, that God could have foreknown the whole procees of textual transmission, and could have designed the original text so that after the corruption process was complete, there would be codes in the Koren text that we now have. It's the old "God could..." argument.
Well, well, well! What shall we make of all this?
I have several points to make. First, no objective scientific experiment has ever shown convincing evidence for a Bible code, so Haralick's point and Satinover's point are both about as moot as you can get. Second, the process of transmission of our Biblical manuscripts has a very strong bearing on the believability of any model of the Bible code. Third, Mike could have found many more variants than he actually listed. So, while he hasn't actually driven a wooden stake through the heart of the alleged codes, there is good reason to think that he's got enough lumber to do it eventually.
I recommend The Bible Code Myth, even for those who couldn't care less about the Bible code. You'll get a clear understanding of what our Hebrew Bible is and how we got it. And that, my friends, is worth far more than any secret message yet extracted from the alleged codes. If you want to buy Mike's book, go to the appropriate page on his web site at www.michaelsheiser.com.
