Three Books by Grant Jeffrey
A Review Of: The Signature of God, The Handwriting of God, and The Mysterious Bible Codes, by Grant Jeffrey
Grant Jeffrey is an evangelical Christian who writes and speaks on Bible prophecy, end-times, the Bible code, and plenty of other controversial stuff. Mr. Jeffrey writes with a lot of enthusiasm, and he says a great many true things. Unfortunately, he mixes his facts with guesses, wild claims, or just plain silly remarks.
People generally react to Mr. Jeffrey in two ways. Those trained in science or logic tend to see his silliness, and so they throw out everything he has to say. Those steeped in his religious tradition tend to see him presenting evidence that supports their faith, and so they accept everything he says.
Both of these responses are wrong, I believe. It's wrong to throw out the baby, but it's just as wrong to drink the bathwater. Mixed in with the goofiness, Mr. Jeffrey has some useful things to say. In this review, I'm going to focus only on Jeffrey's writings on the Bible code. But the same general ideas apply to his presentation of, for example, archaeological findings, historical evidence for Jesus, etc.
To the Bible code, then. The first two books on our list, The Signature of God, and The Handwriting of God, each have two or three chapters on the Bible code. Jeffrey has since followed these up with a full book, The Mysterious Bible Codes, which repeats most of the material in the earlier books. Let's review his presentation.
Jeffrey covers the usual background of the Bible code, discussing Rabbi Michael ber Weissmandl's initial work earlier in this century in discovering "codes" by hand in the text of the Torah. Jeffrey explains a number of typical codes: the Sadat code, the Hitler code, and the Auschwitz, AIDS, and Aaron codes among many others. He reviews in more detail the Great Rabbis Experiment of Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips, and Yoav Rosenberg.
Not one of these codes gets any skeptical investigation from Jeffrey. He does express some doubts when he talks about Michael Drosnin and his use of codes to predict the future. The Bible forbids divinination, and Jeffrey rightly points out that using the Bible to divine the future is on pretty shaky grounds. Also, he says correctly that the Bible code is not numerology and that the Bible code should not be used to support theological positions.
On this last point, Jeffrey seems not quite consistent. In fact, he supports Yacov Rambsel and his "Yeshua codes," which allegedly prove that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah. Now this is obviously a theological statement, and it's been a bone of contention between Jew and Christian for two millennia. If Jeffrey thinks the Yeshua codes prove Jesus is the Messiah, then he's not consistent with his claim that codes can't be used to prove theological points. If he doesn't think the Yeshua codes prove anything, then why does he bring them up? And what statistical evidence does he bring to show that these codes have any mathematical meaning, let alone theological? None.
What is lacking in Jeffrey's work is any sense of judgment. He accepts every code with equal weight. So the AIDS and Auschwitz codes, for example, are just as good to Jeffrey as the Great Rabbis Experiment. (The first two have no demonstrated statistical significance. The Great Rabbis Experiment really is quite interesting; the odds that have been claimed for to be a chance occurrence are about 62,500 to 1.) None of these codes gets any analysis from Jeffrey. He just presents them as miraculous, without pointing out the very real logical and statistical problems with all of them.
At numerous points, Jeffrey makes painfully naive statements. Here's an example. On page 50 of The Mysterious Bible Codes, he says that "hidden failures" are a common problem in scientific research today. (Hidden failures occur when you conduct many experiments but report only your successes. For example, flip a coin 100 times but report only the heads. If you report seeing 48 heads, and then compute the odds of getting heads 48 times in a row, you are guilty of ignoring hidden failures. In a nutshell, that's what most skeptics accuse the Bible coders of doing.) The problem is that hidden failures are not a common problem in science today. Science has its share of problems, but intentionally ignoring data is almost never one of them. Hidden failures are a serious problem among astrology buffs, Nostradamus interpreters, and Revelation hype-mongers. Jeffrey would have been more accurate to point his finger at them.
Occasionally, Jeffrey does quote odds on some of the codes. All too often, he gets his facts wrong. For example, on pages 33 and 34 of The Mysterious Bible Codes, Jeffrey discusses the well-known "Torah" code found at the beginning of Genesis. Following Daniel Michaelson, he claims that the odds of this code occurring by chance are 3 million to 1. Rather impressive, but wrong. Even a naive calculation would make the odds about 35 thousand to 1, but this is still far from right. A more honest calculation shows that the odds are about 18 to 1. That's right. A code like this is expected to happen by chance in more than 5 percent of all manuscripts.
There's a lot more to complain about, but it gets tedious to repeat all the errors.
Now I'll grant that Mr. Jeffrey means well in pushing the Bible code. First of all, he believes the code is real and that it proves God wrote the Bible. (Here, he has company among a few rather bright and well-informed mathematicians, most of them Orthodox Jews. However, the vast majority of all scientists don't believe in the codes.) Second, he sees the codes as a tool for evangelism. He wants to bring people to God, and who could complain about that?
The problem is that Jeffrey's arguments just aren't convincing -- at least not to scientists. Here, I include even those scientists who believe in the Bible code. Grant Jeffrey's presentation of the evidence would not even convince them! There is a case to be made for the codes, but if you want to hear it, you'll have to go elsewhere -- for example, the Aish HaTorah Discovery Seminar or Jeffrey Satinover's book Cracking the Bible Code. If you have a chance to listen to Harold Gans make his case for the codes, do it. Mr. Gans is a fine lecturer and understands the statistical issues. While none of these sources have convinced the majority of scientists, at the very least, they all make a case based on reason, not on bald assertions and skimpy logic.
You may decide that you want to buy Grant Jeffrey's books, despite my largely negative review. Be my guest. I think it's important for you to decide things for yourself. So check it out first hand if you don't want to take my word for it. I've included links below to all his books on the Amazon site. Just be prepared to read them with a hefty grain of salt.
Browse on Amazon: The Signature of God, The Handwriting of God, and The Mysterious Bible Codes, by Grant Jeffrey
