Shaun de Waal
THE BIBLE CODE by Michael Drosnin (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, R91)
THE GREAT PYRAMID DECODED by Peter Lemesurier (Element, R89,95)
CENTURIES ago, the Qabalists believed that the Torah contained secret codes, or could at least be read in such a way as to discover under the apparent words a hidden text which revealed the true nature of the universe. The very letters themselves were sacred signifiers that could be recombined to produce otherwise impenetrable knowledge.
Such notions seem echoed in The Bible Code, in which American journalist Michael Drosnin dramatically unveils the strange messages a computer program is capable of finding in the Torah. Based on a 1986 study by three Israeli statisticians, the modus operandi is this:
Treating the 304 805 Hebrew characters of the Torah as though they were one long word, without spaces or punctuation, the computer seeks out equidistant letter sequences or ELSs. For example, it might extract every 456th letter, which gives a string of 668 letters (with some left over), in which it would look for certain names, words or dates. Then, formatting the text in 456 columns of 668 letters each, the computer would produce a ”snapshot” of the area containing the found word. That area could then be scanned for further relevant words.
By thus turning the Torah into a vast mystic crossword-puzzle, Drosnin finds what seem to be millennia-old prophecies of modern events. The words ”Yitzhak Rabin” were found transected by ”assassin that will assassinate” a year before the Israeli prime minister was indeed slain. This, naturally, gets Drosnin very excited.
With the help of his computer, he digs out all sorts of correspondences – ”Newton” and ”gravity”, ”Clinton” and ”president”. The code also, apparently, indicates that present Israeli leader Binyamin Netanyahu would be assassinated and the world plunged into nuclear war in 1995 or 1996.
This failed to happen. Drosnin explains that the Torah contains future possibilities rather than inevitabilities and would like us to believe that his warnings played some part in averting disaster. He also gives a heated jeremiad on the subject of how it is up to us to avert the nuclear war his investigations predict for either 2000 or 2006.
Drosnin’s thesis has been rejected by the Israeli scientists on whose work his book is based (though they do not refute the existence of certain codes in the Torah), as well as by other scholars. It has been pointed out that his translations of Hebrew words are rather creative, and he does seem to take liberties in transliteration: Rabin’s name appears in different forms, for instance, and Drosnin considers the Hebrew equivalent of MQVVYY to be a match for ”McVeigh” of Oklahoma-bomb fame.
Clearly, though, here is some phenomenon that is not yet entirely explainable. It is possible to comb Crime and Punishment in this way and find ”Shakespeare”, but the Torah – preserved for centuries in precisely the same character-sequence – seems particularly susceptible to the appearance of such correspondences. Perhaps part of the reason is that in ancient Hebrew, as the Qabalists so appreciated, letters double up as numbers.
Whatever the significance of the codes, Drosnin could have written a much more interesting book than he has. Mostly, he repetitively paraphrases himself so we don’t miss the point and produces crossword-puzzle after crossword-puzzle. The notes have more narrative in them than the book proper.
By contrast, Peter Lemesurier’s book is densely encyclopaedic, and his tool of divination is the great pyramid attributed to the pharaoh Khufu. In its outer dimensions he sees a precise map of the cosmos; in the measurements of its inner passages and chambers he finds a ”chronograph” of human history far into the future.
While never an instant bestseller like Drosnin’s book, The Great Pyramid Decoded has had a condsiderable cult following since it first appeared in 1977 and Lemesurier’s ideas about the cosmic map have been recycled by others in such books as Fingerprints of the Gods. Now minimally updated, his tome sounds at times like something Umberto Eco might have parodied in Foucault’s Pendulum. Lemesurier draws minute parallels between arcane geometric figures and the traditions of different religions from ancient Egypt on, all of which, for him, culminate in a kind of New- Agey messianism.
In one respect, though, our two authors overlap. Drosnin says the Torah code pinpoints apocalyptic earthquakes and ”atomic holocaust” for 2000 and 2006. Lemesurier’s pyramid-reading indicates the period roughly 2004-2032 as the time of ”total collapse of materialist civilisation”.