code
Nick Hopkins and Keith Devlin
When The Bible Code was published, even the most grudging cynics had to admit something astonishing was afoot. The book claimed to have discovered hidden messages within the scriptures which predicted major events in world history.
References to World War II, the Gulf conflict, the assassination of John F Kennedy and the resignation of Richard Nixon had apparently been found in the Old Testament.
The book became a best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic and tabloid newspapers fought for the serialisation rights. The code had been discovered by academics and unravelled by computers, so it had to be right, didn’t it? Apparently not.
In fact, it is probably bunkum. According to a new study, the first serious analysis of the book since it was launched last year, the code which unlocked the Bible’s secrets has no validity.
Three researchers have discovered that the code-breaking technique called “equal letter skip” could be applied to any long book with the same results. The amazing revelations are no more than coincidences they say – and to prove the point they have used Moby Dick to “predict” the assassination of Leon Trotsky.
Initially, Maya Bar-Hillel, Dror Bar-Natan and Brendan McKay – all respected mathematicians – began scrutinising the book with an open mind. They studied the theory behind it, and then tested it.
The “messages” in the Bible had been found by equal letter skip which works by taking the letter of any word in a given script, then jumping forward a fixed number of letters to a second letter, and then a third, fourth, and so forth.
When Eliyahu Rips, an Israeli expert in quantum physics, applied equal letter skip to the Hebrew version of the Bible, recognisable names and dates seemed to emerge.
Michael Drosnin, a journalist with The Washington Post, heard about the findings and began to investigate.
To begin with, he was sceptical but was won over when the name Yitshak Rabin appeared next to the word assassinate – a year before the Israeli prime minister was killed.
Although this seemed extraordinary, Bar- Hillel, Bar-Natan and McKay insist it was chance, rather than divine intervention.
They argue in their study, published in Chance, a periodical of the American Statistical Association, that with a text as long as the books of the Old Testament – Genesis alone has 78 064 words – you are bound to find words, or partial words, using equal letter skip.
Professor McKay, who lectures at the Australian National University, applied the system to Moby Dick and found it “predicted” the assassination of Rabin, Martin Luther King and Trotsky.
The paper is also scornful of Drosnin, quoting from an interview to Newsweek magazine in which he had stated: “When my critics find a message about the assassination of a prime minister in Moby Dick, I’ll believe them.”
The study will come as a huge relief to the religious community, which was irritated by what it regarded as the trivialisation of the Bible. Jonathan Romain, a consultant of the Reform Synagogue of Great Britain, thought the book was “too preposterous for words”, and would become “a handbook for would-be mystic megs”.
The study has also been welcomed by maths experts in the United Kingdom, who were reluctant to condemn the book until a proper examination had been completed.
Fred Piper, professor of cryptology and security at the Royal Holloway college, London, said: “One always suspected the book was nonsense, and this seems to be the proof. I don’t doubt Drosnin’s sincerity. I think he genuinely believes there is a secret code hidden in the Bible.”
But the study has not been welcomed by Weidenfeld and Nicolson which publishes the book in the UK. A representative said: “Some experts say one thing, and another lot of experts say another. I am sure there have been studies which back up the book’s methodology.”