Bible Code

Overview / History

Overview

The primary method by which purportedly meaningful messages are extracted is the Equidistant Letter Sequence (ELS). To obtain an ELS from a text, choose a starting point (any letter) and a skip (a number, possibly negative). Then, beginning at the starting point, select letters from the text at equal spacing as given by the skip. For example, the bold letters in this sentence form an ELS for the word SAFEST. (The skip is -4. Spaces and punctuation are ignored.)

Often more than one ELS related to some topic can be displayed simultaneously in an ELS letter array. This is produced by writing out the text in a regular grid, with exactly the same number of letters in each line, then cutting out a rectangle. In the example below, we show part of the King James Version of Genesis (26:5–10) with 33 letters per line. ELSs for BIBLE and CODE are shown. Normally only a smaller rectangle would be displayed, such as the rectangle drawn in the figure. In that case there would be letters missing between adjacent lines in the picture, but it is essential that the number of missing letters be the same for each pair of adjacent lines.

Although we have shown examples in English texts, Bible codes proponents usually use a Hebrew Bible text. For religious reasons, most Jewish proponents use only the Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy). Additionally, since the English translation (of which there are hundreds of versions to choose) is not the original text of the Bible, this would require one to believe in the design of the English language or translation—either through the influence of an omniscient entity, or through careful construction—so that ELS as complex as that found in the Hebrew Torah would be present in that translation. This would apply to all translations, regardless of language, in which complex ELS could be found, as well as to any other texts containing such examples. The other alternative would be to admit that ELS of the complexity claimed by Bible code proponents are not as rare as is believed.