Bible Questions
Are the Bible Codes Real?
"A friend of mine says that there are codes in the bible, that are hidden words that tell us about events before they happen. Are these bible codes real and important?", (Question courtesy of Frederick Ridel)
What your friend is referring to are the so-called “bible codes”. First, let me clarify what they are. Aside from rightly-dividing, which is to say interpreting and understanding the deeper meaning of the bible, there is a tradition of looking for codes and hidden messages in the text itself. This involves looking at the letters and words, and the positioning of them, to see subtleties that are not apparent to the casual reader. An example of this is the Old Testament use of acrostics, where if you take the first letter of each line in a section, and put them together, it forms a new word or phrase that perhaps gives some deeper insight into the passage. Some of these devices are clearly there by design, but unfortunately they are entirely lost in translation.
Then there’s the so-called “bible codes”, which try to capitalize on this tradition, but are frankly misleading. This is where one takes the bible, or a section of it, and lays it out into a block of letters like in a cross-word puzzle, (they use the term “matrix” to describe this). Then one uses a computer to look for new words in that block of letters going up and down, left and right, and skipping letters (every 2nd, 3rd, or 4th letter, etc.). They then look at what words are formed, their proximity to eachother, and lo and behold these hidden messages appear.
Here's the problem with the bible codes; when you're using a computer to look at a large block of text by analyzing every 2nd, 3rd, or 4th letter, going in multiple directions, you are generating an enormous amount of words and phrases. This is true in any text, or random letters, not just the bible. Then one needs to realize that the number of words and phrases that can be connected with a particular historical event are also enormous, and quite arbitrary. I can easily make up a list of dozens of words related the Kennedy assasination. Then if I plug that list into a computer, it should be no surprise that some of those words and phrases are found in proximity to eachother, because there are just so many possible combinations in that block of letters. This explains why the bible codes only work looking backward into the past, because unless you know what you're looking for, the number of words and phrases that can be found is too large to make any sense of.
Bible code advocates might take this a step further, and repeat this process for many different historical events, picking the ones that work best within the text of the bible. This explains why many of the purported bible codes can't be found in other texts or in random letters, because they have cherry picked ones that happen to work in the bible.
Some of the more serious bible code researchers would dispute that they partake of the obvious logical fallacies that I have described here. However, I've never seen any scientific evidence based on carefully controlled experiments that indicates the bible has superior "codes" to anything else. The idea of finding "related" words, phrases, and names in proximity to eachother is something that should be expected, not just in the bible, but in any large text. Proponents will often try to make it seem like something "mystical" is going on, but I don't buy it. Overall, I'd say that the bible codes are a distraction from the great revelations and mysteries that are to be found by studying the scriptures with understanding and discernment from God.
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