Does The Bible Have a Hidden Code?

ABOUT two years after the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yizhak Rabin in 1995, a journalist claimed that with the assistance of computer technology, he had discovered a prediction of that event hidden in the original Hebrew Bible text.  the journalist, Michael drosnin, wrote that he had tried to warn the prime minister over a year before the assassination but to  no avail. 

Other books and articles have not been published claiming that this hidden code provides absolute proof of God's inspiration of the Bible.  Does such a code exist?  Should a hidden code be the basis for believing that the Bible is inspired of God?

A New Idea?

The idea of a hidden code in the Bible text is not new.  it is a central concept in the Cabala, or traditional Jewish mysticism. According to Cabalistic teachers, the simple meaning of the Bible text is not its true meaning.  They believe that God used the individual letters of the Hebrew Bible text as symbols, which when properly understood reveal a greater truth.  In their view, each Hebrew letter and its position in the Bible text was set by God with a specific purpose in mind.

According to Jeffrey Satinover, a researcher of the Bible code, these Jewish mystics believe that the Hebrew letters used to record the creation account in Genesis hold incredible mystical power.  He writes:  "Genesis, in short, is not simply a description; it is the very instrument of the act of creation itself, a blueprint in the mind of God made manifest itself in physical form.

A 13th-century Cabalistic  rabbi, Bachya ben Asher of Saragossa, Spain, wrote of a certain hidden information that was revealed to him by reading every 42nd letter in a portion of Genesis.  This method of skipping over letters according to a particular sequence in an attempt to discover hidden messages is the basis for the modern Bible - code concept.

Next time: Computers "Reveal" the Code

Watchtower, 2000