Translation = I desire/lust after treachery/fraud, Jesus is my violent name
The Significant Index for the above is 1/439,482,767,272,900 (one chance in 439 Trillion)
April 26, 1998
"It should be noted that research on the ELS phenomenon is still in its infancy.
We should remain somewhat skeptical until more data has been researched."
Guy Cramer, July 7, 1997
New Evidence; Will it Make or Break the Codes?
For a background on ELS (equidistant letter sequences) see:#80.
To determine if the Bibles ELS codes phenomenon was real we began to search for derogatory (negative) phrases associated with the name Yeshua (Jesus in Hebrew). The initial data seemed to indicate that the slanderous Yeshua phrases did not exist at significant skip distances.
We could not find a significant ELS phrase which linked "Yeshua" with "Navi Sheker" (False Prophet), or "Shakran" (liar), or "Maysit" (one who seduces others to go astray), or "Mechashaif" (sorcerer), or "Mashiach Sheker" (False Messiah), or "Dat Sheker" (False Religion), or "Klala" (curse).
A Professor of Hebrew Deciphers the Bible Codes
As we continued our research into the negative Yeshua phrases a Professor of Hebrew, Dr. James Price, who has been a skeptic of the ELS phenomenon and involved in a Torah Code discussion group began to search for himself for these unfavorable Yeshua phrases.
He quickly found a number of derogatory Yeshua phrases but they were calculated by myself to be mathematically random finds. As we both began to square off on the issue of the codes, we both took opposing viewpoints. He did not believe that the ELS phenomenon was a valid one and I said "can you prove it to me". It was quickly apparent that Dr. Price had the resources to find what others could not. Without a proper understanding of Hebrew we could only look for the small phrases in which we knew the proper spelling before hand. However, Dr. Price could easily pick out Hebrew words with the proper grammatical sequencing. He even developed his own software to do these searches.
His first big find came shortly after I challenged him.
Deciphering the Yeshua Codes
At Isa 53:12, 67th letter, with a skip of -20, the following 16-letter sequence occurs:
Translation = I desire/lust after treachery/fraud, Jesus is my violent name
The Significant Index for the above is 1/439,482,767,272,900 (one chance in 439 Trillion)
The word * * "I desire/lust"
It is the 1st person common singular Polel imperfect of the Biblical Hebrew word * * [BDB, p. 1003].
* * = *ma'al*--(noun) "treachery, embezzlement, deception, fraud" [Alcalay, 1420; BDB, 591].
* * = *Yeshua'*--Jesus
* * = *shemi*--"my name"
* * = *'az*--(adjective)--"strong, powerful, mighty, fierce, violent, courageous" [BDB, 738; Alcalay, 1875].
I countered using the same segment:
Translation: "[as] one rushing from above Jesus, my name is strength"
But this 15-letter code is one letter short of Dr. Prices 16 letter find.
Dr Price had proven significant slanderous Yeshua codes existed, this gave us some understanding of the phenomenon. If God coded the Bible, why would he allow both positive and negative codes to be associated with the name Yeshua?
Could Dr. Price find Unfavorable God codes?
In Gen 41:27 beginning with the 27th letter, Skip = -63, Dr. Price found :
Translation--"We will awaken, YHWH (is) a detestable thing [an abomination]!"
Significant Index = 1/10,089,971.668 (one chance in 10,089,971)
* *
--1cpl qal impf. of * *--"rouse oneself, awake" [BDB 734]
or -- 3ms niphal perf. of * *--"be roused, awakened"
* *--the sacred name of God
* *--noun masc. sing. "detestation, detestable thing" [BDB 1054]
In Gen 21:6 beginning with the 19th letter, Skip = -2, Dr. Price found:
Translation--"He will scrape off a peace offering. God (is) a detestable thing!"
Significant Index = 1/2,395,468,734,706 (one chance in 2,395,468,734,706)
* *--3ms hiphil imperfect of * *--"he will scrape off" [BDB 892, cf. Lev. 14:41]
* *--noun masc. sing.--"peace offering" [BDB 1023]
* *--"God" (the one true God of Israel) [BDB 42]
* *--noun masc. sing. "detestation, detestable thing" [BDB 1054]
In Gen 40:5 beginning with the 44th letter, Skip distance = -5556, Dr. Price found:
Translation: "God (is) an abomination and a diviner."
Significant Index = 1/31,518.30 (one chance in 31,518)
* *--"God" (the one true God of Israel) [BDB 42]
* *--noun masc. sing. "detestation, detestable thing" [BDB 1054]
* *--"and"
* *--"diviner" [BDB 890; cf. Deut 18:10]
These above finds took Dr. Price a very short time to locate and I have no doubt that he could find many more positive and/or slanderous ELS phrases if he thought it was required.
He has now shown the ELS Phrase phenomenon to be a random occurrence that happens in all literature. There is nothing special about the mathematical significant occurrences in the bible good or bad.
The Famous Rabbi's Experiment
We have one last item to look at: The famous Rabbi's experiment that started off modern interest into this topic
In 1994, a team of Israeli mathematicians found in ELS 64 names of the most famous Jewish Rabbis and Sages from between the years 1 AD and 1000 AD. They also found the date of birth or the date of death for each one in ELS in a compact area of the original Hebrew text of Genesis. This data was published in the Journal of Statistic Science 1994, Volume 9, No. 3, 429-
The mathematicians calculated the chances that this would happen were less than one chance in two and a half billion.
Dr. Price ran a search on an 800 Hebrew letter string in the original text in the book of Isaiah 52:13 to 53:12. He programmed his computer to search for 9,060 Hebrew words with at least 3 letters or more per Hebrew word within the 800-letter string. When the computer finished the search it found 5,903 of the 9,060 words he was looking for with many words appearing more than once. When all of the 5,903 words plus all the duplicate ELS finds were added the computer found a total of 160,650 Hebrew words in ELS within the 800 letter Hebrew string.
Dr. Price's Isaiah experiment:
In the 15-verse segment of Isaiah (52:13 to 53:12) I ran an exhaustive search of all the words in the Hebrew Bible at least 3 letters long. The following is the result:
Number of verses--15
Number of words--202
Number of letters--800
Total number of words searched--9060
Number of different words for which at least one ELS was found--5903
Total number of ELS's found 160,650
All the ELS's were totally confined within the 800-letter matrix, so the maximum possible skip distance was 265. Thus this segment contains ELS's for 65% of all the words in the Bible.
All 58,738 completely fit within the matrix of 459 letters. So the maximum possible skip would have been 153.
Therefore, the Famous Rabbi's experiment doesn't hold much weight when we see how frequent the ELS phenomenon is. And the fact that some of Dr. Prices slanderous phrase findings are far more significant than one chance in 2 1/2 billion for the famous Rabbi's experiment.
The Bible ELS Codes go the way of Cold Fusion
The conclusions of Dr Price's research should end any further research, books, movies, t.v. shows and articles... into the ELS phenomenon. God did not hide ELS codes in the Bible. The ELS codes do not prove divine authorship of the Hebrew Bible. This phenomenon will occur in all texts and all literature. It is just a strange random phenomenon.
For those looking for modern evidence that God exists see: Stephen Hawking's Universe Implodes
Dr. James Price is Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament at Temple Baptist Seminary in Chattanooga, TN. He holds the following degrees:
B.S. in Electrical Engineering, Purdue University
M.Div. Northwest Baptist Seminary
Ph.D. Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning
This paper is Part 1. For Part 2 see: Closing the Bible Codes
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