Its about time I shared this, I suppose...
A few years ago I stumbled upon what I called at the time the Jesus Square. Back then it really troubled me... and then it got lost in all that happens in a normal life. Now with blogs and all it is easy to share, so as it may just interest someone out there, please read on, I believe it is worth it.
For those who do not want to read all this or are already familiar with the "Bible code" principles, simply go directly to the last paragraph of this post where I display the Jesus square. You may then want to read the "Trying to be objective" paragraph which explains the process I imagined and put into place.
Some Jewish rabbis have asserted that the whole of mankind’s history (in fact the whole of history) could be found within the Pentateuch (The bible’s five first books). Some of these Rabbis gave clues to reading, or understanding, the Torah’s « extra » information.
One of the hinted methods is the ELS (Equidistant Letter Sequences) study.
Finding an ELS for a word is to find the word written out in the text in such a way that between the first and second letter there are as many letters as between the second and third and so on till the last letter.
Example : an ELS for the word « SHOULDER »
The number of letters between the S and the H is the same as between the H and the O and so on. This constant number of letters is called the step. In this example the step is 5.
Back in 1985 I was asked to look into this. I was a student at the time and the bargain was that I received a (PC) computer against my work on the subject. I was never asked to proove it was true or false. I was simply asked to study the subject with my computer and read all possible litterature on the subject.
At the time I was, and still am, indifferent to whether the Bible code is a fact or a fiction.
During 14 years I worked on and off the subject as a hobby and did stumble accross some amusing “clusters” but nothing was sufficiently convincing to rule out “Chance” once and for all.
I must admit that most books I read on the Bible code were very far from being convincing. In fact there has been excellent work done on other texts than the Bible (for instance Moby Dick) with often more probing results.
It gave the impression that most people studying the Bible Code were already convinced for or against it and simply tried to prove their beliefs.
So for a long time I stood with no conviction, one way or the other.
One day, though, one cluster did finally stand out and really gave me that “fuzzy feeling”. I spoke about it to a few people and then, as life goes, got used to the cluster existing and therefore let it hide away at the back of my mind. At the time I named the cluster “the Jesus square”.
Then I got caught up with my professional life and dropped the whole Bible code subject.
During the last eight years I nevertheless thought back about this cluster and couldn’t help feeling that I may have some responsibility to get the cluster known. Somebody out there may be able to read into this cluster much more than I have… So this is why this blog exists…. simply to display this “Jesus square”.
Trying to be objective
The process I put into place was the following: once an ELS was found for a word, I would look up all the words, coded as ELS’s, close to this ‘central ELS’. Once all the words were found I would see whether or not these words were related (or over all related) to the main word. To avoid (if possible) being subjective, the words I would check as being close or not to the ELS were the words of the Torah itself (see below).
The method was as follows:
a) Find all ELS’s for the main word (example Hitler) :
b) For each ELS’s write out the text (in which the ELS is found: for example the seven last chapters of Genesis) in a column such as each line has as many letters as the ELS’s step (if the step is 150 each line will be 150 characters long). The ELS will thus stand out vertically in the text. (See example below).
c) Draw a rectangle round this vertical ELS .
Note: in order to simplify things I use Roman characters instead of hebrew ones. Each roman character corresponds to a hebrew letter. For instance ")" = Aleph, "B" is Beth etc.
Example : The main word is YH$W( (corresponding to Yod, He, Shin, Wav, Ayin)
The cluster/rectangle around this word is constituted by the letters in bold charactes. The word itself is highlighted in blue.
e) I look at which words from the Torah appear in the cluster. Are the words linked or not?
The first advantage of this method is to avoid choosing the words to check against the cluster (only all the four lettered words and over from the Torah are checked). In the previous methods a list of words was thought up and then checked. The Chanucka example in « War and peace » showed the danger of such a method.
The second advantage is not to miss words out (we take and check exhaustively all the four lettered words and over from the Torah).
A third advantage of this method is to extend Rips’ and Doron’s minimal skip principal. By taking a small rectangle (I take my sqare 11 letters high by 11 letters wide), the ELS’s found will systematically have steps either close to the main ELS's step or close to a multiple of the main ELS’s step (in other words the other ELS’s will be parallel or very closely so to the main ELS ).
Thus for my 11 side squares the step p for a four letter word ELS would be such :
This method replaces therefore the idea of minimal steps by related steps. One must remember that the probability is lower when the step is greater. (In other words it is more probable to find minimum steps than larger ones).
Here are a couple of examples before looking at the "Jesus Square".
Example 1 : Hitler (He, Yod, Tet, Lamed, Resh).
The first ELS found for started at the 137th letter of Genesis with an 11,603 letter step.
Having no automatic translation (I translated, by hand, thanks to the « The interlinear NIV Hebrew-english old testament »).
As Genesis has 78,064 characters and the step is of 11,603 my rectangle could only be 6 letters high (78064/11603 = 6.xx).
For this example only the five letter words and above from the Torah were checked within the cluster.
Only 7 words were found :
- I created
- Right hand of you
- In the cave
- To days
- Hooks of them
- Ones loving
Comments : ·
- I will give no personnal opinion on the words found, it would bias you own. ·
- Many hundreds of ELS’s were found for Hitler. This is one among many. My choice for this example was obviously subjective.
- In hebrew some words such as "and" (a Wav) is stuck to the word that follows it. Instead of "and Paris" you would have andParis. This explains that the translations are often composed of more than one word.
Exemple 2 : Jesus (Yod, He, Shin, Waw, Ayin)
For the ELS on the 553rd letter with a 6,783 letter step we draw our 11 by 11 letter square.
For this example, only the Torah words of 5 letters and over were sought for.
Exactly ten words were found :
- And I will increase
- To them
- So they gave up
- The fire
- Show me
- A she be filled
- Because of love of
- And you investigate
The Jesus Square
The outstanding cluster appears for the ELS starting at the 23,911th letter of Genesis with a 1242 step.
The cluster in Hebrew characters:
The same cluster in corresponding roman characters: (with colors)
Comments : ·
- Only parallel ELS’s were withheld (Step = 1242 or 2x1242=2484) ·
- All parallel 5 letter ELS’s have been cited ·
- 11 extra parallel 4 letter ELS’s were found (fig, on inside, with us, from to come, twin boys, as before, for two of, the foreign, Jethro, But straw, and wall). ·
- Throughout my reading on the Bible code never have I found such a tight word related cluster whatever the subject.
I have noticed that this subject can bring about strong reactions. Please comment, if you wish, but do not be aggessive. I am simply sharing.