Did Bible Code experts foresee a victory for Donald Trump?
Prophecy is a funny thing. It's one thing to look for signs and codes and hidden messages after an incident has already taken place, but prophecy takes on a different perspective when a prediction was made long before the incident occurs. For instance, many people looked to the prophecies of Nostradamus after the 9/11 attacks and seemingly found "proof" that Nostradamus "foresaw" the terrible event (the proof, of course, being a vaguely worded passage that kind of resembles something that could possibly be construed as a description of what happened). These interpretations are subjective; people fit Nostradamus' vague words to events that have already happened, pointing out similarities to suit their interests. This is what is known as "retroactive clairvoyance", or "postdiction" (as opposed to prediction).
While the quatrains of Nostradamus were all the rage in the 80s and 90s, modern technology has allowed seekers of mystical knowledge to find prophecies in religious texts. The "Bible Code", for instance, works by Equidistant Letter Sequence (ELS). Of course, one could find these hidden messages long before the invention of the computer, but doing so was an exhaustive, painstaking process. Software programs can find names and phrases in entire volumes of text in a fraction of a second.
But does the Bible Code really work?
Well, that depends on your point of view. If a text is lengthy enough, just about any name can be found. Skeptics have pointed out that the ELS method can be used to find "Hitler" or "Bin Laden" in books like Moby Dick. This, in a way, is no different that finding a music album or a song that "syncs up" with specific scenes in a movie. If you're working with a song by Vanilla Ice, for example, and compare it with enough movies, sooner or later the word "ice" (or vanilla) will correspond to a movie scene featuring ice. Or vanilla.
But the Bible Code isn't just about finding one name, or even one phrase. It's way more complicated than that. The concept of secret messages in the Torah is an honored and timeless Jewish tradition, and there is a specific manner in which it must be done. Using the traditional method has produced astoundingly accurate predictions that are nothing at all like "retroactive clairvoyance". Unlike the Bible Code, retroactive clairvoyance doesn't hold up to statistical scrutiny.
Evidence of this can be found in the "Great Rabbis Experiments" conducted by researchers Doron Witztum and Eliyahu Rips. These experiments showed a statistical significance that occurred only in the Torah-- and not in the King James Version of the Bible or other religious texts. In 1994, the results of the Great Rabbis Experiments were published in the peer-reviewed journal, Statistical Science, and has since been re-tested and re-examined by countless mathematicians who were successfully able to reproduce the same result. Those who have tested the Torah Code and found it scientifically sound include U.S. Defense Department cryptological mathematician Harold Gans, University of Washington pattern recognition expert Dr. Robert Haralick, and Professor Shlomo Zalman Havlin of Israel's Bar Ilan University.
The Bible Code and the 2016 Presidential Election
In order to find out how accurate the Bible code was in regards to the recent election, and to rule out the possibility of "retroactive clairvoyance" all we have to do is look at the predictions that were made by code researchers prior to the election. If the majority of code experts predicted a victory for Hillary Clinton, then it would be safe to assume that the Bible Code is as bogus as a ten-dollar Rolex.
Let's take a look at some of the pre-election Bible code predictions made by the leading authorities on the Torah code and see how they panned out.
Source: Rabbi Matityahu Glazerson
Credentials: Author of over 30 books on religion and the Torah code.
Date of Prediction: July 6, 2016
His Prediction: (quoted from joemygod.com) Glazerson highlights the codes for 8 Cheshvan 5777, the date on the Hebrew calendar that corresponds to Nov. 9, 2016 – the first day Trump would be president-elect of the United States. Glazerson found his second group of codes in the Book of Numbers. He opens the video with what he calls “the best meeting” of Donald Trump, spelled in Hebrew, and bocher, which means chosen or elected. In this table he again found codes for nasi (president), Artzot haBrit (United States) and 7 Cheshvan 5777, which corresponds to Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016.
(Rabbi Glazerson's video explaining the code he found can be viewed here)
Source: Jonathan Matthew Wright
Credentials: Studied for three years under Rabbi Matisyahu Glazerson. Founder of thecodesearcher.com
Date: June 28, 2016
His Prediction: This one is pretty spooky. The researcher found the code "Trump wins" in the Torah; however, he also found the words "Hillary steals". This is fascinating, considering all the recent talk about how Democrats are attempting to convince Electoral College electors to deny Trump the presidency. Surely such an event would make the "Hillary steals" code quite eerie-- especially considering that this code was found all the way back in June. See below video for explanation of Wright's code.
Source: Rabbi Shaul Gromer
Credentials: Torah code expert, founder of Torah Treasure House non-profit organization, radio personality
Date: Nov. 6, 2016
His Prediction: Trump will not only win in 2016, but will be re-elected. And more bad news if you're a Democrat. The president after eight years of Donald Trump? Ted Cruz. (Gromer's explains his prediction in the video below)
What does it all mean? Well, interestingly, no credible Torah code expert predicted a Clinton victory-- unless all the videos and predictions claiming that Hillary would win were taken down after election day (it's quite hard to pass yourself off as an expert if you keep your losing predictions visible for all the world to see). There were several others who also predicted a Trump victory by using code-searching software, but these were amateur code-searchers. While their predictions turned out to be accurate, my study focused on those who are considered leading authorities on the matter.
As a natural born skeptic, I can't quite say whether or not I'm convinced that the Bible code is indeed prophetic, but I will concede that if the code really does predict future events, there are some hard and fast rules and guidelines to keep in mind: First, if the code works at all, it only works by using the Torah as the text source. Secondly, unless you know the Hebrew language and calendar, don't even bother with Bible code software programs. Thirdly, the accuracy of the prediction seems to increase with the narrowing of the Equidistant Letter Sequence (ELS) gap. The closer the letters are in proximity in the sequence, the more likely the prediction is to be true. For instance, if the words "Trump wins" is spread out equidistantly through a text containing 500 words, the prediction is more credible than if the coded words are spread out equidistantly throughout a text like Moby Dick, which has over 208,000 words.
https://twitter.com/bizarrejournal
 |
| An example of code found in the Torah, pertaining to North Korea |
Prophecy is a funny thing. It's one thing to look for signs and codes and hidden messages after an incident has already taken place, but prophecy takes on a different perspective when a prediction was made long before the incident occurs. For instance, many people looked to the prophecies of Nostradamus after the 9/11 attacks and seemingly found "proof" that Nostradamus "foresaw" the terrible event (the proof, of course, being a vaguely worded passage that kind of resembles something that could possibly be construed as a description of what happened). These interpretations are subjective; people fit Nostradamus' vague words to events that have already happened, pointing out similarities to suit their interests. This is what is known as "retroactive clairvoyance", or "postdiction" (as opposed to prediction).
While the quatrains of Nostradamus were all the rage in the 80s and 90s, modern technology has allowed seekers of mystical knowledge to find prophecies in religious texts. The "Bible Code", for instance, works by Equidistant Letter Sequence (ELS). Of course, one could find these hidden messages long before the invention of the computer, but doing so was an exhaustive, painstaking process. Software programs can find names and phrases in entire volumes of text in a fraction of a second.
But does the Bible Code really work?
Well, that depends on your point of view. If a text is lengthy enough, just about any name can be found. Skeptics have pointed out that the ELS method can be used to find "Hitler" or "Bin Laden" in books like Moby Dick. This, in a way, is no different that finding a music album or a song that "syncs up" with specific scenes in a movie. If you're working with a song by Vanilla Ice, for example, and compare it with enough movies, sooner or later the word "ice" (or vanilla) will correspond to a movie scene featuring ice. Or vanilla.
But the Bible Code isn't just about finding one name, or even one phrase. It's way more complicated than that. The concept of secret messages in the Torah is an honored and timeless Jewish tradition, and there is a specific manner in which it must be done. Using the traditional method has produced astoundingly accurate predictions that are nothing at all like "retroactive clairvoyance". Unlike the Bible Code, retroactive clairvoyance doesn't hold up to statistical scrutiny.
Evidence of this can be found in the "Great Rabbis Experiments" conducted by researchers Doron Witztum and Eliyahu Rips. These experiments showed a statistical significance that occurred only in the Torah-- and not in the King James Version of the Bible or other religious texts. In 1994, the results of the Great Rabbis Experiments were published in the peer-reviewed journal, Statistical Science, and has since been re-tested and re-examined by countless mathematicians who were successfully able to reproduce the same result. Those who have tested the Torah Code and found it scientifically sound include U.S. Defense Department cryptological mathematician Harold Gans, University of Washington pattern recognition expert Dr. Robert Haralick, and Professor Shlomo Zalman Havlin of Israel's Bar Ilan University.
The Bible Code and the 2016 Presidential Election
In order to find out how accurate the Bible code was in regards to the recent election, and to rule out the possibility of "retroactive clairvoyance" all we have to do is look at the predictions that were made by code researchers prior to the election. If the majority of code experts predicted a victory for Hillary Clinton, then it would be safe to assume that the Bible Code is as bogus as a ten-dollar Rolex.
Let's take a look at some of the pre-election Bible code predictions made by the leading authorities on the Torah code and see how they panned out.
Source: Rabbi Matityahu Glazerson
Credentials: Author of over 30 books on religion and the Torah code.
Date of Prediction: July 6, 2016
His Prediction: (quoted from joemygod.com) Glazerson highlights the codes for 8 Cheshvan 5777, the date on the Hebrew calendar that corresponds to Nov. 9, 2016 – the first day Trump would be president-elect of the United States. Glazerson found his second group of codes in the Book of Numbers. He opens the video with what he calls “the best meeting” of Donald Trump, spelled in Hebrew, and bocher, which means chosen or elected. In this table he again found codes for nasi (president), Artzot haBrit (United States) and 7 Cheshvan 5777, which corresponds to Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016.
(Rabbi Glazerson's video explaining the code he found can be viewed here)
Source: Jonathan Matthew Wright
Credentials: Studied for three years under Rabbi Matisyahu Glazerson. Founder of thecodesearcher.com
Date: June 28, 2016
His Prediction: This one is pretty spooky. The researcher found the code "Trump wins" in the Torah; however, he also found the words "Hillary steals". This is fascinating, considering all the recent talk about how Democrats are attempting to convince Electoral College electors to deny Trump the presidency. Surely such an event would make the "Hillary steals" code quite eerie-- especially considering that this code was found all the way back in June. See below video for explanation of Wright's code.
Source: Rabbi Shaul Gromer
Credentials: Torah code expert, founder of Torah Treasure House non-profit organization, radio personality
Date: Nov. 6, 2016
His Prediction: Trump will not only win in 2016, but will be re-elected. And more bad news if you're a Democrat. The president after eight years of Donald Trump? Ted Cruz. (Gromer's explains his prediction in the video below)
What does it all mean? Well, interestingly, no credible Torah code expert predicted a Clinton victory-- unless all the videos and predictions claiming that Hillary would win were taken down after election day (it's quite hard to pass yourself off as an expert if you keep your losing predictions visible for all the world to see). There were several others who also predicted a Trump victory by using code-searching software, but these were amateur code-searchers. While their predictions turned out to be accurate, my study focused on those who are considered leading authorities on the matter.
As a natural born skeptic, I can't quite say whether or not I'm convinced that the Bible code is indeed prophetic, but I will concede that if the code really does predict future events, there are some hard and fast rules and guidelines to keep in mind: First, if the code works at all, it only works by using the Torah as the text source. Secondly, unless you know the Hebrew language and calendar, don't even bother with Bible code software programs. Thirdly, the accuracy of the prediction seems to increase with the narrowing of the Equidistant Letter Sequence (ELS) gap. The closer the letters are in proximity in the sequence, the more likely the prediction is to be true. For instance, if the words "Trump wins" is spread out equidistantly through a text containing 500 words, the prediction is more credible than if the coded words are spread out equidistantly throughout a text like Moby Dick, which has over 208,000 words.
https://twitter.com/bizarrejournal