The Bible Code

The record of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham:  Matthew 1:1 NASB

David – Before the world adopted Arabic numerals, many ancient languages used the written alphabet as a counting system.  The first letter of the alphabet would also be the number 1; the second 2, etc.  Of course, you needed some letters to represent digits larger than 10 so you would create combinations of letters to produce larger numbers.  This produced some interesting arrangements.  It also explains why most ancient counting systems didn’t have a number 0.  Numbers were used for counting things, and zero wasn’t anything you could count.  As a result of this ancient practice, written texts can be converted into numeric codes.  This is why Matthew alters the genealogy of Yeshua so that it fits the numeric total of the letters in the name David.  And this is also why modern people get a bit crazy when they start imagining that the Bible is “nothing but a string of numbers sent from God,” as the actor in Pi says.  An example of this is found in the book The Bible Code.  Here’s the promotional description:

More than just a simple skip code, the Bible code crisscrosses the entire known text of the Bible to find a complex network of words and phrases. For example, after it finds a keyword (“Yitzhak Rabin”), the computer then looks for related information (“assassin,” “Amir,” “Tel Aviv”). Time after time it finds connected names, dates, and places encoded together. With “Bill Clinton,” “President.” With “Hitler,” “Nazi.” With the moon landing, “spaceship” and “Apollo 11.” A code that has information about significant earthquakes that already happened warns of a major earthquake in Los Angeles early in the next century. It also warns of a nuclear war triggered by an act of nuclear terrorism against Israel.[1]

Now you might ask, “If several ancient languages used this type of arithmetic, why would anyone get so excited about the numeric arrangement in the Bible?”  Good question.  Why don’t we look for a code in ancient Greek texts, or Coptic, or Gothic, or the Byzantine texts?  The answer is obvious.  The West believes the Bible is God’s word, and therefore the code in the Bible is God’s code.  Those other cultures might have messages hidden in the text but they aren’t messages from God.  Since Hebrew is the real God-code language, that’s where we go to find out what God’s secret message is.  And above all else, the reason we look for the code is because we want to know the future.  In cultures where life today is what matters, such a code would have less value.  But for us, oh my, how we want to know!

This implies something else about the way we understand Hebrew.  During the Second Temple period, two significant methods of interpretation arose among the rabbis., typified by Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ismael.  Heschel describes them:

“Rabbi Akiva believed that every detail and every stylistic form has a deep significance and a hidden intent.  To Rabbi Akiva, textual teachings were given in order to be expanded upon.  One who interprets via the surface meaning alone is like a poor man looking for gleanings.  To Rabbi Ismael, textual teachings were given in order to be understood and to establish traditions, not to be expanded upon.”[2]

According to Rabbi Ismael:

“ . . . the text was given for a specific purpose—to communicate instruction to human beings.  It is not beckoning to us to discover layers of existing meaning that are not already visible.  However, the text does invite us, as does any straightforward set of instructions, to deduce new directives and truths for it, by the use of logic and reason.  But that is construction, not discovery; and this summarizes the Ishmaelian view.”[3]

“ . . . because in the Ishmaelian view, the words themselves are not important but only the instructions that they convey.”[4]

Those who search for the secret Bible code adopt the view of Akiva.  The Bible becomes a multilayered code waiting for us to discover its secrets.  But this isn’t the only Hebrew view.  Ishmael saw the biblical text as instruction in righteousness, not secret messages about the future.  He focused attention on what the text means for us today.  The “code” is construction, perhaps even fabrication, that depends on some presuppositions about God and the biblical text; presuppositions that have little to do with living righteously today.

The next time someone excitedly tells you about some secret they’ve discovered in the Bible you might ask yourself why this discovery is so important, and which system of interpretation is being employed.  And if, by chance, you feel your own spiritual adrenaline rushing to the surface, you might ask those two questions again—reflexively.

Topical Index: Bible code, alphanumeric, Akiva, Ishmael, interpretation, Matthew 1:1

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/521542#

[2] Abraham Heschel, Heavenly Torah as Refracted through the Generations, p. 39.

[3] Gordon Tucker, in Abraham Heschel, Heavenly Torah as Refracted through the Generations (ed. and trans. by Gordon Tucker, Continuum International Publishing Group, New York, 2007), p. 39, fn. 138.

[4] Ibid., p. 40, fn. 140.