the bible code and the kabbalah

[The Devil Inside]

in the hebrew language, every letter represents a number as well. there arent seperate characters for them. there are 22 letters in the alphabet.
the torah is written in hebrew.
there are no breaks in the string of letters, or in the words. no punctuation. just a constant stream of letters.

a few years ago a gentleman wrote a computer program that used a "skip pattern" generator to find messages hidden within the letters of the torah. he succeeded in finding all sorts of interesting things. i would prefer to not get into whether it was random chance or whatnot.

kabbalists insist that there are 3 different torahs: written, oral (both of these were given to common men), and esoteric.
the idea behind the esoteric is that there were hidden meanings and teachings inside the torah, that would be unlocked before the time of the messiah.

just want some feedback, thought it would be interesting food for thought for most of you.

thank you for your time.

 

[Michael]

I think this was a common practice in many ancient cultures. Certainly the Greeks, specifically the Pythagoreans, used words and names with clever numerical meaning that would only be known by those “in the know”. Some of these numerical “codes” even made there way from Greek myth into the Bible.

See: Jesus Christ, Sun of God: Ancient Cosmology and Early Christian Symbolism

As for the Torah, I’d think it'd be similar. Although, concerning the algorithm to figure out these hidden messages, I think it also found a “hidden messages” in Moby Dick

See: Skeptics Dictionary: The Bible (or Torah) Code

When my critics find a message about the assassination of a prime minister encrypted in Moby-Dick, I'll believe them." McKay promptly produced an ELS analysis of Moby-Dick predicting not only Indira Ghandi's assassination, but the assassinations of Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, and Yitzhak Rabin, as well as the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

So in summary, yeah there probably are some "messages" in there but so did many Religions of the time. So other than the fun in finding them, they really hold no more meaning than any other religions “hidden code”.

 

[skeptic]

you could find meaningful hidden messages on a Campbell's soup label if you looked hard enough..

 

[The Devil Inside]

so do you gents absolutely refute the possibility of a divine message?

 

[spidergoat]

There are hidden messages, but they are not hidden deliberately, and they won't be figured out by these crytographic methods. That's like looking for your lost coin near a streetlight, when you lost it in the dark. There are always esoteric teachings that can't be captured overtly, but can be seen when we read between the lines. I refer to something like the gnostic tradition of personal revelation of the devine, and the Buddhist idea of "special transmission outside of the scriptures".

 

[Michael]

so do you gents absolutely refute the possibility of a divine message?

yup, although Campbell's soup is starting to sound good . . I'm hungry

 

[The Devil Inside]

i agree with you about that, spidergoat. but perhaps the messages were encoded with the specific intent that they would only be able to be de-crypted when mankind had reached a certain level of enlightenment (science and computers).
i am not saying that that is the only explanation, but how would you approach that idea?
i suppose it requires a belief in the divine intelligence to accept that thought. even farther than that, it would require u to believe that this "intelligence" would even desire to communicate these things.
food for thought tastes like delicious candy.

 

[JustARide]

I believe a hidden message in Paris Hilton's new book predicts a sharp decline in American culture and the rise of rich cunt worship. And by "hidden," I mean completely obvious.