Document text
Do the Bible �codes� add up? Mail Tribune / Bob Pennell Ashland mathematician Ed Sherman started an e-mail newsletter 14 months ago to debunk research claiming there are hidden codes in the Old Testament. But once he did the math, he became a believer. Ashland man was skeptical, now believes By Melissa Martin ASHLAND � Mathematician Ed Sherman is no longer a skeptic when it comes to Bible codes � hidden words and messages in the Hebrew Scriptures. The statistical expert started an e-mail newsletter 14 months ago to debunk researchers who were claiming to find embedded messages in the Old Testament. But when Sherman did the math, he ended up verifying some of the claims and even finding new codes. "Today I stand dumbfounded, a former skeptic turned reluctant supporter," Sherman said. What changed his mind? "It was things like the eight codes about Hitler that appear in the Old Testament passage where Moses prophesies that in the latter days, a nation will rise up and torture and slaughter Jews on a mass scale,�� Sherman said. Bible codes are found by searching the Hebrew text for letters at certain intervals to form words. Using a computer, researchers take a selected text, eliminate spaces between words, then choose every third letter, for example, to find hidden messages. Sherman is the chief executive officer of an Ashland actuarial firm that runs insurance statistics for Fortune 500 companies. He still publishes a monthly e-mail newsletter, Bible Code Digest, but he�s turned it into a primer to help readers sort legitimate code research from hoaxes. "As far as we know, we are the only organization crunching the numbers to make these distinctions," Sherman said. "Most Bible codes are of the coincidental type. Others, however, are extremely improbable" and therefore believable, he said. "Learning which Bible codes are commonplace and which are exceptionally unlikely is very important." Sherman, who is a Christian, was interviewed for the television show "Exploring the Unknown," which is scheduled to air at 6 p.m. July 14 on Fox Family (cable channel 41). Also interviewed was code critic Barry Simon, an Orthodox Jew and an IBM professor of mathematics and theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Simon believes most Bible codes are bogus and can be found in any text, even "War and Peace." "The almost unanimous opinion of those in the scientific world who have studied the question is that the theory is without foundation," he wrote in a statement signed by 54 math and statistic professors from around the world. Bible code research is an intensely controversial field, said Dr. Nathan Jacobi, a Hebrew scholar in Ashland and a language consultant for Sherman�s research. Jacobi�s background is in the aerospace industry. He also taught math at Pasadena City College. "The very fact that you have the greatest minds in science disagreeing with each other already is an indication that it�s a real puzzle," said Jacobi. "It�s highly unusual to apply mathematical and statistical techniques to information you find in the Bible," he said. "There are even people in the religious community who don�t like the idea of applying scientific methods to issues of belief. And there are scientists who say, �This is a religious point of view, so don�t do it.� "But there are also scientists who have never believed in anything and this serves as proof of the existence of God; they need mathematical proof of God." Jacobi said Sherman has made significant contributions to the Bible code field, especially his discoveries in Isaiah. Sherman and his colleague, Dave Swaney, discovered 700 phrases or clusters of codes, all relating to the same subject, in Isaiah 52-53. The surface text prophesies the coming of Jesus Christ as the messiah 700 years before Christ was born. The codes Sherman and Swaney found prophesy Christ�s trial and death, including words such as "spitting," "whipping," "Judas," "sponge" "vinegar," "crucifixion" and names of high priests. "The odds of all these showing up in the Hebrew Bible are about as likely as winning a jackpot lottery seven times in a row," Sherman said. Searching for Bible codes is an intellectual challenge and hobby for Sherman. He doesn�t believe Bible codes should be used to predict the future, manipulate people or extract new "truths." Neither does he need the presence of the codes as a basis for his own faith. "The codes could be a kind of witness to the authenticity of the Bible � a kind of super-human echo effect reverberating through the structure of the text as proof the Bible is definitely not an ordinary book," Sherman said. The details of Sherman�s discoveries are located in his new book, "Breakthrough," which can be downloaded from his Web site, www.biblecodedigest.com Obituaries | Sports | Business | Classifieds | Tempo | Prime Times | So Oregon Sites | Outdoor Journal | Subscribe | Contact | Movies | Advertise | Real Estate Showcase | Archive | Editorials | Letters to the editor | Religion | Wake-up Call | NIE | Cyber Chef | Job Network | So Oregon Weather | WSJ Northwest | Forums | AP Wire | AP Money | F.A.Q. | Awards Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. The Community Newspaper Subsidiary of Dow Jones & Co, Inc Copyright �The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA