In one sense saving faith is the easiest thing in the world – as easy as being clay in the potter’s hands. But in another sense it is the hardest thing in the world, because human clay hates being shaped and formed by Christ so that He gets all the glory for what we become.
John Piper

Comments On Computer Analysis

Comments On Computer Analysis

Comments on “Computer Proof” article.

One thing I’ve always wondered about that “computer analysis”: which version of the Greek and Hebrew does it use? While the mathematical arguments as presented might be valid (not that I grant the validity of the approach) for a particular text in, say, manuscript A, those same arguments would collapse completely if applied to a variant reading in manuscript B.

Let’s look, for example, at the arguments the paper (called by the way something to the effect of “Computer Proof that the Bible Was Written By God”) uses for the text of Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. The paper starts out by demonstrating that the original Hebrew for this had exactly seven words (having already pointed out that in the Bible seven is clearly the number of God, a “fact” which itself is highly suspect). In addition, it continues, these seven words contain 28 (4×7) letters, of which the first three words have 14 and the last four 14. Of these latter four, the fourth and fifth have a total of seven letters, and the sixth and seventh together also contain seven letters. And the three “leading words” “God”, “heaven” and “earth” have an aggregate of 14 letters. In addition, the first, middle and last letters of the sentence total 133 (19×7), and the first and last letters of each word together have a value of 1393 (199×7). The paper goes on and on in like manner for first this verse and then for the entirety of the Bible, but this should be sufficient for my purposes.

The problems of this approach are too numerous to cover in detail. I’ll point out just a few. First of all, the paper never gets around to explaining just why it should be so significant that all these multiples of seven can be found in Scripture. It claims this proves that God wrote the Bible, but it never demonstrates just how it is the argument supports such a conclusion. What possible motivation would God have had for sticking all these sevens into Scripture in the first place? Why should he care?

In addition, while the paper goes to great pains to point out all these seven-combinations, what is equally significant — and this the paper fails to realize — is all the combinations that don’t aggregate to seven. For example, while it is true that the first three words of Genesis 1:1 when grouped together contain a number of letters which is divisible by seven, it is equally true that the first FOUR words of the sentence together do NOT. Why should God have chosen to make the first three words total seven but not the first four? And while the first, middle and last letters of the sentence total a multiple of seven, the first, middle and last letters of each word do not. And, as the paper points out, it is true that the aggregate of the 2nd through 6th words is 896, which is 128×7, that is two to the SEVENth power times seven. However, if it’s so significant that the multiplier 128 here is the seventh power of two, why is it not equally significant that other multipliers (such as the 19 in 19×7, the 58 in 58×7 or the 199 in 199×7) which the paper “discovers” are NOT seventh powers of 2 (or of any other number for that matter)? And why stop with the the aggregate of the first through seventh words, or of the second through sixth? What about the third through fifth? Why don’t they total a multiple of seven? The fact is, for every combination of seven the paper presents, one could easily find six which don’t divide by seven.

The problem with the approach is that it fails to take into count basic probabilities. If one starts with a group of letters, or words, and starts pulling out combinations at random, the chances are 100 percent, for example, that the total of each combination so examined is a multiple of 1 (since all numbers are multiples of one). The chances are 50 percent that the total is a multiple of 2, 33 percent that it is a multiple of three, and 25 percent that it is evenly divisible by 4. Similarly, 1 in five — or 20 percent — of the combinations will divide evenly by 5, and about 17 percent — one in six — will be a multiple of six. Thus, by sheer random chance one seventh of all combinations found will be an even multiple of 7.

The laws of probability tell us that of the 28 letters in Genesis 1:1 268,435,455 — more than a quarter of a billion — combinations may be made. Of these 268 million combinations, statistically, 1 in 7, or 14 percent, will be divisible by 7. Thus, there are over 37 million combinations of 7 in the first verse of Genesis alone! Surely proof that God wrote the Bible, right? On the other hand, there are nearly 45 million multiples of six, 53 million multiples of 5, 67 million multiples of 4, 89 million multiples of 3, and 134 million multiples of 2.

For the arguments in “Computer Proofs That the Bible is the Infallible Word of God” to have any validity, then, the authors must first prove that the number of seven combinations they have found significantly exceeds the 37 million which random chance says may be found in Genesis 1:1 alone. Frankly, I don’t think they can do it.

Calvin Culver