Hidden messages in the Torah
reprinted from SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS
SCIENCE SECTION, page 15C
November 30,1985
HIDDEN ‘MESSAGES’ IN TORAH
by Robin Lustig
Scripps Howard News Service
Dateline: Jerusalem
Computer analysis of the Torah, the Jewish holy book, indicates that it is unlikely to have been written by humans, according to Israeli researchers.
. The researchers at Israel’s Institute of Technology are not yet prepared to say that they have proved that the Jewish scriptures were written by a divine source. But they clearly believe that their preliminary finding point in that direction.
. “we can only say whether or not the scriptures were written by one person. But if you want to draw the conclusion that they were written by a divine source, you are entitled to do so,” Dr. Moshe Katz told a news conference earlier this fall.
. The researchers’ analysis is based on the remise that the Jewish scriptures contain “hidden” messages within the Hebrew text. As an example, Katz said that in the first two of the five books that make up the Torah, the word “Torah” can be read by taking one letter out of each of the 49 at the start of each volume.
. In the third volume, the word “Elokim” (one of the Hebrew words for God) can be read by taking one letter from each of the 26, he said. Forty-nine is a significant number because it is the square of seven, which is considered holy, and 26 is significant because it is the numerical value of the Hebrew letters that spell God, Katz explained. (All Hebrew letters have numerical equivaalents.)
. In the last two books of the Torah, he added, the word “Torah” appears spelled backwards in the same way. “The likelihood of this occurring by chance is around one in two million,” he said. Katz gave a number of other examples that he said showed that “hidden messages” appeared with far greater frequency than cluld be explained by coincidence. In the Book of Esther, the Jewish wife of Hamaan, demanded that the 10 sons of te enemy Malach be hanged, four letters in the list of the sons’ names appear in smaller print than the rest. When read together, these four letters give the numerical value of the year in the Jewish calendar equivalent to 1946, the year when 10 Nazi war criminals were hanged following the Nurenberg trials. . In another passage, the Hebrew word “hashoah”, which means holocast, appears in a section in which God warns that He will desert the Jewish people, leaving them to suffer great hardship, if they disobey the “covenant” between God and the Jews, Katz said.
. “We have programmed the computer to compare these findings with other writings, including a novel by the Israeli Nobel prizewinner Shai Agnon,” he added, “No equivalent findings have been reached.”
We refer all to the analysis of the Bible made by Computers For Christ and how this information may be considered a part of the features of that analysis.