What About Torah Codes and the ELS Phenomena?

One question that we have been asked repeatedly---over and over---is whether or not theomatics has any similarity to the recent discoveries in Israel and elsewhere?

These discoveries have been commonly referred to as "Codes in the Torah," and "ELS phenomena" (Equi-distant Letter Sequences).

Just about everybody out there on the Web, who follows the subjects of Christian evidences, apologetics, Bible prophecy, etc., has heard of these discoveries. The Internet is loaded with sites and newsgroups that discuss this subject (see links at bottom of page).

There is positively no relationship or similarity whatsoever, between theomatics and ELS. They are as different as night and day.

Unlike theomatics, ELS does not utilize the numerical values for the letters of the Hebrew and Greek alphabets, nor does ELS work with the numerical values of words.

A Brief History

A Rabbi named Weissmandel in 1958 observed an unusual phenomenon in the original Hebrew text of the book of Genesis. Upon close examination he found patterns of coded words and phrases buried "beneath" the surface of the book. Unable to pursue this phenomenon very far due to lack of technology, the study died with Weissmandel. Some students at Hebrew university examined Weissmandel's research in 1988 and incorporated computers to further the search for these "Torah Codes." These "codes" reveal knowledge of "future" events and the names of prominent people! By examining the letters of the text in equally spaced intervals (ELS) in the Old Testament, these letters fit together to form new words with significant meaning. Names, dates, events, are "spelled" out in passages of the O.T. Perhaps an example of how these codes are searched out would be appropriate here.

If a hidden word such as "Torah" was being looked for in a particular paragraph or verse, once the 1st (Hebrew) letter for Torah was found in a particular passage, the computer then searches forward through the text to locate the 2nd letter. When the 2nd letter is located, the distance (in letters) is noted. Let's say the distance between the 1st and 2nd letter is 13. The computer then continues through the text at 13 letter intervals, and only that interval, and records the letters at those positions to see if they form coherent words or phrases. Of course you have to first know what word you are looking for, and thus ask the computer to look for the first letter of that word to initiate the search.

Excerpts taken from Hal Lindsey's magazine, article: "God's Authorship of the Book of Genesis."

What Has Been Found?

Here are just a few very brief and typical examples of the "phenomena."

• The first five books of the Bible (the Books of Moses) are known as the Torah. In the Hebrew of Genesis, if you take the first "T", then count 49 letters, the next letter (the 50th) is "O"; the next 50th is "R"; and the next 50th is "H". In other words, after the first "T", in 50 letter increments, we find the letters spelling Torah (TORaH). In the book of Exodus, we also encounter a similar result.

• The word "Eden" is encoded repeatedly 16 times within the short Gen 2:4-10 passage dealing with the garden of Eden. The odds against 16 "Edens" occurring by chance in such a short passage, is claimed to be 1 in 10,000. Also in chapter 2 of Genesis, which deals with the Garden of Eden, scientists have found encoded in the text 25 different Hebrew names for trees. The odds against this happening is 100,000 to 1. (Source~Grant Jeffrey, The Signature of God, pg. 207-208).

• Yacov Rambsel has discovered an astonishing pattern of significant letters spelling Jesus' name YESHUA encoded at equally spaced intervals beneath the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. God encoded these Hebrew letters spelling the name of His Messiah - Yesha ha'Mashiach (Jesus the Christ) ~ in each of the great messianic prophecies. These incredible coded words provide profound insights revealing who Yeshua is, His origin, His mission, and His destiny to return as God's Messiah to establish the kingdom of God. (Source~Yacov Rambsel, YESHUA, The Name of Jesus Revealed in the Old Testament, back cover of book).

For example, in Genesis 1:1, starting with the first letter yod, counting every 521st letter, spells, Yeshua yahkol, which means, Yeshua is able. In Genesis 2:20, starting with the mem in Adam's name, counting 101 letters three times from the right to left, spells Messiah, Mashiach. Starting with the last heh in Genesis 3:20, counting 9 letters 5 times from right to left spells, Yoshiah, which means, He will save. In Exodus 25:5, starting with the second letter ayin, counting every 219th letter from right to left (in reverse), spells, ha'yorah emmet, which means teach the truth.

Probably the most astounding claims relative to ELS, are the claims that modern day historical events, people's names, etc. appear imbedded in the codes. A great deal of excitement is currently being propagated, especially by the proponents of Bible prophecy. Here are just a few of the more harrowing examples.

• In Deut 10:17-22, the scientists found encoded in a group of six verses the Hebrew spelling for "Hitler", "Nazis", "Berlin", "Auschwitz", and the phrase, "a people cry murder, slaughter"! (Jeffrey Pgs. 209-211).

• Perhaps one of the most astonishing "codes" that has been discovered has been a group of "words" clustered together that describe the death of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. The Hebrew words for Sadat, the name of the Moslem Brotherhood assassination team that killed him, the year of the assassination... 1981, and the words "president", "parade", and "murder" were all found clustered together in several verses (Jeffrey, Pg. 209).

• In chapters 39-41 of Genesis we see references to the French Revolution. Revealed in a cluster of encoded words we see the Hebrew words Mapecha HaSarfatit (which spells "French Revolution" in Hebrew), "Louis," the name of the French king, the word "Beit Bourbon," his royal dynasty, the word "Hamarseilles", the name of the French national anthem, and the word "Bastillia" (the infamous French prison for political prisoners). Interestingly, all this information is contained in Genesis 39-41, where the surface text deals with Joseph's imprisonment in Egypt (Jeffrey Pg. 211).

• The researchers at Hebrew University took from "The Encyclopedia of Great Men of Israel", a standard Hebrew reference book, the names of 34 prominent rabbis who lived between the 9th and 19th century A.D. (please note A.D., not B.C.). They also noted the dates of their births and deaths. They then did a computer search for these names in the Book of Genesis. To their amazement, every single name was present encoded in the book of Genesis, in addition each name was coupled in close proximity with the date of the rabbi's death. When submitted to the journal, they encountered skepticism. The Royal Statistical Society wanted to see the results firsthand. Therefore, the Society chose an additional 32 names from the same encyclopedia and asked that their referees observe the computer search. Again, every single one of the additional 32 names was present, coupled with the correct dates of their deaths. The odds of this happening by random chance are more than staggering, they are estimated to be 1 in 50 quadrillion. In otherwords... no chance (Hal Lindsey).

Not to sound too lampoonish, the only thing that could surpass all the above, for an encore, would be if someone found the names of C.I. Scoffied, Hal Lindsey, and Dallas Theological Seminary, imbedded somewhere in the codes? Or how about Del Washburn and Theomatics?

Our Own Personal Assessment

At Theomatics Research, it is not within our capability to say, whether or not for sure, any or all of the above are either true or false. At this time only God knows for sure what is present in His Word with ELS. In otherwords, how much of it is true and of divine origin, and how much of it is simply the overzealous efforts of various proponents and researchers who have private wishes.

It may very well be within God's purposes to put something like ELS in the Bible. Let's not underestimate God. We certainly would not be surprised to see spiritual truths, names and attributes of God, various Bible words and teachings, the name of YESHUA (or Jesus) all through the codes, etc. That idea, at least for us, is fairly believable.

But the names of Hitler and modern day Jewish Rabbis? ---Incredulous!

There are so many articles, studies, innuendoes, etc. all over the Web, about these discoveries. Many of them seem credible. Yet a great deal of it is "hearsay," ---all sorts of second hand information, quotes from quotes of somebody else's quotes, people talking a lot about amazing and specific findings, but giving no real facts or verifiable data. There are a lot of things being said, but not a lot of hard (easy to understand) data or explanations. Everything seems to be in bits and pieces all over the place.

One major study and paper that has been done, was put out by Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips, and Yoav Rosenberg, and is entitled Equidistant Letter Sequences in the Book of Genesis. We obtained a copy from the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (Volume 9, Number 3, August 1994). It is extremely scientific and mathematical and technical in nature (would take a math professor from MIT to figure it out). Evidently, calculations have been done on this that substantially prove minute probability or chance that ELS is simply coincidence. There is, however, a scientific rebuttal to that investigation, from Brendan McKay of Australian National University.

The two books currently on the market, fueling the excitement and debate among the general populace, are the books by Grant R. Jeffrey, The Signature of God, and YESHUA, by Yacov Rambsel---upon which much of Jeffrey's book is based.

ELS Software Available

The programmer who put together the research for software for theomatics, also developed a program to do the ELS research. We have never really used the program, but will make it available to those may be interested in it. It is a DOS prompt Borland Turbo C program, that takes the straight line Hebrew text, and finds Equi-Distant Words. A person enters into the program the location or (1) starting point of the search, and (2) the sequence desired. The program then searches and (3) prints out the results with various formatting options.

The program is available from us at Theomatics Research for $30.00. If a person wants the entire Old Testament Hebrew text included, the price is $50.00.

There is also a program available from Torah Gematrias that will look for the patterns, but only in the Torah (first five books of O.T.). It is available from Torah Educational Software.

Letter From and to a Doctor

To conclude here, we would like to quote portions of some email exchange, with a medical doctor, Dr. Frank Krautter, who wrote to us asking us about our assessment of ELS? It will provide a somewhat subjective and fascinating analysis.

Dear Del:

I find the "Hitler" and "Mussolini" thing to be pretty incredulous. It almost makes me think that the patterns are random, and that if you search long enough you can find anything, which discredits the whole approach. I would bet a lot of people look at that sort of finding, and say, "lunacy" and close their minds like a clam snapping shut. I have to trust others on the stats, and the statements that these patterns are not in non biblical sources. To prove that, you would have to spend a huge effort looking. I thought the link would be in that the intervals were key numbers. For a few of Rambsel's intervals that is the case. You don't have a index by key theomatic values, and I scanned a good part of your book looking for links between his work and yours and was not too successful. If being a doctor didn't take up so much time, I could get into this a lot better. Frank

Dear Dr. Krautter:

The fact everyone must realize, is that everybody out there is looking for future events, the holocaust, etc. determined to find those things. Can they be equally found by mixing up the words randomly? That is the type of testing that theomatic has done and must continue to do. It is the only credible way. This is all very fascinating, isn't it? Del

Dear Del:

Yes it is incredibly fascinating. I have talked it up a bunch, Most people say, interesting, but it is above their heads. They are unwilling to stop and think about it. Then a group understand it clearly and are content to just sit with the information I give them. Most people are very very lazy thinkers, and at best a capable of only paroting back what others have said to them, but they are still dear sweet souls that I enjoy, even though it is disappointing. Maybe the same frustration devotees of the opera have with me. Frank

Hi Frank!

I was glad to read the things you said. The one thing that disturbs me the most about ELS, is the fact that the findings consist of what I like to call "little spurts phenomena." Unlike theomatics, it does not involve testing procedures on a large population of non arbitrarily selected examples (identified in advance of performing any tests.) Hebrew words generally have very few letters in them. It takes perhaps only three to six letters to come up with any Hebrew word, that may require perhaps twice as many letters to translate into English (Hebrew has no vowels but only consonants). Trying to compose Hebrew words to match modern English words, such as HOLOCAUST, HITLER, GESTAPO, etc. may be very easy to do, because with just consonants, any vowell (a,e,i,o,u) can be arbitrarily interposed. Also, how many possible different ways are there to spell "Hitler" in Hebrew?

I have seen only two to three ELS examples of phrases more than two words in length, and am not sure that ELS found those by the same sequences. If the phrase was found by the same unbroken sequence pattern, that would be truly impressive. If phrases are being put together by individual words, each found by different sequences, that would start to smell suspicious.

I do not understand the statistical calculations that supposedly come up with the incredible non/random probabilities. If you stop and think about it, there are "trillions" of possibilities as to where one could start a sequence, or how big the equal lengths are, etc. It appears that the sky is the limit, i.e. there are no limits on how people can find results. There must always be definable parameters (a limit of possibilities) before accurate probabilities can be determined.

The problem I see here is that apparently no one (at least I have not heard of anyone) testing this on non Biblical sources. Or better yet, on a randomly re-arranged Biblical source. That is what must be done. There are just too many ways to approach the thing in order to come up with the conclusions that people want to come up with. The whole Biblical text is going to have to be jumbled, and then some side by side searches done. Again, that is the rigorous type of testing that theomatics has done.

And of course when some professor from "Harvard or MIT" does the calcs (based upon data fed to him by the ELS researcher), and comes up with jillions to one probabilities, why who would even dare question that? The big problem with all of this, is if it is NOT true, someone (or many someone's) are going to eventually expose it. That would not only bring down the credibility of the house of ELS, but also the house of theomatics. Ouch!

You are right about people not understanding the stats. The equal problem for the person debunking the claims, is that no one will understand his stats either (nor will most people want to believe them). What will happen is that a handful of both the proponents and the debunkers will end up talking past one another.

I really do believe that theomatics holds much better potential for scientific verification than anything else that has (apparently) ever been done, including ELS. The problem is convincing others of that fact. If ELS eventually goes down, it is really going to hurt theomatics. If ELS holds up, most everyone out there will automatically accept theomatics as being more believable. It is unfortunate that it has to be that way. I would feel like the republican who lost the election because he ran in the year all the democrats swept into office. Del

Links to ELS Sites

We contemplated providing a list of sites dealing with the Torah Codes, but there are so many it is hard to pick and choose. For best results, use a search engine such as AltaVista, and type in key words, such as: Torah codes, codes in the Torah, Hebrew codes, Codes in the Pentateuch, ELS phenomena, The Signature of God, etc. You will bring up dozens of sites that will provide lists and links to other sites. Be sure to search Usenet (newsgroups) as well as the Web.

One of the best places to start, is the Resource Page at Georgia Tech.