The episode discusses the "Bible Code," a hidden code in the Bible that allegedly predicts future events. In 1994, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin received a warning that his life was in danger, which was supposedly encoded in the Bible. A year later, Rabin was assassinated, and the code was found to have predicted the event.
The code was discovered by computer scientists, statisticians, and mathematicians who used a technique called "equidistant letter sequence" or "skip code" to find hidden messages in the Bible. One of the researchers, Dr. Eliyahu Rips, claimed to have found the names of 34 famous rabbis and their birth and death dates encoded in the Bible, despite the fact that the Bible was written thousands of years before they were born.
Other researchers, including Michael Drosnin, built on Rips' work and claimed to have found predictions of major world events, including the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin, the Gulf War, and the death of Princess Diana. Drosnin believed that the code was created by an advanced intelligence, possibly aliens, and that it contained predictions of future disasters that could be prevented if decoded.
However, critics, including Australian mathematician Brendan McKay, challenged the methodology used to decode the Bible and argued that the results were due to chance or manipulation of the data. McKay demonstrated that similar patterns could be found in other texts, including "Moby Dick" and song lyrics by Vanilla Ice.
Despite the controversy, the episode concludes that the Bible Code remains a fascinating and unexplained phenomenon that continues to inspire research and speculation.
Here are the key facts extracted from the text:
1. In 1994, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin received a warning that his life was in danger, encoded in the Bible.
2. The code predicted the assassination of Rabin, which occurred a year later.
3. The Bible Code also predicted the name of the killer and the date of the assassination.
4. The Bible Code is a type of code that uses equidistant letter sequences (ELS) to encode messages.
5. The ELS code was first discovered by Rabbi Ben Asher in the 13th century.
6. In the 1940s, Rabbi Ben Asher's work was revisited by Rabbi HMD Vice Mandle.
7. In 1985, mathematicians Eliu Rips, Doran Wium, and Yav Rosenberg performed a series of experiments on the Bible Code.
8. They found that the names of 34 famous rabbis were encoded in the Bible, along with their dates of birth and death.
9. The odds of this happening by chance were estimated to be about 1 in 10 million.
10. Michael Drosnin, an American investigative journalist, wrote a book about the Bible Code in 1997.
11. Drosnin's book claimed that the Bible Code predicted the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, as well as other major events.
12. The Bible Code also predicted the fall of Saddam Hussein, the capture of Osama bin Laden, and the 2008 financial crisis.
13. Some researchers have questioned the validity of the Bible Code, citing methodological flaws and the possibility of manipulating computer programs to find desired results.
14. In 1999, Australian mathematician Brendan McKay published a paper criticizing the methodology of the Bible Code research.
15. McKay showed that the same techniques used to find messages in the Bible could also be used to find messages in other texts, such as Moby Dick.
16. The search for the Bible Code has been ongoing for many years, with some researchers believing that it holds the key to predicting future events.
17. Michael Drosnin spent 25 years researching the Bible Code and wrote several books on the subject.
18. Drosnin believed that the Bible Code was created by an advanced intelligence, possibly extraterrestrial.
19. The Jordanian government approved an excavation request to search for a stone obelisk believed to be connected to the Bible Code, but later revoked the permit.
20. Drosnin passed away in 2020, but his work on the Bible Code continues to be studied and debated by researchers.