Over the past several years, much controversy has been generated by statistical research originally done in Israel on what have come to be known as the "Bible Codes" or "Codes in Torah." This legitimate statistical work on equal-interval letter-skip patterns found in the book of Genesis was published in the August 1994 issue of the peer-reviewed journal, Statistical Science. Presentations of this research for popular audience have taken many different forms, ranging from reporter Michael Drosin's book, The Bible Code, through the"Discovery Seminars" run by the Jewish outreach organization Aish haTorah, and onward to various Christian and messianic groups attempting to use this material to make points of their own. Many of these popular presentations, unfortunately, range much farther afield than the original researchers ever intended to go, and until recently, responsible articles written for the educated non-statistician on the subject of the codes in Torah have been few and far between.

In October 1995, Bible Review magazine published an article by Jeffrey B. Satinover, MD, Ph.D., outlining the history of this statistical research and its basic findings. A psychiatrist with a private practice in psychotherapy, psychiatry and psychopharmacology, Satinover also serves as medical director for the Temenos Institute Psychiatric Clinic, in Westport, Connecticut. We are pleased to present here Dr. Satinover's complete article on the "Codes in Torah," reprinted with permission both from the author and from Bible Review. In a separate section, we also present Dr. Satinover's responses to letters received and printed by Bible Review which commented on his article (these letters, and Dr. Satinover's responses, appeared in the February 1996 issue).

Articles Critical of the "Codes in Torah"

Many well-reasoned criticisms of this work have also been written, and studies have been designed to point out flaws in the statistical methods used by Witztum, Rips, and Rosenberg (the authors of the original Statistical Science article). Statistician Prof. Abraham Y. Hasofer of Australia has written criticisms of the Statistical Science paper from a methodological point of view, and also (and somewhat more accessibly to the average reader) has strongly criticized their use for outreach (as is done in the "Discovery Seminars"). He originally published his Codes in Torah: A Rejoinder in 1993 in the journal B'Or Ha'Torah, vol. 8E. He has recently revised this article, which is now titled Torah Codes: Reality or Illusion. We highly recommend Prof. Hasofer's article.

We believe that Meru Foundation's work may shed some light on the Equal-Interval Letter Skip (ELS) patterns: how they might have been generated, and what their significance might be. Below are some informal essays and other material by Stan Tenen presenting our speculations on the subject.

In the summer of 1997, Stan Tenen did two radio interviews on the Bible Codes on Art Bell's Coast to Coast, an all-night program devoted to unusual and esoteric topics. Note that this program is designed for a general audience, with no background in Jewish learning, and only a slight awareness of science. However, the format allows the speaker enough uninterrupted time each half-hour to make a coherent presentation, and so the feedback we have received on these interviews is quite positive.

As of March 2000, Stan Tenen's two 1997 interviews on Coast to Coast are not currently available online.  Apparently, Coast to Coast is between servers for the Archives of older interviews, and no decision has been made as to whether, or where, to re-post them.  Up to date information can be found at www.coasttocoastam.com/guest/tenen-stan/6379,
audiocassette recordings of Mr. Tenen's interviews may still be available.

• Art Bell's Interview of Stan Tenen, 9 June 1997 (2 hours) and
• Art Bell's Interview of Stan Tenen, 7 July 1997 (3 hours)

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