ARTICLES ON THE "BIBLE CODES"

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).

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.

This abridged version of Prof. Hasofer's article is posted on a website maintaned by Prof. Brendan McKay, one of the chief critics of the "Codes" research (and indeed, of what he calls "mathematical miracles" in general). Prof. McKay's page of links on the "Torah Codes" material includes pointers to other articles on this subject which may be of interest.

In addition to Profs. Hasofer and McKay, many other mathematical professionals have also expressed strong reservations about the "Codes in Torah". Prof. Barry Simon of Cal Tech has organized a petition that expresses some of their major concerns.

We believe that Meru Foundation's work may shed some light on the equal-interval letter skip 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. Audio records of this interview may be available from the Coast to Coast AM website. The dates are below.