CHRISTMAS

(The monthly e-newsletterfrom from Bible Code Digest Site.)

Dr.asali Zaki

CHRISTMAS STORY FOUND IN 3000-YEAR-OLD WRITINGS OF KING SOLOMON

The researchers at biblecode digest have announced the finding of a 14-letter ELS :
"Christmas is a gift to Him and to the mother"

 

Details of the Christmas story have been found encoded together in the ancient Hebrew text of the Bible, written nearly a thousand years before the event.The surprisingly extensive collection of predictions was discovered beneath the surface text of the book of Proverbs earlier this month by Bible Code Digest researchers.In announcing the finds, the monthly e-newsletter and web site  noted that its researchers suspect there are many more similar codes yet to be found in the passageCentered around a puzzling Christmas message, the researchers have so far found dozens of Hebrew equidistant letter sequences (ELSs) such as Mary, Joseph, Bethlehem, stable, manger, nativity, shepherds, star and angels.The cryptic 14-letter focal ELS reads “Christmas is a gift to him and to the mother,” and runs backwards every 19th letter from Proverbs 15:30 to 15:22..Researchers are not sure of the meaning of the messageThe complete cluster of Christmas codes appears to span Proverbs 14 through 17.Bible scholars believe Solomon, the son of King David, authored most of Proverbs. He reigned as king of Israel from 970-930 B.C..Equidistant letter sequences are Hebrew words and phrases made up of letters with equal numbers of other letters, or “skips,” between them.According to veteran mathematician R. Edwin Sherman, director of the Bible Code Digest, the odds against these words appearing by chance is less than one in a trillion.“A small number of these codes could just be coincidental,” said Sherman. “But there are far too many of them in this array to be there by chance.”.Sherman is a consultant to Fortune 500 companies and government agencies on insurance risk, Sherman uses accepted statistical analysis to evaluate the validity of Bible codes.VResearchers included Sherman, Dr. Nathan Jacobi and Dave Swaney, editor of the Bible Code Digest.Bible Code Digest researchers use search software developed by the pioneering Israeli scientists whose paper announcing the significance of Torah codes was first published in the prestigious journal Statistical Science.The software uses the Koren version of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament.Significant code clusters like this are typically connected thematically to the surface text above them.For instance, another less mathematically-significant Christmas cluster was discovered during the project beneath Micah 5:1, a well-known prophetic passage about the Christmas story.The verse reads, “But you, Bethlehem Ephratah, though you are little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall he come forth to me, he who is to be ruler in Israel; and his origin is from ancient time, from days of old.”

The researchers are so far baffled by the lack of such a connection for this cluster. The Proverbs text where the Christmas codes are located is seemingly the same advice for living given throughout this revered book, and has no obvious link to the Christmas story.Bible code research gained the world spotlight three years ago with the publication of several best-selling books on the subject. But research into Bible codes has been going on since the Middle Ages, when rabbis began noticing remarkable ELSs in the Torah.Code research took a quantum leap forward with the introduction of mathematical analysis of German and Japanese codes during World War II, and the advent of personal computers a few decades later. Bible code researchers use the same basic methodology to search for codes in the original Hebrew.

Bible Code Digest researchers have discovered several other meaningful code arrays in the Old Testament. The most significant is a massive cluster beneath Isaiah 52 and 53 about the crucifixion of Christ. Another is an extremely significant group of Holocaust clusters in Genesis and Deuteronomy.They also recently announced discovery of a new form of code called mosaics, which are word patterns that when analyzed statistically indicate authorship of portions of Genesis was far beyond the abilities of humans.

The following is a partial list of the Christmas ELSs found to date:

 Christmas is a present to him and to the Mother
 Son of Mary
 Joseph
 Mary
 Betrothed
 City of David
 Bethlehem
 Star
 Jesus the Messiah
 Stable
 Manger
 Angels
 Homage
 Deer of the Dawn (Star of the East)
 Son of Man
 Cow Shed
 Shepherds
 Atonement Lamb
 Hope
 Adoration
 Virgin
 The Magi
 Gifts
 Gift of Myrrh
 Gift of Frankincense
 Gift of Gold
 The Root of Jesse
 Savior
 Cradle of Straw
 A Banner for the Peoples
 A Covenant of the People
 Light of the Nations
 Holy Child
 Holy New-born Child
 Newborn King
 Son of the Highest
 He Will Be Great
 Wonderful Counselor
 John
 The Baptist
 Carpenter
 Elizabeth
 The Word
 The Promised One
 Anointed One
 Ruler in Israel

  Ephratah
 Astrologer
 Camel
 Camels
 Astrologers
 No Room
 At the Inn
 Redeemer
 Jehovah
 Miraculous
 Lamb of God
 Second Adam
 Son of Jehovah
 Peace (Shalom)
 Fulfillment
 Lord
 Heavenly
 Census
 Miracle
 Wonderful
 Counselor
 Garland/Wreath of Thorns
 Living Jehovah
 Glory
 Glorious
 Foundation
 Roman Tax
 Holy
 Caesar
 Gabriel
 Quirinius
 From Nazareth
 Simeon

 Seraphim
 Herod
 Prophetic
 Cross
 Immanuel
 Atonement
 Descendant of David
 Pilgrim
 Awesome Jehovah
 Angelic


***Christmas Codes in the Book of Proverbs***

Most subscribers received an e-mail from us during the week before Christmas with a press release about our exciting Christmas codes discoveries, one of the most significant code cluster discoveries of the past year. Here is the story behind the finds.

As the Christmas season approached, it dawned on us that if the Old Testament held a magnificent cluster on the details of the death of Christ, such as the one in Isaiah 52-53, that it might also harbor similar treasures about his birth.  So we commenced an expedition into the Tanakh to see what we could see.

Our first search target was the text beneath the great prophecy in Micah 5:2 (5:1 in the Jewish Bible) concerning the role the little town of Bethlehem would have in the birth of the Messiah. We were encouraged at first by the number of Christmas terms we found there. However, after putting a fairly impressive list of ELSs together, and computing the probabilities of the findings, we found them to be borderline in terms of their significance. We lacked a dramatic focal code - a long ELS with short skips -- for the collection.  And there were few lengthy ELSs with short skips.  Perhaps we (or someone else) will find these in the future, but we decided to look around instead for another, more meaningful area to search for ELSs about the birth of Christ.

Dr. Nathan Jacobi told us over lunch in mid-December that there was a Hebrew term for Christmas (Khet-gimel Heh-mem-vav-lamed-dalet), which literally translated means "Holiday of the Nativity," and that he had searched for it in the Tanakh. But he told us that the only significant find of this seven-letter ELS occurred in Proverbs 15 with a skip of only 19 (The next shortest skip was 670). He had put it aside to research at a later time. The next day we conducted a few tentative searches of the vicinity with some of the ELSs we had found in Micah, and were rewarded with hits on an impressive percentage of the terms that we looked for. And the ELSs we were finding in Proverbs had much lower skips than those we had seen in Micah. After we had collected three dozen of these ELSs, Ed Sherman ran a probability test on them and found that they were indeed significant.

As we accumulated these short finds, we "snooped" before and after those that seemed to be key terms to see whether or not they could be lengthened into a focal code. In fact, we e-mailed Dr. Jacobi an extension of the Christmas code to see whether it contained words that could lengthen the message, but we inadvertently sent him the letter strings backwards. The mistake was not a complete disaster, though. Dr. Jacobi discovered two meaningful terms in the letters that run counter to the direction of the Christmas code - "Rejoice my people" and "From God to Jesse."

Only a couple of days before we had planned to send out a press release on our findings, we met with Dr. Jacobi to discuss the Christmas code again. This time, considering the letters before it, we found that the seven letters leading into the code read gift (Sheen-yod) to him (Lamed-vav) and to the mother (Lamed-aleph-mem), to create the phrase, "Christmas is a gift to him and to the mother," a 14-letter, seven-word ELS strengthening the focal code that is the center of cluster. But what does it mean? Is the "him" Joseph and "the mother" Mary? Does it refer to mankind in general and mothers specifically? The possibility that Mary is "the mother" is supported by close occurrences of ELSs for Mary and virgin. Likewise, the possibility that Joseph is "him" is suggested by a close ELS for his name. But the bottom line is that we really don't know. By the way, the significant "From God to Jesse" ELS is partially beneath the longer code, using the same letters as "is a gift to him !
and to the mother," but running the opposite direction, and including a yod that is just outside the sheen that begins the focal code.

We are also wondering why this growing cluster of codes is in the book of Proverbs, beneath a passage of wonderful bits of wisdom from Solomon contrasting the wicked and the righteous, but no hint of a prophesied birth. The Micah array that we had searched earlier had, of course, a strong connection with the surface text. There are a few tenuous connections, such as the portion of 15:23: "A man finds joy . . ." And 15:24, which reads, "The path of life leads upward for the wise to keep him from going down to the grave."  It is a fascinating puzzle. A more appropriate surface text might have been another verse a few chapters later on, in Proverbs, 25:2: "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter."

So far the codes that we have found tend to divide themselves up into three main categories:
 
- the trip to Bethlehem and the birth of Christ
- events following the birth, including the adoration of the shepherds and The Maji
- the visit to Jerusalem for Jesus' circumcision and the subsequent flight into Egypt

While we were excited about finding "The Maji" encoded in the passage, we were unable to find "the wise men (or the three kings)" in the area. The only wise man we could associate with the other finds was Solomon himself.  As might be expected, however, the literal text in this area is peppered with references to "the wise."  Discovered to date have been many associated words, such as pilgrim, astrologers, homage, eastern, star, and the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh that they brought.  We noted that the occurrence of the ELS for "Persian" with the shortest skip (14) was only four letters away from the ELS for "astrologers" (skip of 536) at the same letter where the ELS for "adoration" (skip of 96) exactly intersects with "astrologers."

Similarly, we noted that the occurrence of the John ELS with the shortest skip in the passage (74) was only two letters away from the ELS for "the Baptist" (skip of 620).  We have only begun to explore this labyrinthine cluster of seemingly related codes and ELSs.

We will continue to research this fascinating array, as well as the one in Micah.  We would welcome your views and any other terms you may find in either passage.

The odds against the cluster of Christmas ELSs that we have so far found in Proverbs 14-17 (or of any one of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 alternative similar clusters) appearing as it does by chance are less than 1 in a billion times a billion.  We believe our calculation more than adequately takes into account the "wiggle room" that skeptics cite as their prime reason for rejecting the potential validity of Bible codes.  This cluster is clear, substantive evidence of the reality of some of its ELSs.

Here are the ELSs rated eight stars through two stars that we have found to date:

We have provided a rating for each finding:
- CODES, or STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT CODES, are those with less than a 1% probability of occurring.  These have a rating of 4 or higher.
- POSSIBLE CODES, or those with a 1 to 10% probability of occurring (Rating: 3)
- ELSs, or those with a 10% or higher probability of occurring (Ratings: 0-2)


CODES

Rating: 8 stars (********)
Description: Extremely Improbable
Range of Probabilities: Less than 0.0001%
Range of Odds:  Less than 1 in 1 million

(********) Christmas is a present to him and to the mother (Sheen-yod Lamed-vav Lamed-aleph-mem Khet-gimel Heh-mem-vav-lamed-dalet) Proverbs 15:22, Word 4, Letter 3, Skip -19.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////

(___*****)
Rating: 5 Stars (___*****)
Description: Rare
Range of Probabilities: 0.01% - 0.1%
Range of Odds:  (1 in 1,000) to (1 in 10,000)

(___*****) From God to Jesse (Mem-aleph-lamed-vav Lamed-yod-sheen-yod), Proverbs 15:26, Word 7, Letter 3, Skip +19.
(___*****) And Father of the Root of Jesse (Vav Aleph-bet Sheen-resh-sheen Yod-sheen-yod), Proverbs 9:13, Word 3, Letter 3, Skip -678.
(___*****) Eastern (Koof-dalet-mem-vav-noon-yod), Proverbs 17:14, Word 7, Letter 3, Skip -2. (Refers to the star in the east as well as the Maji.)

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Rating: 4 Stars (____****)
Description: Very Unlikely
Range of Probabilities: 0.1% - 1.0%
Range of Odds:  (1 in 1,000) to (1 in 100)

(____****) Jesus the Messiah (Yod-sheen-vav-ayeen Heh-mem-sheen-yod-khet), Proverbs 14:19, Word 8, Letter 3, Skip +5,771.
(____****) Rejoice My People (Resh-noon-vav Ayeen-mem-yod), Proverbs 15:17, Word 3, Letter 2, Skip +19.
(____****) Pilgrim (Tsadee-lamed-yod-yod-noon), Proverbs 15:27, Word 6, Letter 3, Skip +2. (Refers to individual wise men.)

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////

POSSIBLE CODES

Rating: 3 Stars (_____***)
Description: Unlikely
Range of Probabilities: 1.0% - 10%

(_____***) Manger (Aleph-bet-vav-samekh), Proverbs 15:17, Word 7, Letter 1, Skip +1.
(_____***) Elizabeth (Aleph-lamed-yod-sheen-bet-ayeen)), Proverbs 14:5, Word 2, Letter 1, Skip +58. (Relative of Mary's; mother of John the Baptist.)
(_____***) The Baptist (Heh-mem-tet-bet-yod-lamed), Proverbs 16:19, Word 7, Letter 3, Skip -620.
(_____***) Living YHVH (Yod-heh-vav-heh Khet-yod), Proverbs 15:22, Word 2, Letter 2, Skip -21.
(_____***) The Holy Newborn Child (Heh-yod-lamed-vav-dalet Yod-koof-resh-aleph), Zechariah 8:10, Word 23, Letter 4, Skip +14,742.
(_____***) Counselor (Tsadee-ayeen-vav-yod), Proverbs 15:22, Word 6, Letter 1, Skip -1. (from Isaiah 9:5-6)
(_____***) Homage (Kaf-bet-vav-dalet), Proverbs 15:33, Word 6, Letter 1, Skip +1.
(_____***) Roman Tax (Mem-samekh Resh-vav-mem-noon), Proverbs 14:12, Word 4, Letter 3, Skip -393.
(_____***) Salvation (Yod-sheen-vav-ayeen-heh), Proverbs 15:28, Word 3, Letter 2, Skip -4.
(_____***) Betrothed (Aleph-resh-vav-sheen-heh)), Proverbs 17:10, Word 5, Letter 2, Skip -32.
(_____***) Son of Man (Bet-noon Aleph-dalet-mem), Proverbs 15:31, Word 5, Letter 4, Skip +22.
(_____***) Atonement Lamb (Tet-lamed-heh Kaf-Peh-vav-resh), Psalms 77:12, Word 1, Letter 5, Skip -8,688.
(_____***) Hope (Lamed-koof-vav-vav-tav), Proverbs 15:27, Word 6, Letter 2, Skip -20.
(_____***) Quirinius (Koof-yod-resh-noon-yod-vav-samekh), Psalms 106:7, Word 15, Letter 1, Skip -5,635.
(_____***) Cradle of Straw (Ayeen-resh-sheen Koof-sheen), Proverbs 14:14, Word 2, Letter 4, Skip +223.
(_____***) Joseph (Yod-vav-samekh-peh), Proverbs 15:4, Word 3, Letter 2, Skip -13.
(_____***) Betrothed (Aleph-resh-vav-sheen-heh), Proverbs 14:17, Word 7, Letter 4, Skip +64.
(_____***) Adoration (Heh-ayeen-resh-tsadee-heh), Proverbs 15:27, Word 6, Letter 2, Skip +96.
(_____***) Egyptian (Mem-tsadee-resh-yod), Proverbs 15:18, Word 8, Letter 2, Skip -3.
(_____***) In the Book it is Written (Bet-samekh-peh-resh Kaf-tav-vav-bet), Jeremiah 52:4, Word 20, Letter 3, Skip -56,387.


//////////////////////////////////////////////////////

ELSs

Rating: 2 Stars (______**)
Description: Not unusual
Range of Probabilities: 10% - 30%

(______**) Carpenter (Noon-gimel-resh), Proverbs 16:28, Word 5, Letter 3, Skip -1.
(______**) A Banner for the peoples (Lamed-noon-samekh Ayeen-mem-yod-mem), Psalms 142:7, Word 11, Letter 1, Skip -5019. (From Isaiah 11:10.)
(______**) Counselor (Tsadee-ayeen-vav-yod), Proverbs 15:22, Word 6, Letter 1, Skip -4.
(______**) Caesar (Koof-yod-samekh-resh), Proverbs 16:13, Word 4, Letter 3, Skip +52.
(______**) Childbirth (Lamed-yod-dalet-heh), Proverbs 15:13, Word 8, Letter 4, Skip -11.
(______**) Adoration (Aleph-heh-bet-heh), Proverbs 15:17, Word 4, Letter 2, Skip +1.
(______**) Adoration (Aleph-heh-bet-heh), Proverbs 17:9, Word 4, Letter 1, Skip +1.
(______**) Adoration (Aleph-heh-bet-heh), Proverbs 17:17, Word 3, Letter 1, Skip +1.
(______**) Joseph (Yod-vav-samekh-peh), Proverbs 14:25, Word 6, Letter 4, Skip +26.
(______**) Foundation (Yod-samekh-vav-dalet), Proverbs 14:7, Word 6, Letter 2, Skip -16.
(______**) Counselor (Yod-vav-ayeen-tsadee), Proverbs 14:19, Word 3, Letter 4, Skip -6.
(______**) Gabriel (Gimel-bet-resh-yod-aleph-lamed), Proverbs 11:5, Word 6, Letter 3, Skip -1012.
(______**) Son of the Highest (Bet-noon Heh-ayeen-lamed-yod-vav-noon)), Proverbs 14:2, Word 7, Letter 1, Skip +8,503.
(______**) City of David (Ayeen-yod-resh Dalet-vav-yod-dalet), Proverbs 12:16, Word 3, Letter 3, Skip -3,390.
(______**) Bethlehem (Bet-yod-tav-lamed-khet-mem), Proverbs 12:13, Word 1, Letter 1, Skip +568.
(______**) To Egypt (Lamed-mem-tsadee-resh-yod-mem), Proverbs 12:25, Word 2, Letter 2, Skip +621.
(______**) Lord (Aleph-dalet-vav-noon), Proverbs 16:1, Word 5, Letter 3, Skip -4.
(______**) Mary (Mem-resh-yod-mem), Proverbs 14:29, Word 7, Letter 1, Skip +1.
(______**) Virgin (Bet-tav-vav-lamed-heh), Proverbs 14:1, Word 3, Letter 4, Skip -23.
(______**) Gift of myrrh (Sheen-yod Mem-vav-resh), Proverbs 15:1, Word 1, Letter 4, Skip -16.
(______**) Shepherds (Resh-vav-ayeen-heh-yod-mem), Proverbs 15:32, Word 1, Letter 3, Skip +209.
(______**) Joy (Sheen-mem-khet-heh), Proverbs 15:23, Word 7, Letter 2, Skip -6.
(______**) John (Yod-vav-khet-noon-noon), Proverbs 14:7, Word 3, Letter 3, Skip +74.
(______**) Holy Child (Yod-lamed-dalet Koof-dalet-sheen), Psalms 141:8, Word 1, Letter 2, Skip +2,988.
(______**) Cross (Tsadee-lamed-bet), Proverbs 15:12, Word 2, Letter 4, Skip -1.
(______**) My Servant (Ayeen-bet-dalet-yod), Proverbs 15:15, Word 4, Letter 2, Skip +8. (From Isaiah 52:13.)
(______**) John (Yod-vav-khet-noon-noon), Proverbs 15:30, Word 7, Letter 4, Skip -84.
(______**) The Root of Jesse (______), Proverbs 14:7, Word 3, Letter 3, Skip +74.
(______**) Virgin (Bet-tav-vav-lamed-heh), Proverbs 16:32, Word 4, Letter 3, Skip +28.
(______**) Angels (Mem-lamed-aleph-kaf-yod-mem), Proverbs 16:14, Word 2, Letter 1, Skip +261.
(______**) Foundation (Yod-samekh-vav-dalet), Proverbs 14:31, Word 5, Letter 5, Skip -28.
(______**) Homage (Kaf-bet-vav-dalet), Proverbs 16:8, Word 3, Letter 3, Skip -10.
(______**) Gift of myrrh (Sheen-yod Mem-vav-resh), Proverbs 16:7, Word 3, Letter 2, Skip -22.
(______**) My Servant (Ayeen-bet-dalet-yod), Proverbs 14:9, Word 5, Letter 4, Skip -10.
(______**) Holy (Koof-vav-dalet-sheen), Proverbs 16:31, Word 5, Letter 3, Skip +33.
(______**) The Maji (Heh-mem-aleph-gimel-yod), Proverbs 16:7, Word 2, Letter 4, Skip +111.
(______**) Gift of myrrh (Sheen-yod Mem-vav-resh), Proverbs 14:17, Word 7, Letter 2, Skip +23.
(______**) Wonderful (Noon-peh-lamed-aleph), Proverbs 16:26, Word 1, Letter 1, Skip +16.
(______**) Glory (Peh-aleph-resh), Proverbs 14:17, Word 1, Letter 3, Skip -1.
(______**) Glory (Peh-aleph-resh), Proverbs 16:31, Word 2, Letter 2, Skip +1.
(______**) Fulfillment (Bet-yod-tsadee-vav-ayeen), Proverbs 13:11, Word 3, Letter 3, Skip +33.

Not listed here is a surprisingly long list of 114 ELSs with a rating of one star. 

ELSs that we searched for but did not find are the following:

You Shall Name Him Jesus, Horn of Salvation, You Highly Favored One, Meek and Mild, GF Handel, Silent Night, Only Savior, Christianity, Three Wise Men, Three Kings, The Lord Himself Will Give You a Sign, A Virgin is with Child, Upon Them the Light Had Dawned, A Great Light, Precious Cornerstone, Sin-Bearer, A Child is Given, Heavenly Host, And His Kingdom Will Never End, Newborn King, The Only Son of God, Born of a Virgin, Offspring of a Woman, Child of Heaven, The Word Made Flesh, Son of Elohim, Caesar Augustus, Swaddling Cloths.

In all, we have so far compiled a database of 216 ELSs in this extensive cluster.

**************************************

***Three Crosses At the Heart of the Christmas Cluster***

There are three crosses found in this cluster that very tightly overlap. They are each comprised of three occurrences of the ELS for Jehovah (Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh).  In each case, the vertical column of the cross consists of a forward occurrence of YHVH as an ELS that is overlapped by a backward occurrence of YHVH of the exact same skip, and that share their middle three letters in common.  In other words we have the symmetrical ELS of YHVHY.  The vertical columns of these crosses have skips of 7, 28 and 34 letters.  Each of these vertical columns is crossed by a literal appearance of YHVH within the actual text of Proverbs 14 and 15, creating fascinating examples of meaningful interplay between ELSs and surface text.

In the case of the cross where the vertical column has a skip of 7, if we display this in a typical crossword diagram we have:

Y
HVHY
V
H
Y
HVHY

This appears in Proverbs 14:26-27.  Again, the horizontal occurrences of HVHY are literal appearances of YHVH in the text.  We show them above as being backwards because, of course, Hebrew is written from right to left.

The middle example of these three crosses is located in Proverbs 15:23-27, where the vertical column has a skip of 34.  It looks like this:

..Y
..H
HVHY
..H
..Y

If this column is extended downward two more letters, we have Ayeen-Tav-Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh, which means "season of Jehovah" or "time of Jehovah."  This ELS comes within two letters of exactly overlapping with the focal code of the cluster, where the nearest letter of that focal code is the Mem of the Hebrew words for Christmas (Khet-gimel Heh-mem-vav-lamed-dalet).  It may be noted that Jesus was crucified on the middle of three crosses, so this is possibly why it is the middle cross that is the most significant.  The vertical YHVHY is so tightly interwoven with the ELS for Christmas that its five letters are 2, 2, 6, 9 and 5 letters away, respectively, from the closest letters of the Christmas ELS.

The third of the three crosses is quite close to the middle cross, and appears in Proverbs 15:25-29 with a skip of 28.  It looks like this:

..Y
..HVHY
..V
..H
HVHY

The fourth letter down from the top of the vertical YHVHY is a heh.  This heh is the last letter of an ELS with a skip of -4 that spells salvation (Yod-Sheen-Vav-Ayeen-Heh).  The first four letters of this ELS form an ELS for Jesus, because it consists of the first four letters of the Hebrew word for salvation. The vertical YHVHY is so tightly interwoven with the ELS for Christmas that its five letters are 8, 2, 7, 3 and 25 letters away, respectively, from the closest letters of the Christmas ELS.

Two more crosses are formed by literal phrases that cross the Christmas ELS.  The first is the phrase, "Joy to man." from Proverbs 15:23.  This phrase intersects with the Christmas ELS at its 6th letter, and extends four letters before and three letters after that letter, as the horizontal part of the cross.  The entire verse reads, "A man has joy by the answer of his mouth; and how good is a word in its season."  The word for "word" (Dalet-Bet-Resh) is the same as that used in John 1:1 for "word" in a translation of the New Testament into Hebrew, where that verse reads, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God."  An ELS for Joy (Sheen-Mem-Khet-Heh) with a skip of 66 also exactly overlaps with the literal appearance of the same word, to form yet another cross.

The second cross is formed by the phrase, ". is upward to the wise.", from Proverbs 15:24.  This phrase intersects with the 4th letter of the Christmas ELS, and extends six letters before and four letters after that letter, as the horizontal part of the cross.  The entire verse reads, "The path of life is upward to the wise, that he may turn away from Sheol below."

A second cross is formed by a Joy ELS with a skip of 79 that exactly overlaps with a literal appearance of the word "joy".  The last letter of that 79 skip ELS is also the last letter of another Joy ELS with a skip of 6.

The following listing shows the exact letter number of each of the letters of the ELSs and literal words or phrases described above.  In showing the letter number, we have omitted the first four numbers, which are 949.  For example, the first letter number is actually 949,439, but is shown below only as 439. Instances where the letter is also a part of the Christmas focal code are noted with plus signs:

299.1st letter of Joy Cross (79 skip)
378.2nd letter of Joy Cross (79 skip)
439.6th letter of Living YHVH ELS (21 skip)
447.4th letter of Joy Cross (66 skip)
457.3rd letter of Joy Cross (79 skip)
460.5th letter of Living YHVH ELS (21 skip)
481.4th letter of Living YHVH ELS (21 skip)
496.7th letter of Christmas ELS+++++++
502.3rd letter of Living YHVH ELS (21 skip)
511.1st letter of phrase, "Joy to man." from verse 23
513.3rd letter of Joy Cross (66 skip)
515.6th letter of Christmas ELS+++++++
517.1st letter of YHVH Cross ELS (34 skip)
518.8th letter of phrase, "Joy to man." from Proverbs 15:23
523.2nd letter of Living YHVH ELS (21 skip)
534.5th letter of Christmas ELS+++++++
536.4th letter of Joy Cross (79 skip); 4th letter of Joy ELS (6 skip)
540.Beginning of literal verse 24,  "The path of life is upward to the wise."
542.3rd letter of Joy ELS (6 skip) that exactly overlaps with Joy ELS (79 skip)
544.1st letter of Living YHVH ELS (21 skip)
548.2nd letter of Joy ELS (6 skip) that exactly overlaps with Joy ELS (79 skip)
551.2nd letter of YHVH Cross ELS (34 skip)
553.4rd letter of Christmas ELS+++++++
554.1st letter of Joy ELS (6 skip) that exactly overlaps with Joy ELS (79 skip)
557.End of literal phrase, "The path of life is upward to the wise."
572.3nd letter of Christmas ELS; End of Verse 24, ".that he may
turn away from Sheol below."+++++++
579.2nd letter of Joy Cross (66 skip)
580.1st letter of YHVH Cross ELS (28 skip)
585.3rd letter of YHVH Cross ELS (34 skip)
591.2nd letter of Christmas ELS+++++++
605.1st letter of literal YHVH
606.2nd letter of literal YHVH
607.3rd letter of literal YHVH
608.2nd letter of YHVH Cross ELS (28 skip); 4th letter of literal YHVH
610.1st letter of Christmas ELS+++++++
619.4th letter of YHVH Cross ELS (34 skip)
636.3rd letter of YHVH Cross ELS (28 skip)
645.1st letter of Joy Cross (66 skip)
653.5th letter of YHVH Cross ELS (34 skip)
664.4th letter of YHVH Cross ELS (28 skip); 5th letter of Salvation ELS (4 skip)
668.4th letter of Yeshua ELS (4 skip) and Salvation ELS (4 skip)
672.3rd letter of Yeshua ELS (4 skip) and Salvation ELS (4 skip)
676.2nd letter of Yeshua ELS (4 skip) and Salvation ELS (4 skip)
680.1st letter of Yeshua ELS (4 skip) and Salvation ELS (4 skip)
687.2nd letter of Season of YHVH ELS (34 skip)-part of YHVH Cross
692.5th letter of YHVH Cross ELS (28 skip); 1st letter of literal YHVH
693.2nd letter of literal YHVH
694.3rd letter of literal YHVH
695.4th letter of literal YHVH
721.1st letter of Season of YHVH ELS (34 skip)-part of YHVH Cross

The point of all this is that there an obvious compactness to this group of seven crosses, both in the small size of the skips and in the proximity and interweaving of these crosses with one another, that more than suggests intentional placement at the heart of the Christmas ELS.

We compiled a listing of occurrences of the YHVHY ELS with skips under 35 in the Tanakh and noted that only about one in eight of them cross a literal appearance of YHVH (thus forming a YHVH Cross such as we have described above).  Five of these appear in the book of Proverbs, and the group of three crosses we described at the beginning of this article are the three that cross a literal YHVH.


*********************************************

***Did An Incomparable Chess Master Arrange the Letters of Genesis?***

A world championship chess match takes place.  The victor executes an amazing series of unusually brilliant moves to clinch the title.  After the match a detracting reporter writes, "Each move was merely the repositioning of a common chess piece on a board of squares.  Why should anyone be impressed?"

Obviously, the reporter was oblivious to the incredible intricacies of world class chess.  And yet he was right in observing that any chess player's moves can be explained away as a series of seemingly unremarkable, mechanical steps.  Is this a reasonable analogy to statements by skeptics who say that mosaics (introduced in the last two Digest issues) are merely the result of large local letter frequency variations (LLLFVs) between different parts of the Biblical text?  We will explore this question in this article.

We have done a great deal of testing of this matter using a model that starts with the actual letter frequencies by chapter in Genesis and ends with a simulation of the mosaic effect that would result from such letter frequencies.  The model generally produces the actual mosaic effects that we have seen exhibited by different ELSs we have checked out.   This tells that, in a narrow sense, the skeptics are right.  That mosaics are an effect of LLLFVs is the direct result of the fact that Genesis 1-17 is composed of a fixed set of letters.

This is a seeming victory for those who believe that mosaics are merely a mechanical result of the fact that different chapters have more or less instances of a given letter than would be expected based on how often that letter appears within the entire passage of Genesis 1-17.  And yet we are still left with the question that could be asked of the reporter at the world championship chess match:  Is there any reason to believe that there was some genius behind the mechanical placements of chess pieces (or Hebrew letters)?  Or is this truly an unanswerable question?

Various circumstances exist that at least partially explain why Genesis 1-17 is such a complex text in terms of unusually large variations in letter frequencies between different chapters.  First, three of the chapters contain major genealogies that result in the repetition of the same words within numerous verses.  They are like a repeated form letter where the only things that change are what you would insert in the blanks:  the person's name, how long they lived and who they fathered. 

Second, the accounts given shift rapidly from one character and scene to another.  Often, the names of key people appear a large number of times.

Third, according to the Documentary Hypothesis, there were multiple authors of the text-with presumably different styles and propensities to use certain words or phrases more frequently than others.

The validity of the notion that these factors largely explain the unusually high level of textual complexity of Genesis 1-17 is bolstered by the fact that our index of such complexity (the TCI introduced in last month's Digest) was nearly as high for the English text of the King James Version (232.0) as it was for the Koren version of the Hebrew Bible (263.5).  That the complexity index for the KJV should be somewhat lower than that for the Hebrew text could reasonably be due to the fact that English is not nearly as terse a language as Hebrew, as so it took many more letters (32,179 vs. 20,478) to translate the same text into English.

Enough said for the case of those who suspect there is really nothing to mosaics.  Now let's look at a few observations that support the notion that there was some ultra-genius behind the arrangement of the Hebrew letters in Genesis 1-17 and that they designed the text to produce mosaics (and perhaps other sub-surface effects, such as codes).  Was there an unparalleled chess master at work?  How would we be able to tell whether or not that was the case?

As you may recall, in the December 2000 Digest we reported on the highly unusual mosaic pattern exhibited by the Echad ELS within Genesis 1-17.  Echad (Alef-Khet-Dalet) is the Hebrew word for "one" that is at the core of one of the most important Biblical verses of Judaism: "Shema Yisrael! Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad" or "Hear O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one." (Deuteronomy 6:4)  This verse has been cited by Jews throughout the centuries as an emphatic statement of their belief in only one God and as a reason for rejecting the claimed divinity of Jesus by Christians.  (Parenthetically, some Christian Biblical scholars dispute the validity of this latter assertion, in part because Echad appears elsewhere in the Torah to describe a compound unity, while there is another Hebrew word, Yachid, that clearly means absolute unity, that was not used in Deut. 6:4.  An example of a verse where Echad describes a compound unity is Genesis 2:24: "Therefore shall a man leave hi!
s father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall be ONE flesh.")

We have reproduced the graph from the December issue below for ease of reference.

Echad (One)

Percentage Deviation from Expected
50%....................48%
45%
40%........................41%
35%
30%................30%
25%..............24% ..........26%
20%..........20%
15%
10%.....10%..10%
5%.7%
0---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-5%.............................-4%
-10%
-15%
-20%
...0-1..1-2-..2-3 -.3-4-...4-5...5-6....6-7...7-8..8-9.9-10*
Groups of Skip Sizes (in Thousands of Letters)                    
*10,238

Let's review what this graph shows.  We searched for the Echad ELS within Genesis 1-17.  For each search, we specified a range of 1,000 successive possible skip sizes.  For example, in one search, the program found all occurrences of Echad as an ELS with skips between 6,001 and 7,000.  When we did this search, the program told us that Echad was expected to appear 843.7 times with skips in that size range.  The program determined this based on basic math that took into account exactly how many times each letter of the ELS appeared within the search text and how many possible opportunities there were for a three letter ELS to appear within that text with skip sizes ranging from 6,001 to 7,000.  Now, even though Echad was expected to appear 843.7 times, it actually appeared 1,252 times, or 48 % more than expected.  That 48% is what is shown in the graph above the 6-7 label on the graph.  It signifies that Echad appeared 408 times more than expected with skips between 6,001 and 7,!
000.

What the graph also tells us is that the Echad ELS consistently appears much more often than it should for all skip ranges up through 8,001-9,000.  In all, it appears 2,240 times more than it should (or 18.9% more) within Genesis 1-17 than if the letters of that text were randomly arranged.  The question is, how can something show up so consistently in excess of what it should?  By using our model, which starts with the actual number of times that each Hebrew letter appears within each chapter of Genesis 1-17, we can roughly reproduce the above mosaic effect.  So we see that the above effect is a direct result of major variations in the letter frequencies between the different chapters.

Next we used this model to determine how likely it was that a given set of letter frequencies by chapter could produce a mosaic effect as dramatic as the one shown above.  We found, by computer simulation, that the chances were about 3 in 1,000, or 0.3%.  This told us that it was possible, though rather unlikely, that a mosaic effect as pronounced as that above could be coincidental. 

By further using this model, and the actual letter frequencies by chapter within Genesis 1-17, we have noted that we should only expect that mosaic effects as remarkable as that of the Echad ELS, should only show up for about 10 to 15 three letter Hebrew words (trigrams).  Now, even though we have only checked out about 30 trigrams out of over 5,300 possible trigrams (forward and backward spellings are treated as only one possible trigram), we have already found about 10 Hebrew words with mosaic effects roughly comparable to that for Echad.  In other words, even though we have only checked out less than 1% of the possible trigrams for unusual mosaic effects, we are close to filling our expected quota for the number we would expect to appear by chance after having checked over 150 times as many possibilities. 

It took a highly unusual arrangement of letters within Genesis 1-17 to produce a very significant mosaic effect for the Echad ELS.  Similarly, it would take a highly unusual arrangement of the same letters to produce major mosaic effects for numerous other ELSs which are meaningful Hebrew words.  We may ultimately see that it is asking too much of chance to come up with highly unusual letter arrangements that will produce major mosaic effects for an unexpectedly large number of meaningful ELSs.  If that point is reached, the notion of a master chess player might become scientifically validated.  However, we may fall short of that, leaving the Mosaic Hypothesis without sufficient grounds.

In addition, there are several other reasons, each of which would take a lot of space to describe, that are similar to the above types of observations, that tend to strongly support the potential validity of the Mosaic Hypothesis.  Some of these relate to the tendency for Hebrew words that are highly relevant to the literal text of Genesis 1-17 to exhibit strong mosaic effects.  Unfortunately for us, in order to study this comprehensively enough to potentially overcome the standard objections of skeptics regarding "wiggle room," much future work will be involved.  Nevertheless, we continue to suspect that there probably was a master chess player who deliberately arranged the letters of Genesis 1-17 to produce mosaics. 

Various code researchers have brought forth the possibility of code phenomena existing within a three or four dimensional framework.  Mosaics are one such phenomena.  For any selected ELS, we have five dimensions to start with:  1) Beginning letter of search text, 2) Ending letter of search text, 3) Size of skip range,  4) Lowest skip size within each range, and 5) number of occurrences of the ELS (or number of occurrences above or below the expected number).  By fixing one of these, we end up with a four dimensional surface.  By fixing two of these, we end up with a three dimensional surface.  By fixing the first three, we have the two dimensional surface which is the graph in this article.