Okay, I know — it’s beating a dead horse. But, I was reminded of the Bible Code today by this recent rehearsal of the nonsense at the Skeptophilia Blog. And since we’re beating dead horses, I should remind readers that I wrote a short book debunking this many moons ago (from the perspective of manuscript transmission and the history of the Hebrew OT text). It’s 100 pages or so and available as PDF.
The Bible Code Myth Redux
Drosnin is a particularly apt candidate for Paleo-babble since he manages to combine the bible code with ancient aliens. He implies that Aliens encoded the Torah and gave it to Moses, and also implies that aliens invented human language.
Although I do also find it kind of funny that the so called “skeptic” has no problem making the leap that the human capacity for seeing order in chaos and pulling complex symbolism out of seemingly random data is merely an evolutionary hold over from our ancestors needing to be aware of animal signs.
The fact that he equates being aware of a rustle in the grass with finding (or even imposing) ordered patterns in chaotic, random data with a straight face as though this were simply a self-evident fact, just goes to show that its easy to think critically about other people’s views. The trick is to apply the same critical thought to your own ideas.
There is no real connection between the two. There is no necessity to look for patterns or to sift patterns out of chaotic data in order to be put on alert by unexpected movement or sounds.
you do not have to be good at seeing patterns in order to be aware of predators. You simply have to have sharp eyesight, keen hearing, or sense of smell (or all of the above).
Deer are far more wary and aware of predators than any human I have ever seen, yet strangely I have yet to run across a deer conspiracy theorists.
agreed; Drosnin is a poster child for paleobabble.
Why do i feel like i’m stepping into the Lion’s den posting in this area?? LOL! Anyways.. Michael, have you heard about the “Aleppo Codex” ? They talked about it on Coast to Coast yesterday, and it sounded interesting. Seems to be just the text you’d need for a Bible Code, so this seems the appropriate place to post.
Was wondering if scholars [any you know about anyways] were aware of this “perfect version” of Hebrew cannon, and if you could ad anything to it being real or not?
Here’s a link you can listen regarding it… Forward to about 49min mark.
everyone in Old Testament studies knows about the Aleppo Codex. It’s like any other manuscript (divergences from the others) and is incomplete anyway (lacks most of the Torah). There is no “perfect version” of the Hebrew Bible – this person just wanted to get on Coast to Coast. Where I work we actually have the data to produce a digital version of Aleppo (a project I arranged several years ago) but there isn’t much of a demand for it in biblical studies. There are a number of items ahead of it, but eventually we’ll put out a digital Aleppo to go with our other Hebrew texts.
By the way, you can view the Aleppo Codex at http://www.aleppocodex.org/. That site’s been running for years. It’s nice.
Silly me.. here is the link
http://youtu.be/OA1O33fC9rw