There is a fascinating article on Lincoln and the Jews in Jewish World Review today:
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/herb/geduld_lincoln.php3
This entire topic is most interesting in the light of Ross Nichol’s message yesterday at Temple Sinai, which I hope you will all download and listen to if you missed it:
http://rootsoffaith.org/2010/02/13/mishpatim-exodus-211-2418-2.htm
Also, our theme this year at the April 16-18 UIWU meeting here in Charlotte is the Torah/Hebrew Heritage of our American Founders and Culture. United Israel Senior VP Ralph Buntyn has lectured on George Washington in several of our past meetings but there is much more to come, from him and other speakers. Details will be posted at our main Web site here:
One of the so-called “minor” festival days within Jewish tradition falls today, January 30th, which also happens to be a Sabbath day this year of 2010. It is called in Hebrew Tu b’Shevat which literally means “15th of Shebat,” referring to the 11th month/moon on the Jewish/biblical calendar (called Shevat, see Zech 1:7). We are not certain of the origins of all the names of the Jewish months, since in the Hebrew Bible months are normally just numbered, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and so forth. However, the Hebrew word shevat does mean a staff or rod, and thus by extension a “tribe.” One of the more interesting references to the 11th month is Deuteronomy 1:3 where Moses gives his final message to the assemblies of Israel east of the Jordan on the 1st of Shevat, which would have been the New Moon.
In Hebrew numbers are expressed by letters, Alef=1, Bet=2, Gimmel=3 and so forth. By such a system the number fifteen would be “ten & five” which is Yod Heh–however, since Yod Heh is an abbreviation for YHVH, the Divine and Holy Name of God, a substitute combination of Tet (nine) and Vav (six) are used–Thus the designation TU. The 15th of any lunar month is also the Full Moon and since Shevat, or the 11th month, often falls in late January/early February, it is the biggest and brightest moon of the year, sometimes called the “Wolf Moon,” see National Geographic story “Biggest Full Moon.”
In Jewish tradition this festival of the Full Moon of Shevat is also called the “festival of the Trees” and it marks a “new year” in terms of trees and their fruit, based on the Torah command in Leviticus 19:23-24: “When you come into the land and plant any kind of tree for food, then you shall regard its fruit as “uncircumcised” (i.e., forbidden). Three years it shall be forbidden to you; it must not be eaten. And in the fourth year all its fruit shall be holy, an offering of praise to the Yehovah. But in the fifth year you may eat of its fruit, to increase its yield for you: I am the Yehovah your God.” This passage is viewed as having great significance, both practically and mystically, and it falls within the Holiness Code of the Torah (Lev 19), one of the more inspiring and universal collections of mitzvot or teachings.
In Israel and throughout the world it is a day of the planting of trees. It is also said that on the 15th of the 11th month the sap in the trees begins to rise signaling the end of winter, and the almond trees blossom by this day. I heard from a friend in Israel just this week that indeed the almond trees are out in full all over the Land. Since trees as so often used in the Hebrew Bible to represent human beings, their lifespan, and their potential to “bear fruit,” both the planting of a tree and its eventual growth and gifts are understood to represent symbolic meaning as well (see Psalm 1:3; 92:13; Eccl 12:1-7).
This day is also connected to the ma’aseror “tithe” of produce, as related to trees, fruit, and other produce.
In terms of the Torah text itself just as a tree is planted with future hope of fruit, but without any immediate result until at least three years of growth, plus a 4th year of dedication to YHVH, and then only in the 5th year the fruit is eaten–humans have similar experiences of new beginnings or “plantings” that do not yield immediate results but one must “wait” for the results to appear. Fruit trees continue to represent to most of us a picture of pardes or Paradise, as well as the original diet of human beings (Genesis 1:29; 2:9). Such a diet (called in Hebrew zeor’im or “seeds”) was seen as ideal and conducive to spiritual development. Daniel and his three companions in Babylon separate themselves from the food and wine of the king and for three years of “testing” eat “from the seeds,” experiencing health and spiritual insights and power far beyond their peers (Daniel 1:14-15).
A story is just breaking tonight around the world regarding the text found by Prof. Garfinkel at Elah over a year ago. It has apparently now been deciphered and dated and can be reliably put in the 10th century BCE, the time of the “Monarchy.” This is a major breakthrough in terms of the debate between the “minimalists” who argue the Biblical narratives are post-Exilic and those who maintain that we have texts at least 500 years earlier.
See the Eureka press release with photos here.
The incredible story of the late NFL football star Reggie White, who turned in his last years from preaching Christianity to a quest for Torah faith, as powerfully documented in this ESPN video:This particular Torah reading, Vayigash: Genesis 44:18-47:27, taken from the first word “to draw near,” where Judah DRAWS NEAR to Joseph, has great meaning to United Israel World Union and its history.
It just so happens that on January 1st, 1943, the weekend that United Israel World Union was officially formed in upstate NY by David Horowitz, that the Torah reading was indeed Vayigash! David had no idea of this at the time, and never noticed it years later when it was pointed out to him around his 90th year.
There could have been no more appropriate date or reading, in that Horowitz at that time represented the ONLY significant person of the House of Judah who was determined to do something to “DRAW NEAR TO JOSEPH.” Is this not rather incredible!! Indeed this Joseph cycle of readings has proven very significant in our own time. Allenby took Jerusalem on December 9, 1917 (just “happened” to be on Kislev 24!), and the reading with Mikketz (Gen 41). The UN Partition vote was on November 29, 1947 and the reading was Vayeshev. In both cases, the nations that I would associate with Joseph come to the aid of Judah and his companions, saving their LIVES in a great time of trouble, and there is a kind of “uniting” of the two houses even then, but in a preliminary way.
It is obvious that the Rabbis who complied the Haphtorah readings from the Prophets saw more than an ordinary meaning in this phrase, in that they chose Ezekiel 37:15-28, the passage about the two “sticks,” one for Judah and the sons of Israel his companions, and the other for Joseph, and all the house of Israel and his companions. Those sticks are UNITED, thus the whole idea of UNITED ISRAEL which David Horowitz has pioneered for over 50 years now. One stick IS the stick of Joseph, but it is in the hand of Ephraim–and we learn why in next weeks Torah reading where the aged Jacob adopts the two sons of Joseph, but puts the younger Ephraim, BEFORE the older Manasseh, and gives Joseph the birthright, taken from Reuben, the firstborn son. You might have expected it to go to Judah, since Judah is clearly next in line since Simeon and Levi were eliminated for their cruelty (see Gen 49:5-7), as well as being one of the strongest and most prominent of the twelve tribes, but Jacob rather chose his beloved Rachel’s son Joseph. Joseph is also given the special plot of land in Shechem, where he was later buried, and the site of such contention now with the Palestinians (Gen 48:22; Josh 24:32). YHVH declares that these TWO sticks will become ONE in His Hand (Ezk 37:20) and the following verses explain how that will happen:
I will take the sons of Israel from among the nations where they have gone, and I will gather them from every side and bring them into their own land; and I will make them ONE NATION in the land, on the mountains of Israel; and ONE King will be king for all of them; and they will no longer be two nations and no longer be divided into two kingdoms.” This chapter of course opens with the vision of the Valley of Dry Bones.
So the children of Israel end up in TWO COMPANIES, as was already hinted at the previous Torah reading Vayishlach (Gen 32:10).
The whole Joseph story seems to echo this history of the Lost Tribes. Joseph is sold into slavery, as was ancient Israel, the Northern Kingdom. He is effectively given up for DEAD (thus the valley of Dry Bones), and forgotten by his brothers, here represented mostly by Judah, who remains in the Land and returns to the Land after the Babylonian disaster. He marries a GENTILE woman, an Egyptian, and eventually reaches a great position of power and prominence, the highest of the kings of the earth–and for all practical purposes completely loses his identity–but all this time YHVH was with him. He is the DREAMER, the one who did not fit in, the one rejected by his brothers. According to Genesis 49:22-26 the descendents of Joseph will achieve great blessings and incredible wealth, and Moses adds his own details to the prophecy in Deut 33:13-17–Joseph is to push to the ends of the earth, and have the favor of “the one who dwells in the Bush,” achieving great favor and prominence. We should expect then, at the time when Judah returns to the land (the prophets declare: I will save the house of Judah first), which we have seen the this past century, that Joseph will exist someone on the earth, looked upon as Gentile, but somehow oriented to the God of Israel and the Bible, but with incredible wealth and power. The key then would be that large portions of such “Gentile” populations would begin to feel an irresistible pull toward Judah and the Land of Israel, and be drawn home. There is a preliminary return, spoken of in Jeremiah 3 and 16, but also that massive return that will pale the Exodus in size…we seem to be living in such days, and have for the past 50 years, but especially I think we have seen the return of large pockets of Joseph to God, Israel, and Torah in the past 25 years. It can only increase not decrease, and it is one of the strangest phenomena on the earth today, as thousand of “Gentiles” seem suddenly interested in discovering their Hebraic “roots.”
There appear to be some incredible parallels between the Joseph story, the Lost Tribes saga, and the story Jesus tells in Luke 15, most often referred to as the Prodigal Son. One son stays “home,” the other becomes “lost” and forgotten among the Gentiles, but eventually returns home…
Both Houses of Israel, that is Judah and Ephraim (usually called Israel in the prophets, in contrast to Judah) are chastised and rebuked, but the language of Jeremiah 3:6-14 is most important and interesting. Judah is called treacherous while Israel is called faithless (lit. turned, slidden away), but v. 11 says that “Faithless Israel has proven herself more righteous than treacherous Judah.” That, no doubt, becomes the source of the jealous that Isaiah 11 speaks about, and it is echoed in the Prodigal son story. Judah is very reluctant to give up her privileged place of “faithfulness” to a backslidden Israel–but it is Judah’s attitude that has to change. In the end, though falling into great apostasy, Joseph is proven MORE RIGHTEOUS, and returns home. Also, based on the words of Jacob in Gen 49 it does appear that the Scepter departs from Judah and eventually goes to Joseph also–from him comes the Stone, the Rock of Israel–or Shiloh…This will surely be a surprise to all the world, both Jews and Christians, who are so focused on a Davidic Messiah figure.
The story in the Torah today is itself so very moving. What a scene, and yet there is such power in the grace and love that he ends up showing his brothers. It is easy to forget that the sons of Israel are a very diverse mix, born of four different women, and with very different temperaments and characteristics, as are outlined by father Jacob in next Sabbath’s reading.
Tis the Season” love it or not but for an alternative take on Jesus’ birth, December 25th, and a different kind of “Silent Night” see my essay, just up on the Web at Bible&Interpretation, a site well worth a bit of browsing:
http://www.bibleinterp.com/opeds/xmas357921.shtml
I love this wonderful Armenian portrayal of the meeting of Miriam with her kinswoman Elisheva in the region of Ein Kerem in the “hill country of Judea,” west of Jerusalem. Note that the unborn babies are shown in situ as if by ancient ultrasound. According to Luke’s gospel the women were separated in their pregnancies by six months and Mary stayed with Elizabeth for three months, implying that she was attending at the birth of John/Yehochanan.
Does God ever dream? Not literally, as we humans do, but in terms of a future vision? Ross Nichols, teacher at the historic Temple Sinai in St. Francisville, LA, presented an exceptionally powerful, inspiring, and insightful teaching on this whole subject of dreams yesterday, tied to the weekly Torah reading Miketz (Genesis 41:1-44:17). You can listen to it here:
http://rootsoffaith.org/2009/12/19/miketz-the-dream-genesis-411-4417.htm
The “Tomb of the Shroud” which was discovered and investigated in 2000 by Shimon Gibson, Boaz Zissu, and me, with a team of our UNC Charlotte students in the summer of 2000, continues to yield up many scientific secrets about life and death in Jerusalem in the time of Jesus. I related the basic story of the exciting discovery of this freshly robbed tomb in the Introduction to my book The Jesus Dynasty in 2006 and Shimon Gibson has recently provided a more thorough analysis in his new book, The 
Final Days of Jesus: The Archaeological Evidence (HarperOne, 2009). We published a preliminary report in the journal Hadashot Arkheologiyot (vol. 111: 2000, pp. 70-72, figs. 138-139) but a major monograph is ShroudDrawingplanned for 2011 and various aspects of the research are beginning to appear in scientific journals. Although the burial shroud itself continues to receive great public interest (see the latest in today’s The Daily Mail), other aspects of research on this tomb are quite notable. DNA profiles were done on all the bones in the tomb, so far as we know for the first time in an ancient tomb in Jerusalem from the Herodian period. We also have the only substantial example of male hair from the period (lice free, cut reasonably short, and well groomed), and most important, the earliest case of leprosy ever found–in the Holy Land or elsewhere. The significance of the latter discovery is a major contribution to our understanding of ancient disease and has recently been published in the current issue of the Public Library of Science Journal. Yesterday’s Jerusalem Post had a nice feature update on the tomb and its secrets, highlighting the leprosy finding:
Remains in tomb near Old City show first known case of leprosy
Dec. 15, 2009
Judy Siegel-Itzkovich , THE JERUSALEM POST
DNA taken from the shrouded remains of a man discovered in a tomb next to the Old City of Jerusalem shows him to be the first human proven to have suffered from leprosy, according to Hebrew University researchers and North American and British collaborators. They published their findings in the December 16 issue of the PLoS One – the US Public Library of Science journal.
Prof. Mark Spigelman and Prof. Charles Greenblatt of the Sanford F. Kuvin Center for the Study of Infectious and Tropical Diseases at HU in Jerusalem, along with Prof. Carney Matheson and Kim Vernon of Lakehead University in Canada, Prof. Azriel Gorski of New Haven University and Dr. Helen Donoghue of University College London performed the molecular investigation. The archeological excavation was led by Prof. Shimon Gibson, Dr. Boaz Zissu and Prof. James Tabor on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
The burial cave, known as the Tomb of the Shroud, is located in the lower Hinnom Valley near the Jaffa Gate and part of a first century CE cemetery known as Akeldama, or “Field of Blood” (mentioned in the Book of Matthew 27:3-8, and Acts 1:19 in the Christian Bible). It is located adjacent to the spot where Judas is said to have committed suicide.
The tomb of the shrouded man is also located next to the tomb of Annas, the high priest (6 CE to 15 CE), who was the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the high priest who betrayed Jesus to the Romans. It is thus believed that this shrouded man was either a priest or a member of the aristocracy. Gibson suggests that the view from the tomb would have looked directly toward the Second Temple.
The tomb is very unusual because it is clear that this man, whose remains are dated by radiocarbon methods to 1 CE to 50 CE, did not receive a subsequent burial. Secondary burials were common practice at the time, when the bones were removed after a year and placed in an ossuary (a bone box made of stone). In this case, however, the entrance to this part of the tomb was completely sealed with plaster. Spigelman believes this is because the man had suffered from leprosy and died of tuberculosis, as DNA of both diseases was found in his bones.
Historically, disfiguring diseases such as leprosy led to the sufferer being ostracized from their community. However, a number of indications – the location and size of the tomb, the type of textiles used as shroud wrappings, and the clean state of the hair – suggest that the shrouded individual was a fairly affluent member of Jerusalem society, and that tuberculosis and leprosy may have crossed social boundaries at that time.
This is also the first time fragments of a burial shroud have been found from the time of Jesus in Jerusalem. The shroud is very different to that of the Turin Shroud, until now assumed to be the one that was used to wrap the body of Jesus after his crucifixion. Unlike the complex weave of the Turin Shroud, this is made up of a simple two-way weave, as textile historian Dr. Orit Shamir was able to demonstrate.
Based on the assumption that this is representative of a typical burial shroud widely used at the time of Jesus, the researchers conclude that the Turin Shroud did not originate from Jesus-era Jerusalem.
The excavation also found a clump of the shrouded man’s hair, which had been ritually cut before he was buried. These are both unique discoveries because organic remains are only rarely preserved in the Jerusalem area owing to the soil’s high humidity levels.
Spigelman and Greenblatt state that the origins and development of leprosy are largely obscure. Leprosy in the Jewish Bible may well refer to skin diseases such as psoriasis. The leprosy known to us today was thought to have originated in India and brought over via bacteria to the Near East and Mediterranean countries during the Hellenistic period. The results from the First Century Tomb of the Shroud fill a vital gap in our knowledge of this disease, they said.
Furthermore, the new research has shown that molecular pathology clearly adds a new dimension to the archeological exploration of disease in ancient times and a better understanding of the evolution, geographic distribution and epidemiology of disease and social health in antiquity.
The co-infection of both leprosy and tuberculosis here and in 30 percent of DNA remains in Israel and Europe from the ancient and modern period provided evidence for the postulate that the medieval plague of leprosy was eliminated by an increased level of tuberculosis in Europe as the area urbanized.
As sundown fell across Israel, Europe, and the United States last evening millions of Jews and many others who care about the history of Israel are marking the advent of Hanukkah, the Festival of Dedication. What might be lost is the historical grounding of the feast of Hanukkah itself, which seems to actually derive from Friday’s date: Kislev 24 or the 24th day of the 9th month of the Jewish calendar. Notice carefully this historical background:
The book of the prophet Haggai comes to us from the 2nd year of the Persian King Darius, late summer, August, 520 BCE. It is one of the most precisely dated books in the Hebrew Bible, much like its sister Zechariah, and its twin Malachi. The three go together, like peas in the pod, both coming from that crucial time of the “restoration” of Judah to the Land following the Babylonian captivity. Collectively they are our LAST WORD from Yehovah in terms of how the redemption is to unfold. It is very likely, based on Haggai 1:12, where the Prophet is called the “messenger of Yehovah,” that Haggai is in fact the author of the book we call Malachi, as this book is just named “My Messenger,” and the name of the prophet who wrote it is not given. Both Haggai and Zechariah address their contemporary situation, as one would expect, and are concerned that the Temple be rebuilt and that the constitution of the new state of Judah be ordered according to the Torah. However, if read carefully, both clearly understand that this restoration of Judah is only a preliminary, even symbolic step, to a coming GREAT restoration of Judah and ALL Israel. Even though there is a Priest (Joshua), and a Governor (Zerubbabel) of the Davidic line, there is no anointing of the BRANCH figure of whom both Isaiah and Jeremiah had spoken. One way of putting this is to say that Haggai and Zechariah are working in the tall shadow of JEREMIAH (see especially chapters 30-31), and they know, from his clear and powerful prophecies, that the final days have not come with this tiny little beachhead return of a portion of Judah to the land. But they do believe that this return of Judah is a “sign” of things to come, and a guarantee that the Plan of Yehovah, to fill the earth with justice and righteousness, through Abraham’s seed, is not to fall to the ground.
And that leads us to the curious and fascinating references to the 24th day of the 9th month–Kislev 24 in modern Jewish parlance.
Notice, reading the book of Haggai is sequential, it takes you through the last months of the year. It begins with the Rosh Chodesh of the 6th month (August), takes you through the 21st day of the 7th month (2:1), which is the last day of Sukkoth (October), and then into December–with the 24th day of the 9th month. Haggai’s third and fourth messages come on this very day. It is a short book, and if you skim it through you will see the building sequence.
Kislev 24 is mentioned FOUR times in the second chapters, verses 10, 15, 18 and 20. Twice it is emphasized that “from THIS DAY FORWARD I will bless you,” and twice Haggai gets a special Word from Yehovah, on this very day. You have to read the whole chapter to get the context, but the message is basically that Yehovah will “SHAKE the heavens and the earth and ALL NATIONS,” overthrowing their power, anoint the chosen one (symbolized in that day by Zerubbabel), and essentially make Jerusalem the new world capital. For the DETAILS you need to go back, of course, to Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Micah in particular, as they set forth the entire agenda to which Haggai only briefly alludes.
This message is addressed to the two “messiahs,” the Priest and the “King” or Governor, Joshua and Zerubbabel, respectively (2:4-5). They become “signifiers” of things to come. They are not the final anointed ones, and Zechariah picks this up in his visions, especially chapters 4 and 6. These symbolic figures, as well as the promised presence of the Holy Spirit (see 2:5 and Zech 4:6!), are the guarantee that Yehovah will bring about these promises.
Notice, Zechariah begins getting his visions and messages in the 8th month of that same year (Zech 1:1), or mid-November. He has EIGHT night visions, they are all quite difficult to follow, but prophetically important in forecasting the redemptive future. There is much more detail in Zechariah, but the two, Haggai and Zechariah, should be read in tandem, as one explains the other. Now, note carefully, Kislev 24 is not specifically mentioned in Zechariah, but it is alluded to in chapter 4:8-10. It is the famous “day of small things,” that one might be led to “despise,” because after all, this tiny little remnant of Judah, beginning to lay the foundation of a nondescript temple, under the mighty thumb of the Persian empire, was hardly even worthy of the name of a city-state, much less a world kingdom, and yet had HOPES and DREAMS and promises of world dominion!
Chapters 7-14 of Zechariah, which he gets two years later, are quite different. They are straightforward and fairly plain, laying out, likely in some sequential order, both the preliminary events, and the detailed climax, of the “time of the end.”
So, what about Kislev 24? It seems to have a three-fold meaning. First, in the time of Haggai and Zechariah, it was the day MARKED for the promise that the redemption would ultimately come about, not by power, nor by might, but by the Spirit of Yehovah–but “in its time.” Second, subsequently though history, this day seems to be one upon which key events take place, perhaps only a few of which have been recognized down through history. And finally, it might well turn out that on some Kislev 24 in the future, that date will serve as a “countdown marker” for the unfolding of the mysterious 1260/1290/1335/2300 days of Daniel’s visions, which interested Sir Isaac Newton so much.
During the period of the Maccabees, when Syrian ruler Antiochus IV unleashed his great persecution against the Jews of Judea/Palestine, it was on Kislev 24 that the enemy was defeated and the Temple freed from its desecration. That is why the festival of Chanukah is celebrated beginning at sundown, at the end of Kislev 24. In other words, it is NOT so much Chanukah that is important, as its marker date: Kislev 24. It seems to become a kind of banner date in history that marks any kind of “signal” of future redemption.
Fast forward to December 9, 1917. General Allenby, leading the British forces (remember Lawrence of Arabia), liberates Jerusalem for the first time in centuries from Turkish/Muslim rule. The date on the Jewish calendar–you guessed it: Kislev 24! That evening the Jewish soldiers in the British army celebrated Chanukah and went to the Wall in openness and freedom. The Torah reading that week was Mikketz (Gen 41), where JOSEPH is raised to power and saves Judah. And the Haphtorah reading, for the special Sabbath of Chanukah, as it is today, is the fascinating Zechariah 2:14-4:7! Note how it begins: “I have returned to Zion,” which seems to be the essential meaning of THIS DAY.
It is doubtful that Allenby was aware, during the heat of the battle, of even Chanukah, but certainly he knew nothing of Kislev 24.
If we begin checking in history over the past 2520 years (remember that number), there have been numerous times when Kislev 24 has played a large part, and even a smaller more symbolic part, in the unfolding of redemptive history. For example, no matter what one’s view of Yeshua might be, it seems in all likelihood that Yeshua was conceived on this day, nine months before his birth in September 3 BCE.
Some UIWU officers also noticed some years ago that the encounter David Horowitz had at the cave with his teacher Moshe Guibbory, as recounted in his autobiography, Thirty-three Candles, was on Friday night, December 16/17, 1927–and again, you guessed it, this was Kislev 24th. The Torah reading was Vayeshev, which begins the Joseph cycle, and the Haphtorah was Amos 2:6-3:8, which seems quite appropriate. Horowitz had no idea of this until over 50 years later when it was pointed out to him by others.
Now, a tiny bit on the numbers. Note, these important visions came in the year 520 BCE. The year 2000/2001 marks 2520 years since that first Kislev 24 vision of Haggai. The number 2520 is interesting, it has several mystical mathematical properties, but one most obvious one is that it is 7 x 360, or seven “prophetic years.” A prophetic year in the Bible is 360 days, thus we get in the books of Daniel and Revelation the period of 1260 days for 3.5 years. There are a number of indications, both in the Torah and Prophets, especially Ezekiel, that a kind of “day for a year” principle applies in Prophecy, and accordingly, the official “Exile” of Joseph and Judah would last 2520 years. Perhaps this is the meaning of the phrase “after two days” and “on the third day” references in Hosea 6. Now Judah was essentially “restored” in type at least, in the year 520, but the full restoration, and the union of things between Judah and Joseph is yet to come, “after two days” according to Hosea (a day is a “thousand years” in these prophetic texts). The point is, based on this chronology, we are “in” the third day, as of the year 2000. And indeed, it does appear we have begun to experience a “shaking of all things.” Whether this is the ultimate upheaval to which Haggai refers remains to be seen.
It is also worth noting, in terms of Kislev 24, that if you add 2300 days (the figure in Daniel 8) to that day, you always, on the Jewish calendar, come to the last day of Unleavened Bread, oddly something like 6.3 years later. In other words, it is sort of a strange figure. And there are then various interesting ways, too complicated to go into here, that the periods of Daniel (1260/1290/1335) fit in, taking one to Shavuot of any given sequence of years. We do know for certain that the 2300 “days” was fulfilled as a “day for a year” running from Alexander’s defeat of Darius in 334 BCE (June 7), to the day, to June 7, 1967–when Jerusalem was liberated by the Israelis in the Six Day War. The point seems to be that Alexander’s march to Jerusalem began a period of 2300 days/years of the trampling of Jerusalem. So what this seems to indicate is that there is a larger (day for a year) fulfillment of these periods, as well as a shorter “day for a day” fulfillment, once the “countdown” begins.
One might conclude then, from these indications, that on some Kislev 24, at some year “on our days and in our time” (whether past or future), people will come to recognize that Haggai’s “shaking” did indeed begin. It does not seem likely that time has quite yet come, but every year at this time one’s thoughts go to this date, given such an important designation by Haggai and Zechariah. On a personal level, it seems it can always be a date of “renewal” for any of us, and a time of new beginnings, looking to both the past and to the future.
Over a dozen years ago, in May 1997, a sensational new book titled The Bible Code by Michael Drosnin, was published by Simon & Schuster. It was announced with a full-page ad in the New York Times and quickly appeared on the covers and editorial pages of major magazines and newspapers worldwide. Drosnin, a free-lance investigative reporter, who once worked for the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, offered a readable, engrossing, and intriguing account of a hidden code found in the Hebrew Bible (what Christians call the Old Testament), discovered several years ago, with the use of advanced computer programs, by a number of Israeli mathematicians, including Moshe Katz, Eliyahu Rips, and Doron Witztum. This code is based on what are called ELS or Equidistant Letter Sequences found in the traditional Masoretic Hebrew text of the Torah or Five Books of Moses. The idea is a simple one. According to its supporters there is encoded within the plain text of the Hebrew Torah hidden messages and information. Imagine the entire 304,805 Hebrew letters of the traditional Torah fed into a computer in perfect sequence, much like the sequenced chemical strand of a DNA double helix. The computer then looks for meaningful words and phrases occurring at various intervals or equal distant letter skips—say every 50 letters, or 75, or 100 letters—or really any number one chooses to use, forward or backward in the text.
For example, if you start with Genesis 1:1, go to the first occurrence of the letter Tav (which is at the end of the first word bereshit, “In [the] beginning”), count 49 letters, and you come to the letter Vav (50th letter); count another 49 letters and you arrive at Resh; and 49 letters again and you come to the letter Heh—put these together: Tav, Vav, Resh, Heh and you spell a Hebrew word: TORaH (see illustration). It is most interesting that the same thing happens with the first lines of Exodus, the second book of Torah. If you begin with the first Tav (the end of the second wordshemot), count 49 letters, you come to a Vav, another 49 letters to a Resh, and a fourth 49 letters you end up with a Heh—again TORaH in Hebrew. The third book of the Torah, Leviticus, has a similar pattern, but this time the sacred Name of God (YHVH/Yod, Hey, Vav, Hey) is spelled out every seven letters, beginning with the first Yod. Numbers and Deuteronomy continue the pattern, but with the word TORaH spelled backwards, every 49 letters. The sacred Name YHVH also is found at the end each of these five books, also at intervals of 49 letters. The question is, are we dealing with a phenomenon that can be explained purely by chance and random sequence, or is there some “pattern” that has somehow been inserted by the Author or authors of these texts? Given the number of letters in Genesis (about 78 thousand), one would expect the letters Tav, Vav, Hey, and Resh, to appear in sequence, at various letter intervals, at least two or three times based on chance distribution alone. What is interesting here is the way in which these key terms: Torah and YHVH, appear precisely where they do—at the opening and closing of the Five Books of the Torah, and in a balanced sequence of forward and backward spelling—with YHVH opening Leviticus, at a sequence of seven letters. Such number patterns, of seven and forty-nine, have mystical and historical significance in Hebrew tradition.
The phenomenon is also found in much more complicated ways. Prof. Rips, for example, found that in the single section of Genesis 1:29-3:3, one can find encoded, at various letter sequences, not only the names of the seven edible species of seed-bearing fruits in the land of Israel (barley, wheat, vine, date, olive, fig, and pomegranate), but also the names of the twenty-five trees of the Garden of Eden, delineated by tradition (chestnut, acacia, willow, etc.)—again, all hidden at various equal distant letter skips (5, 18, 9, 14, and so forth). There is no other segment of Genesis of similar length where these words occur at such short intervals (less than 20 letters).
Dosnin’s book goes much beyond such relatively simply patterns. His book is filled with charts of various grids or sections of the Hebrew text, in which one finds patterns of words at various sequences—moving forward, backward, horizontally, vertically, and diagonally. For example, he finds the names Yitzhak Rabin and Amir (Rabin’s convicted killer), the phrase “name of assassin who will assassinate,” Tel Aviv, and the date on the Hebrew calendar 5756 (1995-96)—all laid out in one portion of the Hebrew Torah at various letter sequences (see pp. 16-17) of his book. He tells us of his dramatic efforts to warn Rabin of the possibilities of his death, as he discovered these particular “codes” before the assassination in 1995. He also finds the assassinations of J. F. and Robert Kennedy, clustered with terms such as Dallas, Oswald, Ruby, S. Sirhan, marksman, respectively. In the case of Egyptian President Sadat, he finds the phrase “Chaled will shoot Sadat” and even the Hebrew date “8 Tishri” in a relatively small section of the text. Another section shows many words clustered together related to the 1991 Gulf War, including the words: Saddam Hussein, missile, 3rd of Shevat (Jan 18th), and so forth. Hardly anything is left out of the book, from Watergate, to Hiroshima, to the Jupiter comet collision. Drosnin’s book is filled with such examples, including things yet to come—which is part of the controversy, since most of the Israeli scientists who have developed the basic research on the computer code maintain it can not be used reliably to predict the future. As Prof. Rips put it, when asked about Drosnin’s book: “All attempts to extract messages from Torah codes or to make predictions based on them are futile and of no value.”
The idea that the Torah, as the purest revelation of the God of Israel, was divinely inspired at Sinai and delivered to Moses in a letter-perfect form that we have without error today, is fundamental to traditional Judaism. Indeed, in Jewish mystical tradition, the Torah contains all knowledge. As the Vilna Gaon put it in the 18th century: “all that was, is, and will be unto the end of time is included in the Torah.” The Torah is understood to be the “blueprint” of the universe, a reflection of the perfect mind of God. Many of these Codes, especially the more simple ones, based on the ELS phenomenon, had been discovered by various rabbis down through the ages. It was the brilliant Rabbi Michael Ber Weissmandl, survivor of the Holocaust, who first made a systematic examination of the entire Torah, looking for such patterns. As a youth he had written out the entire 300 thousand letter text of the traditional Torah on white cards, in 10-by- 10 arrays of letters. Following the war he lived outside of NY City, sat for hours, Bible in hand, making complicated mathematical calculations on the letters of the Bible, taking copius notes in the margins. Eventually he established a Yeshiva and gathered a group of faithful students around him. Unfortunately little of his work was committed to writing, and most is now lost. For example, the Vilna Gaon had found the name Rambam (Maimonides) encoded in Exodus 11:9 in an acrostic acronym from the first letters of the words: Rabot Moftai B’eretz Mitzraim (“marvels will be multiplied in the land of Egypt”). Rabbi Weissmandle discovered that if you began with the letter M (Mem), of this acrostic, the words Mishnah and Torah were spelled out at a 50 letter sequence—but with the two words separated by 613 letters. Those familiar with Jewish tradition will recall that Maimonides’ greatest work was titledMishnah Torah and it is the most authoritative commentary on the 613 Mitzvot (Commandments) in Judaism.
I first heard of the Torah Bible Code on various visits to the Jewish Quarter of the Old City in the early 1990s. It was talked about openly among the rabbis and Torah students who lived there. In fact, in July, 1990 I discussed the phenomenon with the Chief Rabbi of Israel, and he appeared to be quite excited and favorable toward the results that were just beginning to appear from the Israeli scientists. I can still recall the example shown to me from Deuteronomy 31:14-18, where Moses is told how Israel will go astray and that God will hide his face from them. If you begin with the letter Heh, last letter in the name of Moses in verse 14, count 50 letters, you come to Shin, another 50 letters, you come to Vav, and so forth until one finds spelled out: Hey Shin Vav, Alef, Heh—which is in Hebrew is HaShoah—the Holocaust! (see illustration). I was told at the time that this word, HaShoah, never occurs anywhere else in the Torah in such a pattern. I still have my Hebrew Bible marked with those letters I circled on that day. Shortly thereafter I was able to obtain a privately published “manual” on the Torah Codes published by the Orthodox group Arachim. In 1993 I received a letter from Prof. Paul Eidelberg from Bar-Ilan University, on behalf of his colleague Dr. Moshe Katz asking me for help in getting some of this work published in English. Prof. Katz was one of the pioneers in the computer examination of the Torah Code possibilities. Prof. Eidelberg was kind enough to mail me a copy of Prof. Katz’ s book on the Torah Codes in Hebrew, B’Otiyoteiha Nitna Torah (published 1991; subsequently in English as: Computorah: On Hidden Codes in the Torah [1996]). Over the next few years I continued to hear about the Bible Code and the astonishing claims these Israeli mathematicians were making. Prof. Eidelberg himself published a fine summary in the Orthodox scientific journal B’Or HaTorah (“Codes in the Torah: A Discussion” No. 9, 1995), and from time to time one would see articles about the codes in the Jewish press.
The first major academic breakthrough involving such research on the Bible Codes was the 1994 publication of an article in the prestigious scholarly journal Statistical Science (Vol 9, No. 3, pp. 429-38) titled “Equidistant Letter Sequences in the Book of Genesis,” by Israeli mathematicians Doron Witztum, Elijahu Rips, and Yoav Rosenberg. In this very technical article these researchers reported on an experiment in which they claimed to have found, encoded in the book of Genesis, the names, as well as the birth and death dates, of 34 “Great Men of Israel” taken at random from a Jewish Encyclopedia. Their list included such figures as Rabbi Avraham Ibn-Ezra, Rashi, the Rambam, and so forth. In October, 1995, the popular magazine Bible Review, published a summary of these findings by researcher Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, titled “Divine Authorship? Computer Reveals Startling Word Patterns.” The response was overwhelming and gradually the subject of the Bible Codes was working its way into a wider discussion among Biblical scholars (who almost universally scoffed at the idea) and informed lay persons. Satinover addressed many of the objections and responses in a subsequent issue of Bible Review (February, 1996), but the idea was dismissed by Biblical scholars as preposterous and it never really caught on in the public mind. A rather technical mathematical discussion has continued on the Web since the publication of the Statistical Science article in 1994. I have attempted all along to follow the discussion as it has developed.
When Michael Drosnin’s book burst on the scene in 1994 the result was like a torrential storm among specialists and non-specialists alike. One even saw the book for sale in K-Mart, WalMart, and the local grocery store! There are dozens of Web sites on the Internet devoted to a discussion, pro and con, of the validity of the Bible Codes. Bible Review, perhaps as an act of repentance, published a scathingly critical article on Dosnin’s book in August, 1997 titled “The Bible Code: Cracked and Crumbling,” in which the prestigious Hebrew Bible scholar Ron Hendel and mathematician Shlomo Sternberg pointed out what they consider to be the utter foolishness, problematic nature, and outright fraud embodied in the whole idea. Australian mathematician Brendan McKay, along with Hebrew University professor Dror Bar-Nathan published a detailed refutation of what they consider to be the mathematical flaws of the whole idea and responses by Ripps and Witztum followed with counter-responses from McKay & Bar-Nathan. These discussions become extremely abstract and technical and would surely be difficult to follow without a high level of training in the science of mathematical statistics.
Today there are multiple easy-to-use programs for personal computers that allow anyone to get into the act of calculating Torah codes. With a little knowledge of Hebrew one can search for his or her own name and any other significant data. I know of several who have done this. One friend wrote me to report that he had found his name, year of birth, place of birth, and the words “prophet Elijah” are all encoded together! He is trying to determine if this might be significant for his own role in the future plan of God. Others are using the codes to reveal all sorts of details about the impending apocalyptic end of the age on or around the turn of the Millennium. The Christians have also moved quickly into the arena. Popular evangelical writer Grant Jeffrey published a best-seller titled The Signature of God, in which he claims that codes verifying Jesus as the Messiah, his atoning death on the cross, and his role as Savior and Lord, are all encoded in Hebrew Bible using this same ELS code! For example, he points out that if you begin in Genesis 1:1, take the first Yod in the first word, count forward every 521st letter, you will spell out Yeshua Yakhol, which he translates “Jesus is able.” (I have not bothered to count this one out, but assume it will work). He also finds the name of Yeshua, as one might expect, in the prophecy of Isaiah 53 regarding the Suffering Servant. Jeffrey has no mathematical training of which I am aware, but he assures his readers that the chances this name would appear randomly in this chapter are one in 50 quadrillion!! What Jeffrey fails to point out or recognize is that any name of three or four common letters can be found millions of times in various letter sequences, in any language, in a book the size of the Hebrew Torah. The word Yeshua, with its very common Hebrew letters, occurs 600,000 times at various sequences in the Torah—but so does Koresh, Mohammed, Krishna, Buddha, and so forth, including most of the simple first names of anyone reading this article. It is obvious that the whole Bible Code phenomenon has degenerated to the level of tea leaves and Tarot cards! The whole subject of mathematical patterns is nothing new. One can find at any airport bookstore the latest book putting forth “astounding” claims of improbability with reference to the measurements of pyramids of Egypt, the letters in the Arabic Koran, or even the Greek New Testament (numeric patterns of all types).
In my view one of the most worthwhile discussions of the whole Torah Code phenomenon, on a more popular level, is being carried out by the leaders of Aish HaTorah, a rabbinical school in Jerusalem founded by Noah Weinberg—particularly the work of Rabbi Daniel Mechanic, senior “Codes” lecturer for the organization. Although these Orthodox Jewish scholars are convinced the Torah Code phenomenon points to the Divine Authorship of the Hebrew Torah, they have responsibly engaged one another and outside colleagues in a discussion that takes into consideration the various objections and excesses of the subject. Jeffrey Satinover, the author of the initial article in Bible Review, published a responsible and balanced book called Cracking the Bible Code (William Morrow, 1997), that appears to be a balanced source for surveying the question in a comprehensive way.
In the end, the notion of the Bible Codes rests on two fundamental pillars: 1) the claim that these word patterns are statistically significant and could not be accounted for by chance; 2) the idea that there is a letter-perfect, inviolate, version of the Torah in Hebrew, without textual variants or alterations. First, we must be clear on what is meant by “codes.” Word patterns per se, distributed at various distances, will naturally occur in any text in any alphabetic language, whether the English or Hebrew Bible, the works of Tolstoy or Shakespeare, the morning newspaper, or even this article I am writing. Such “words” are accounted for purely by chance, and are not properly referred to as “codes.” Thus to find my name Tabor, or Jesus, or that of anyone reading this article, in any text, is no surprise—especially if the letters of a text are arranged on a grid, and one searches for sequences of one letter skips up to several thousand, in all directions—forwards, backwards, horizontally, and vertically. The possibilities are endless! A “code,” on the other hand, implies that an author or the Author has deliberately arranged the text with certain patterns, complex enough and unusual enough that they would not be accounted for by a random chance occurrence.
For example, Prof. McKay took the English text of Moby Dick and has shown how all sorts of “astounding” things can be found at various letter sequences—such as the assassinations of various public figures, with dates and details. In a more playful mood, Dr. McKay took an English translation of the New Testament book of Revelation and found terms such as Bill Gates, MS-DOS, virtual reality, software, and even the name Michael Drosin—all on a single page grid! Other researchers have taken a portion of the Hebrew translation of War and Peace, roughly the size of the Torah in Hebrew, fed it into a computer, and sought to determine what hidden codes might be there as well. In one short section of the book they found at least 50 words, and even phrases, related to Chanukah—including Hashmonean, temple, lights, Maccabees, sanctuary, month of Kislev, miracles, chanukah, etc. Not having any advanced mathematical training, and no experience at all in the complex world of statistical analysis, I really can offer little here from my own expertise. I will continue to read the debate between the mathematicians and follow it to the degree I can.
As for the inviolate text of the Hebrew Bible, the whole Bible Codes theory faces what I take to be a rather insurmountable problem—especially in dealing with portions of the Hebrew text larger than a section or page. Drosnin states that the Israeli research is based on the traditional Torah, as printed in the Jerusalem Bible Koren edition, which he tells us is the same in all official copies of the text worldwide. The problem is that there is no single ancient copy of the Torah that agrees letter perfectly with modern copies found in synagogues today. The traditional text reprinted in modern editions goes back only to the 16th century and represents a composite text based on various manuscripts of the Masoretic text, put together by the Rabbis. Even our two oldest copies of the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible, the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex (10th century C.E.), do not agree in every word and letter. Any critical edition of the Hebrew Bible will show these many variations at the bottom of the page (see the latest edition of Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, which is based on the Leningrad Codex but footnotes all the major variants from other manuscripts). There are also the many hundreds of changes that the Masoretes made in the text and have noted in the margins and their notes. Over 100 times they change the name of God from YHVH to Adonai, thousands of times they recognize that the text as written needs correction (which they do in the margins). Now with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and portions of the Torah they contain, we know the Masoretic text is just one textual tradition, and not necessarily the oldest. As often as not the Dead Sea texts agree with the Greek Septuagint (which was translated from a Hebrew version around 200 B.C.E.!), and the Hebrew text that Josephus used, against the traditional Masoretic text. This means that any wide search of the Hebrew Bible, involving thousands of letters in dozens of pages, becomes invalid if one assumes that the precise letter sequence in modern copies of the Torah has not changed over the centuries. Our manuscript evidence simply proves otherwise. On the other hand, some of the word patterns, such as the two illustrated in this article, involving letter skips of only 49 or 50 letters, in a relatively limited section of Torah, would remain valid subjects of discussion. What becomes impressive to the non-specialist is when such patterns appear to be superimposed directly within a passage in which the plain meaning of the text corresponds to the “code”—such as the “trees of Eden” mentioned earlier, or the word “holocaust” in Deuteronomy 31:16-19, a passage dealing directly with the subject of the “hiding of the face.” The mathematical debate will go on and perhaps reach definitive resolution by the scientists. My own conclusion is that the verdict is still out on the final question: has some author/s or Author/s inserted patterned messages into the text of the Hebrew Bible,or can all the patterns, so far discovered, be accounted for by statistical factors of chance.