Biblical analysis has a divine conclusion
Reprinted courtesy of THE AUSTRALIAN 1987 June 23
(Investigator 15, 1990 November)
Using a computer to analyse the text of the Bible, biomechanic Dr Moshe Katz has come up
with what he claims could be scientific proof of the Holy Book's origins.
DAVID LESER reports from Jerusalem
AS fantastic as it might sound, Dr Moshe Katz, a respected lecturer at
the Institute of Technology in Haifa, believes his discoveries have
confirmed what Jewish sages have always believed — that the Old
Testament was the work of one immortal author and not, as some modern
scholars contend, an edited collection of separate accounts from
different biblical periods.
Dr Katz believes his inquiries show the Bible prophesied events that
were to take place, in some instances, thousands of years later.
For example, he claims that by using scientific methods one can show
that the Book of Esther contained quite specific, albeit encoded,
references to the Nuremberg trials and that the Book of Deuteronomy
foreshadowed, in similar coded form, the Holocaust.
Dr Katz began his inquiries in response to the currency given to
variations of the Welhausen school of thought, which, for more than 150
years, has propagated the idea that the Bible was a human product
prepared by different people at different times and in different
places.
"This idea held that at some later stage an editor collected them all
and edited them into a final product," he said. "This biblical critique
was called the documentary hypothesis and my work was to check and
study this approach."
As the documentary hypothesis was based on non-measurable variables, Dr
Katz decided to use existing scientific tools to determine whether the
Bible might have been derived from many sources or just one.
He typed the Book of Genesis and then extracts from the other four
Books of Moses into a computer in such a way that by abolishing the
spacing between words the text assumed the appearance of a string of
continual letters.
"In other words, I took this information as a stream of letters to see
what the probability was that the scattering of the letters was a
coincidence or not.
"In some instances, the probability was as high as one in 38 million that I would get the results I did."
He said the text was in its original form — the ancient Hebrew of the
Torah (biblical) scrolls. Any other version, be it in modern Hebrew or
another language, and the system would collapse.
The initial formula Dr Katz applied was based on the number seven. This
number holds special significance in Jewish tradition because it
represents a spiritual level beyond the realm of nature.
It is why there are seven days to the week, to Passover, Succot and
other Jewish festivals and why, for example, Jewish land is required to
lie fallow every seven years.
The maximum spiritual level in numerical terms is, therefore, 49
— seven times seven, the number of days, for example, that it
took the Jews to get to Mount Sinai. On the 50th day they received the
Torah.
Adopting the same numbers then, Dr Katz decided to select at random the
first paragraph of Genesis, which starts with the Hebrew word, Bereshit
— or in English: "In the Beginning..."
Dr Katz marked the "t" in Bereshit and then skipped 49 letters. On the
50th letter he made another mark. Twice more he did the same thing —
skipping 49 letters and marking the 50th letter.
The result was that the four letters he had marked spelt the word Torah
(Bible), which has four letters in Hebrew — Tav, Vav, Resh and Hey.
Dr Katz then went on at random again to another section, this time
Genesis Chapter 28, which tells the story of how Jacob, on his way from
Beersheba to Haran, came upon a holy place and feeling tired, decided
to rest his head on a rock.
After dreaming of a stairway to heaven and an image of God next to him,
Jacob woke with a start and said to himself: "What a terrifying place
this is! It must be the house of God."
Dr Katz used a different spacing formula this time — 26 — the numerical value of the Hebrew word for God, Yahweh.
On the first occasion, the computer marked out the letters that form the Hebrew word for temple — Mikdush.
He did it again and this time the letters spelt out Torah (bible) once more.
"The Bible and temple are the holiest features of Jewish tradition so
one can now understand why Jacob was so terrified waking up in this
place," he said.
Dr Katz said the remarkable aspect of these results was not that words
were being found in the text by simply stringing letters together at
regular intervals but that in every instance the words had direct
relevance to the text in which they were concealed.
According to the Jewish mystics and sages, the Old Testament contains information that exists on four levels.
The first level, Pashut, signifies the simple story that is accessible and comprehensible to all.
The second level, known as Remez. refers to information that is hinted at.
The third level, called Drash, is based on interpretation — that by
reading one passage and then another, one can interpret a third meaning
.
The fourth level Is the secret level — information that is passed down
from generation to generation, usually from teacher to student, and is
so arcane that anyone not familiar with its language and codes would
not even know of its existence.
It is this level that Dr Katz claims to have deciphered with the tools of science.
"There are dozens and dozens of examples I can point to," he said.
One such example occurs in Genesis Chapter 38, which recounts the story
of how Judah slept with his daughter-in-law, Tamar, while she was
disguised as a prostitute.
According to the Jewish sages, this union became the source of the
Kingdom of David, which began ruling the land of Israel thousands of
years after the time of Genesis.
Applying the 49-letter spacing formula backwards and forwards across
the text, Dr Katz said he found the names of Judah and Tamar's progeny
encoded in its passages.
Still another example is found in Deuteronomy Chapter 32, verses 16 and
17, which recount how God told Moses he would die soon and that after
his death, the Jewish people would turn their backs on the Lord and
break the covenant.
"They will abandon me and worship the pagan gods of the land they are about to enter," it says.
"When that happens I will become angry with them; I will abandon them and they will be destroyed.
"Many terrible disasters will come upon them and then they will realise
that these things are happening to them because I, their God, am no
longer with them."
Applying the same 49-letter spacing formula, five Hebrew letters
emerged from the text — Hay, Shin, Vav, Aleph and Hay. Together they
spell Hashoa — the Hebrew words for the Holocaust.
In Dr Katz's opinion, the most startling prophecy is the one winked at in the Book of Esther.
In these pages Esther, the Jewess, marries King Xerxes of Persia whose
prime minister, Haman, is a descendant of Agag, an Amalekite king whose
people had long been the traditional enemies of the people of Israel.
Haman devised a plot to destroy the Jews of Persia but Queen Esther
prevailed on her husband to destroy Haman and allow the Jews to fight
back.
Haman was hung on the gallows and the Jews eventually destroyed their enemies, including Haman's 10 sons.
Asked what else he could do for his beloved wife, Queen Esther replied:
"If it please Your Majesty, let the Jews in Susa do again tomorrow what
they were allowed to do today. And order the bodies of Haman's sons
hung from the gallows."
The King ordered this done and the bodies of Haman's 10 sons were publicly displayed.
This period in history is now celebrated by Jews worldwide as the
festival of Purim, which in English means "lots". Haman had cast lots
to determine the day for destroying the Jews.
Instead he and his sons suffered the very fate they had planned for their enemies.
According to the Jewish sages, the reason Esther asked that Haman's 10
sons be hung even though they were already dead was because she was
speaking not to the King, but to the King of Kings — God.
She was, they claim, seeking the spiritual death of Haman and his descendants.
Into this biblical whirlpool waded Dr Katz with his computer.
In chapter nine, verse five, the 10 sons of Haman are listed —
Parshandatha, Dalphon, Aspatha, Poratha, Adalia, Aridatha. Parmashta,
Arisai, Aridai and Vaizatha.
Deviating from his normal formula, Dr Katz noticed that in the first,
seventh and 10th names there was one letter in each word that was far
smaller than any of the other letters.
The three letters were Tav, Shin and Zine, which have the exact numerical equivalent to the Gregorian calendar date of 1946.
By consulting the history books, Dr Katz discovered that on October 16
1946, 32 men faced a military court martial in the German town of
Nuremberg for their crimes against humanity.
Eleven of those men were found guilty and sentenced to death. However
one of the accused, Reich Marshall Goering, committed suicide a few
hours before the verdict was to be carried out.
That left 10 men, the number Esther had asked to be hung from the gallows.
For the total sceptics, Dr Katz offers one more tantalising morsel of information.
One of the defendants, Julius Streicher, had been the editor of the
most notorious anti-Semitic newspaper in Nazi Germany, Der Sturmer.
Dr Katz produced a copy of the New York Herald Tribune from the following day, which reported the executions.
As the rope was tied around Streicher's neck, the condemned man looked
down at his witnesses and shouted: "Purim fest (festival) 1946."
October 16 1946 is also, in the Hebrew calendar, the 21st day of
Tlshri, which falls each year on the seventh day of the festival of
Succot.
That day is known as Hoshana Raba, the final day of verdict.
Dr Katz believes his work has revealed only a small proportion of
the overwhelming proof for God's authorship of the Old Testament.
His intention is to raise money to prepare a video on the subject as
well as to buy a personal computer with a memory large enough to store
the Torah.
But, according to a number of biblical scholars here, he need not
bother. His findings, while titillating and certainly intriguing, have
no basis in fact they say.
"I would say that today, in general, there is no biblical scholar who
would accept his conclusions," Professor Shalom Paul, head of the Bible
Department at the Hebrew University, said.
"No one would doubt that the material was punched in correctly and that
it spat out the appropriate answers. But it all depends on the
questions that were asked."
Another biblical scholar said: "The patterns Dr Katz used are nonsense
and, besides, there is no original Hebrew text. He is simply using one
particular edition.
"In any event, I don't think the existence of God can be proven by something like this."