Bible code-breakers:

On March 8, Bill Keller wrote in the New York Times:

Two weeks ago, a group of senior intelligence officials in the Defense Department sat for an hour listening to a briefing by a writer who claims - I am not making this up - that messages encoded in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament provide clues to the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. One of the officials told me that they had agreed to meet the writer, Michael Drosnin, author of a Nostradamus-style best seller, without understanding that he was promoting Biblical prophecy.

On March 11, Michael Drosnin's letter to the newspaper is published:

I am the author of "Bible Code II: The Countdown," mentioned by Bill Keller in his March 8 column.

My Pentagon briefing about the Bible Code took place on Feb. 21 and was attended by top military intelligence officials.

[...]

Why do United States and Israeli intelligence take the code seriously? Not, as Mr. Keller writes, because "we're all a little too desperate these days," but because the Bible Code keeps coming true.

The "Bible Code keeps coming true"? Well, that's because you can read almost anything out of the Bible, or even the novel Moby Dick - as this analysis shows.   Also, the book/technique was debunked six years ago in the Skeptical Inquirer. On the other hand, maybe it fits in nicely with Bush's view that "Events aren't moved by blind change and chance" but by "the hand of a just and faithful God." as this NYT-Op-Ed notes.


posted by Quiddity at 3/10/2003 10:40:00 PM