Bible Codes and Other Nonsense

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Bible Codes and Other Nonsense

• David Madigan
• Rutgers University

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What are Bible Codes?

• Equidistant letter sequences (ELS) that seem to
  make sense
• All of our avenues are wide
• ALl of Our aVenuEs are wide

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The Rabbis Experiment

• 34 Rabbis in The Encyclopedia of Great Men of
  Israel with 3 columns or more of text and a date
  of birth or death
• Search for their names and dates as ELSs in
  Genesis
• Measured a distance, d
• Permuted the Rabbis 999,999 times
• d one of the smallest

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Replicate Experiment
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Results

• R Genesis randomly permuted
• T War and Peace
• I,U,W Other early Hebrew texts
• V Gensis with verses permuted

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The Rabbis Experiment

• WRR made many choices
• Three fixed variations of the format of the
  Hebrew date (chosen from many possibilities)
• Also used alternate versions of names (list of
  names was provided by Prof. S.Z. Havlin)
• Many of the Encyclopedia dates altered from the
  original

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War and Peace Experiment

• Use the same list of Rabbis
• Use the same dates and date forms
• Same permutation test
• Cook the forms of the names out of 90 used by
  WRR, drop 20 and add 30 consistent with Hebrew
  principles

• P-value 0.0000012

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Choices, choices

• Birth dates or death dates?
• Alternate forms for the 15th and 16th day of any
  Hebrew month
• Used three of eight possible data forms
• Many choices for distance function
• Limited the size of the ELS sip for more common
  words
• Almost always made the blind choice that gave
  the smaller p-value! (e.g. 14 possible date forms
  - WRR the most fortuitous)

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