reprinted from SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS
SCIENCE SECTION, page 15C
November 30,1985


HIDDEN 'MESSAGES' IN TORAH

by Robin Lustig
Scripps Howard News Service

Dateline: Jerusalem

Computer analysis of the Torah, the Jewish holy book, indicates 
that it is unlikely to have been written by humans, according to 
Israeli researchers.
     The researchers at Israel's Institute of Technology are not 
yet prepared to say that they have proved that the Jewish 
scriptures were written by a divine source. But they clearly 
believe that their preliminary finding point in that direction.
     "we can only say whether or not the scriptures were written 
by one person. But if you want to draw the conclusion that they 
were written by a divine source, you are entitled to do so," Dr. 
Moshe Katz told a news conference earlier this fall.
     The researchers' analysis is based on the remise that the 
Jewish scriptures contain "hidden" messages within the Hebrew 
text. As an example, Katz said that in the first two of the five 
books that make up the Torah, the word "Torah" can be read by 
taking one letter out of  each of the 49 at the start of each 
volume.
     In the third volume, the word "Elokim" (one of the Hebrew 
words for God) can be read by taking one letter from each of the 
26, he said. Forty-nine is a significant number because it is the 
square of seven, which is considered holy, and 26 is significant 
because it is the numerical value of the Hebrew letters that 
spell God, Katz explained. (All Hebrew letters have numerical 
equivaalents.)
     In the last two books of the Torah, he added, the word 
"Torah" appears spelled backwards in the same way. "The 
likelihood of this occurring by chance is around one in two 
million," he said. Katz gave a number of other examples that he 
said showed that "hidden messages" appeared with far greater 
frequency than cluld be explained by coincidence. In the Book of 
Esther, the Jewish wife of Hamaan, demanded that the 10 sons of 
te enemy Malach be hanged, four letters in the list of the sons' 
names appear in smaller print than the rest. When read together, 
these four letters give the numerical value of the year in the 
Jewish calendar equivalent to 1946, the year when 10 Nazi war 
criminals were hanged following the Nurenberg trials.
     In another passage, the Hebrew word "hashoah", which means 
holocast, appears in a section in which God warns that He will 
desert the Jewish people, leaving them to suffer great hardship, 
if they disobey the "covenant" between God and the Jews, Katz 
said.
     "We have programmed the computer to compare these findings 
with other writings, including a novel by the Israeli Nobel 
prizewinner Shai Agnon," he added, "No equivalent findings have 
been reached."

We refer all to the analysis of the Bible made by Computers For 
Christ and how this information may be considered a part of the 
features of that analysis.

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