Torah Bible Codes - Equidistant Letter Sequences (ELS) Search Software Research and Development (TorahBibleCodes.com) - is led by Professor Eliyahu Rips of the Einstein Institute of Mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
In 1994 Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips, and Yoav Rosenberg (WRR) developed a method for testing the significance of the phenomenon according to accepted statistical principles. After making certain choices of words to compare and ways to measure proximity of those words, they performed a randomization test and obtained a very small p-value, i.e. they conclude that the results are highly statistically significant.
On 19 July 2024 Professor Eliyahu Rips passed away (Z"L ז"ל) - may His memory and life's work be a blessing! Today, we continue with this effort to advance Torah Bible Codes (ELS Search) scientific research. Our mission is to advance and pioneer the necessary computer programming and development to take the currently closed proprietary source-code of the Torah Bible Codes (ELS Search) software (in Windows C++) and develop this software to be free, open source-code in Python that is more conducive to the open-source sharing of this software and the Big Data that it computes.
Simply put: We have developed the free open-source software Proof of Concept (POC) 0.1 BETA, and coming soon is the upgrade of our current Torah Bible Codes (ELS Search) software to version 1.0 (which will be shared soon) which is free for everyone to access the source code and all Big Data that will be shared globally.
Simply put: We have developed the free open-source software Proof of Concept (POC) 0.1 BETA, and coming soon is the upgrade of our current Torah Bible Codes (ELS Search) software to version 1.0 (which will be shared soon) which is free for everyone to access the source code and all Big Data that will be shared globally.
To this end, we invite any (and all) to support and participate in open-source development of the public algorithm and code of the TorahBibleCodes project in order to contribute to the developed features and functionalities available freely to all. You are invited to pledge your active support and participation.
If you don't have the extra cash to support, but if you have the time (which is equal to money), then you can contribute to the Python code and algorithm development and help shape the direction of the Python code program (at GitHub and StackOverflow) to help us all develop the desired features and functionalities in stages, and to do refactoring of the code when necessary after contributions from the Open-Source public that help refine and streamline the code available as Free Open-Source.
In the late 1970s Dr. Eliyahu Rips, an Israeli Math Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, began looking for hidden codes in the Torah with the help of a computer. In 1994 Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips, and Yoav Rosenberg (WRR) published an article in the peer-reviewed journal, Statistical Science, entitled "Equidistant Letter Sequences in the Book of Genesis". In their article, the researchers publish their findings of an experiment that they conducted regarding Equidistant Letter Sequences (ELS) - i.e. sequences of equally spaced letters - that are cryptographically hidden within the text of the Book of Genesis.
The editor of Statistical Science, Professor Robert Kass, made the following remark about the article by Witztum, Rips, Rosenberg in his preface to that issue of the journal:
". . . When the authors used a randomization test to see how rarely the pattern they found might arise by chance alone they obtained a very highly significant result, with p=0.000016. Our referees were baffled: their prior beliefs made them think the Book of Genesis could not possibly contain meaningful references to modern-day individuals, yet when the authors carried out additional analyses and checks the effect persisted. The paper is thus offered to Statistical Science readers as a challenging puzzle."
In a public statement, Dr. Eliyahu Rips has stated, "The only conclusion that can be drawn from the scientific research regarding the Torah codes is that they exist and that they are not a mere coincidence."
In a public statement, Dr. Doron Witztum has stated, "In codes research, we are dealing with a similar situation: 1) The credibility of serious codes research will be compromised by amateurs whose 'discoveries' are scientifically meaningless 2) People will exploit the Torah to present all kinds of counterfeit proofs, by finding 'hidden messages', that bolster their ideology. We have a very important and valuable phenomenon that has been discovered. It's a scientific discovery that can really help us get a better understanding of the nature of our existence. Rather than have it watered down with people's personal exploitation or misunderstanding, we should be investing more in serious research and understanding of the phenomenon."
In a public statement, Dr. Harold Gans (an expert NSA mathematical cryptographer) has stated, "After exhaustive analysis, I have reached the conclusion that the only information that can be derived from the codes discovered in Genesis is that they exist, and the probability that they are mere coincidence is vanishingly small."
In their paper that examined WRR's conclusions, entitled "Patterns of Equidistant Letter Sequence Pairs in Genesis", Gans, Inbal, and Bomboch conclude, "The compactness of patterns formed on the surface of a cylinder by ELSs of a priori selected famous Jewish personalities and ELSs of their communities of birth or death is smaller than can be attributed to chance."
Witztum, Rips, and Rosenberg (WRR) developed a method for testing the significance of the phenomenon according to accepted statistical principles. After making certain choices of words to compare and ways to measure proximity of those words, they performed a randomization test and obtained a very small p-value, i.e. they conclude that the results are highly statistically significant.
As a control text for the scientific experiment, WRR used a Hebrew translation of Tolstoy's War and Peace of the same length as the Book of Genesis. As one would expect for control texts, the result was totally nonsignificant.
Witztum, Rips, and Rosenberg (WRR) define an Equidistant Letter Sequence (ELS) as a sequence of letters in the text whose positions - not counting spaces - form an arithmetic progression. That is to say the letters are found at the positions
n, n + d, n + 2d, ..., n + (k - 1)d
WRR define n as the start, d as the skip between letters in the search-term, and k as the length of the ELS. These three parameters uniquely identify the ELS which is denoted (n, d, k).
The text within which the ELS is/are being searched is written as a two-dimensional array, i.e. on a single large page with rows of equal length, except perhaps the last row. Usually an ELS appears as a set of points on a straight line. The exceptional cases are those where the ELS "crosses" one of the vertical edges of an array and reappears on the opposite edge. To include these cases in our framework, we may think of the two vertical edges of the array as pasted together with the end of the first line pasted to the beginning of the second line, the end of the second line to the beginning of the third line, and so on. We thus get a cylinder on which the text spirals down in one long line.
- To fund the necessary computer programming and development to take the currently closed proprietary source-code of the Torah Bible Codes (ELS Search) software (in Windows C++) and develop this software to be free, open source-code in Python that is more conducive to the open-source sharing of this software and the Big Data that it computes.
- To encourage and fund scientific research, projects, and experiments that will advance our knowledge and insight into the ELS Torah Bible Codes.
- To allow greater (easier) access and more research in this field within the scientific programming community. To allow those in the scientific programming community free and open access to the Torah Bible Codes (ELS search) software as well as open access to the various Hebrew Bible texts for the purpose of conducting research and scientific experiments.
- To encourage advanced Scientific Computing and Computing Research with this open-source Python software for Torah Bible Codes (ELS Search), as well as with various texts (Big Data-Sets) to serve as texts for experiment and controls, (i.e. Torah (experiment), All Books of Tanach (control), and various Random Hebrew-Language Daily Newspapers (control)).
- To fund the advancement of computer science research that is applied to this field of Torah Bible Codes (ELS Search) research, such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Neural Networks, and Natural Language Processing.
To this end, we invite any (and all) to support and participate in open-source development of the public algorithm and code of the TorahBibleCodes project in order to contribute to the developed features and functionalities available freely to all. You are invited to pledge your active support and participation.
If you don't have the extra cash to support, but if you have the time (which is equal to money), then you can contribute to the Python code and algorithm development and help shape the direction of the Python code program (at GitHub and StackOverflow) to help us all develop the desired features and functionalities in stages, and to do refactoring of the code when necessary after contributions from the Open-Source public that help refine and streamline the code available as Free Open-Source.