Re: Numerology

Allan Harvey (aharvey@boulder.nist.gov)
Thu, 09 Sep 1999 10:36:29 -0600

At 12:03 PM 9/9/99 -0400, Bill Hamilton wrote:
>At 09:38 AM 9/9/99 -0600, Allan Harvey wrote:
>
>>Actually there has been at least one such effort. I don't have time to
>>look for the reference, but I recall that some people produced results
>>similar to "The Bible Code" using as their text a Hebrew translation of
>>"War and Peace".
>
>My understanding about searching War and Peace was that it was done by the
>authors of the original paper on the ELS (equidistant letter sequence)
>searches of the Hebrew Bible and didn't find much of anything.

OK, you made me go look to verify my memory.
There is a skeptical Web page about the Bible Codes at:
http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/torah.html

Among much else on this page it says:
>
> The first serious attack on WRR's paper was published by mathematicians Dror
> Bar-Natan and Brendan McKay. They found that a small change in the choice of
> appellations for the famous rabbis can lead to War and Peace performing just
> as well as Genesis.

There is then a link to the paper with the War and Peace result. They also
have links to other similar experiments that find things of theological
significance in "War and Peace".

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Dr. Allan H. Harvey | aharvey@boulder.nist.gov |
| Physical and Chemical Properties Division | "Don't blame the |
| National Institute of Standards & Technology | government for what I |
| 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80303 | say, or vice versa." |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------