Bible Codes

However, the existence of statistically insignificant data does not exclude the possibility of finding something of value, so I continued searching for things that might be of interest.

Since the Bible is the Word of God, I would expect the Codes to say something about God's plans and purposes, and the way of salvation, so I put in the word "Yeshua" (Jesus). Since it only contains four characters, and most of them are quite common, I found many occurrences of Yeshua all over the Tanakh. I soon became swamped with data, so I restricted my search to the book of Genesis. I was interested in the family of Yeshua, including Yussef (Josehp) and Miriam (Mary), and of course his title Mashiach (Messiah), so I searched Genesis using equidistant letter sequences from 2 to 50. The number of occurrences were:

• Yeshua - 79
• Yussef - 5
• Miriam - 148
• Mashiach - 43

These are roughly in accordance with what I would expect to get by pure chance, but I was interested to find that four out of the five occurrences of Yussef were in Genesis 42-45, which tell part of the story of Yusef in Egypt. The whole story begins in chapter 39, so I searched Genesis 39-45 using intervals from 2 - 100, forwards and backwards. This gave some more data, including a few occurrences of Yusef in chapters 39-41.

I plotted all the occurrences of Yeshua, Miriam, Yusef and Mashiach in Genesis 39 on a page of monospaced Hebrew text, and all the joined up characters looked like a plate of spaghetti. However, among all this apparently insignificant data, something emerged which goes beyond the realms of pure chance.

Genesis 39:4-9 reads as follows:

And Yusef found grace in his [Pharaoh's] sight, and he served him: and he made him overseer over his house, and all that he had he put into his hand. And it came to pass from the time that he had made him overseer in his house, and over all that he had, that the Lord blessed the Egyptian's house for Yusef's sake; and the blessing of the Lord was upon all that he had in the house, and in the field. And he left all that he had in Yusef's hand; and he knew not ought he had, save the bread which he did eat. And Yusef(1) was a goodly person, and well favoured. And it came to pass after these things, that his master's wife cast her eyes upon Yusef(2); and she said, Lie with me. But he refused, and said unto his master's wife, Behold, my master wotteth not what is with me in the house, and he hath committed all that he hath to my hand; There is none greater in this house than I; neither hath he kept back any thing from me but thee, because thou art his wife: how then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?

The two occurrences of Yusef that are marked as Yusef(1) and Yusef(2) in bold characters are highlighted in yellow in the monospaced Hebrew text below.

These two Yusef's are connected by another Yusef, in the hidden codes, at 57 characters equidistance, so it appears vertically in this text which has 57 characters per line.

There are two occurrences of Yeshua, highlighted in red, passing through the "vav" of Yusef (1). One of these is at 68 characters equidistance. The other is 48 characters equidistance, and continues from the final "ayin", repeating itself backwards at 8 characters equidistance passing through the "vav" of Yussef(2).

Miriam, highlighted in cyan, appears backwards at 15 characters equidistance and passes through the "yodh" of Yusef(1).

Mashiach, highlighted in magenta, appears backwards at 48 characters equidistance.

In verses 9-11, Yeshua appears again at 48 characters equidistance and repeats itself in reverse, from the final "ayin", at 10 characters equidistance as shown below.

I have not yet worked out all the statistics of this, but I've gone part of the way. Considering only the two occurrences of Yeshua, both at 48 characters equidistance, both repeating themselves backwards at different equidistances, together with the occurrence of Mashiach which occurs at 48 characters equidistance backwards, all within verses 5-11, the odds against this appearing purely by chance is about two million to one. If I continued the calculation and worked out the probability of getting all the other bits fitting nicely into place, the odds would get much longer.

The statistics are based on the probability of getting all these characters falling nicely into place if you throw them in the air and then arrange them at random in a long, continuous line. It's rather subjective because you are working out the probability of finding something that you have already found. Consider, for example, that you step out of your front door and put your foot on a nail. The probability of a nail occurring at that very spot is quite small in absolute terms, but if you wait until the nail has got stuck in your foot and then do the calculation, the probability is one. However, when we are working with Bible Codes, the occurrence of one code after another on similar themes, within a meaningful context, leads us to the conclusion that we are finding something that is more than pure chance.

In this particular context, the Bible Codes point to Yeshua Ha'Mashiach Ben Yusef" (Jesus the Messiah son of Joseph). In the Rabbinical literature there are two Messiahs, the son of Joseph and the son of David. The son of Joseph comes first and is temporary. The son of David comes next and is for ever. (Midrash Rabbah - Genesis XV). This, of course, corresponds to the Messianic view of the suffering servant who came to bring us salvation from our sins, who will come again in judgement to rule over the whole earth.

Now we move on to Isaiah 53:8-11 where there is a very interesting result. The text says:

He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken. And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.

Starting from the "yodh" in "ariyk" which means "he shall prolong", we have "Yeshua Shmi" at 20 characters equidistance in reverse, which means "Yeshua is My Name". Passing through the letter "shin" of Yeshua we have "Mashiach", in reverse, at 42 characters equidistance.

Can there be any doubt that the suffering Messiah, described in Isaiah 53, is none other than Yeshua Ha'Mashiach?

This result was found by Yacov Rambsel, and I would highly recommend his book "Yeshua - The Name of Jesus Revealed in the Old Testament", Frontier Research Publications Ltd., 1996, ISBN 0-921714-34-3.

Keith York found three other occasions where Yeshua Shmi occurs:

• Job 33:8-11 at 11 characters equidistance backwards. In this passage, Elihu quotes Job's protestations of innocence back to him as follows:
  I am clean without transgression, I am innocent; neither is there iniquity in me. Behold, he findeth occasions against me, he counteth me for his enemy, He putteth my feet in the stocks, he marketh all my paths.
  This is rather similar to the Messianic prophecy of Psalm 22, which also has a Bible Code and we will look at it later.
• Nehemiah 12:47-13:5 at 51 characters equidistance backwards. This passage tells us how the law was read before the people, and how the Ammonites and Moabites were excluded from the congregation because they had hired Baalam to pronounce a curse on Israel. Then it says "God turned the curse into a blessing". This can be compared with the ultimate reversal of the curse, when Yeshua the Messiah came to bring us salvation:
  Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. (Gal. 3:13-14).
• Exodus 20:2-23 at 179 characters equidistance backwards. This is the passage giving the Ten Commandments, starting with:
  I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
  The Torah given to Moses is the written Word, and Yeshua is the living Word, as it says in John 1:1-14:
  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth.

All these occurrences of Yeshua Shmi occur in a context that points to the nature and work of Yeshua the Messiah, and are surely no coincidence.

In Psalm 22:1-12 we find "Yeshua Moshiach" written backwards at an equidistance of 45 as follows:

Psalm 22 contains a number of prophetic verses that were fulfilled during the execution of Yeshua:

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ... All they that see me laugh me to scorn ... He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him ... they pierced my hands and my feet ... They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.

For the fulfilment of these verses, see Matthew 27:35-46.

The odds against finding this equidistant sequence in Psalm 22 by pure chance is about one in 100,000. The odds against finding it in the entire book of Psalms is about 1 in 1000. This is at present the only known occurrence of Yeshua Mashiach anywhere in the Hebrew Tanakh, and it is very interesting that it occurs in a prophetic passage that speaks directly about the suffering Messiah.

This result was found by Richard Prendergast and published as a letter in the Daily Mail, Wednesday June 4th 1997.

Mike Gascoigne
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