Both the Thou Shalt blog and Dr. Claude Mariottini have mentioned a recent attempt to find “Bible codes”, this time supposedly foreseeing the current financial crisis. But of course, foreseeing is the wrong word, since no one seems to have picked up on this until after the fact.
It is easy to start with current events and then “find” them in the Bible, especially if you are willing to ignore the actual words of the Bible and instead skip to every nth letter until you find words and patterns. Go here for more information. You won’t understand the Bible better, but you may learn a few new banking and economics terms in modern Hebrew.
There do seem to be examples of actual predictive prophecy in the Bible, mentioning specific nations, specific leaders and that sort of thing. But ancient Israel’s prophets and honest readers of the Bible know something that, deep down, these people making claims of prophecy after the fact presumably know too. Real prediction is risky, because it often gets it wrong. The genuine attempts at prediction in the Bible are no exception. And so it is no wonder that so many prefer the safer route, to start what they know and then (using whatever means necessary) find a way to claim that it was foreseen in some authoritative source or other.
At any rate, clearly the actual words of the Bible just aren’t good enough for some people. So go ahead and read it as though it were a word puzzle. But don’t pretend this is showing any kind of respect for the Bible.
I wonder how many modern Hebrew (or ancient runic) banking terms can be found by skipping every nth consonant in The Tales of Beedle the Bard
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