going to take the fantastical step of taking verificationism to be true and permit only evidence which is empirically measurable. In other words, this session will not be dedicated to argumentation or specu- lation, but, instead, we will be providing only verifiable, empirical evidence that the God of the Bible is the one true God.

Christians and atheists alike will naturally view such claims with skepticism, as well they should. But we will make an additional asser- tion to increase the skepticism, we will prove the Bible by the Bible. Why is this such an outlandish claim? Because under the traditional constraints of logic proving something by itself is a circular argument. But one of the problems traditional logic has is that it has not yet caught up with the study of information.

And so for your homework for this week I asked you to read an ar- ticle which discussed the burgeoning field of information science, a discipline concerned with the definition, properties, and application of information. So in this final session in part two of our apologetics Session 07: Information and Inspiration course we are going to discuss in what ways the study of information reflects on the veracity of the Bible.

Veracity is a word that simply means truthfulness. However, whereas the historicity, or historical accuracy, of the Bible is dedicated to truth claims made in the Bible, the veracity of the Bible, as we define it here, is dedicated to examining the principal truth claim about the Bible, specifically, that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. Introduction The Bible as Data We have come to the midway point of our semester of Apologetics. We begin, therefore, with an important question that is very rarely And I’ve specifically chosen this topic for this article because I be- even considered, let alone explored in any depth. The question is this, lieve that the facts that I’m about to present may well put the final nail what is the Bible? Some might start superficially and say that the in the coffin, so to speak. In session one of this course we heard Mister Bible is a collection of books. Some might say that it is the Word of Deity defend a philosophy called verificationism, the belief that there God. Some might say that it is a religious text. Some others might say is no truth outside of what can be empirically measured. This view, of it is Hebrew mythology. These, of course, are all common descrip- course, has serious philosophical problems, but in this article we are tions. But since we are looking at the Bible from what can actually be

1 2 proven, and since our inquiry is based upon information, let’s answer 5. Extreme sophistication the question in the most data-centric way possible. From this vantage 6. Evidence that the dataset originates from outside of space-time; point the Bible is: that is, the dataset should exhibit the capacity to predict what cannot be known by beings inside the universe, things like future 3,566,480 letters from two language alphabets in a particular order. events.

In other words, it is a very long dataset. Knowing what we know about Sophistication information, what should we be looking for in this dataset? According to what we know about information, what is required of 1. Data plus meaning; in other words we should be looking for pat- data complexity in order for it to rise to the level of extreme sophisti- terns of information cation? Of course, the data must be extremely informative; that is, it 2. Appearance of Redundancy though not truly redundant must have multiple levels of rule or pattern-based complexity. In fact, 3. Appearance of Noise but not truly random I would argue that it has to exhibit unreasonably voluminous levels 4. Complexity of rule or pattern-based complexity. And the fact is that the Bible has 5. Sophistication exactly those characteristics. However, before we dive into the spe- cifics, we should discuss some of the criticisms of our informational Do we see all of these things? In at least some measure, yes. But, in approach to Scriptural analysis. truth, any book of sufficient length will meet all of those requirements. Now, if the principal truth claim about the Bible is that God wrote it, Criticism to Informational Analysis of Scripture what should we expect to see in this data set? To answer this we must examine what the Bible claims to know about God. Consider the fol- Typically criticism against analyzing scripture from the point of view lowing: of the information sciences centers around two arguments. The first argument is a hermeneutic argument and the second is a moral argu- God’s ways are above our ways: ment. Let’s look at each of these criticisms carefully. The Bible should show signs of high sophistication. Hermeneutic Criticism God declares the end from the beginning: The Bible should have predictive power beyond statistical probability. The most common criticism against the informational analysis of the Scriptures is the hermeneutic argument, which is forwarded by those Given this information, we can revise the expectations for the Biblical who claim that looking for patterns or hidden information in the Bi- dataset as follows: ble violates what is called, in theological circles, the Perspicacity of Scripture. The perspicacity of scripture is just a fancy way of saying 1. Data plus meaning—information that the Bible means what it says and says what it means. The more 2. Appearance of Redundancy dogmatic proponents of the perspicacity of scripture take an even 3. Appearance of Noise harder line and declare that no Biblical passage has any intended 4. Extreme complexity

3 4 meaning other than the obvious and literal meaning of the text. Their ourselves from these actions. The Bible makes it absolutely clear that view is that God says what he means clearly so that all can understand we should avoid all forms of divination. Consider the following: it; God has no need to hide anything. Deuteronomy 18:9-14 There are, I hope it is obvious, serious problems with this criticism. Consider the following passages in the Bible: “When you enter the land the LORD your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices div- Proverbs 25:2 ination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, But the glory of kings is to things is detestable to the LORD, and because of these detestable practices search out a matter.” the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you. You must be blameless before the LORD your God. The nations you will dispossess listen Mark 4:11-12 to those who practice sorcery or divination. But as for you, the LORD your God has not permitted you to do so.” And he said to them, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, so that “they may Our view is that we should only prophecy by the Spirit of prophecy, indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest who is Christ Jesus. We take Biblical patterns, hidden levels of Bibli- they should turn and be forgiven.” cal information, and other subtler Biblical phenomena to be confirma- tory not predictive. In other words we consider these phenomena only Isaiah 28:9-10 when the phenomena confirms the Bible itself, not future events or predictions about our personal lives. “To whom will he teach knowledge, and to whom will he explain the mes- sage? Those who are weaned from the milk, those taken from the breast? For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little.” Before we speak much further on patterns in the Bible let us examine Clearly, God does say what He means and means what He says, but the field of study dedicated to understanding the nature of concealing that does not imply that He never speaks in degrees of subtlety; rath- information within other forms information, the field of cryptography. er, God conceals things and reveals them to those who are mature. Cryptography generally deals with two categories of concealment: Moral Criticism 1. Codes—Codes are prearranged messages like, “one if by land and The second argument, and frankly an argument we would do well to two if by sea.” Codes are the simplest form of encryption and also take seriously, is that looking for patterns can distract us from the the best form. The reason for this is that both parties already know expressed truth of the Scripture. In fact, the search for patterns can what the possible messages will be and what signal will be given become a form of divination—trying to predict events in the future in any case. However, codes also have downsides, most impor- through the use of patterns or hidden information. We should guard tantly is that they are not very flexible. In that famous midnight

5 6 ride of Paul Revere the British could only attack by land or by sea. But what if the British unexpectedly showed up flying airplanes. Rich explained that each code is a case of adding every fourth letter The code would not have been flexible enough to accommodate to form a word. the new information. 2. Ciphers—A cipher, unlike a code, is algorithmic, that is you use a Rich explained that each code is a case of adding every fourth letter system to decipher the message. There are, of course, many kinds to form a word. of encryption algorithms and ciphers, but as a category their ad- vantage over codes is that any text message can be sent via a ci- Read the code pher. Ciphers are what we will be examining in this article. That is pretty interesting, but we should remember a couple of im- When we think of ciphers and codes, we think of spies and clan- portant characteristics of equidistant letter sequences (ELS). First, destine operations carried out by intelligence agencies. We think of finding words, names, places, and phrases as an ELS is not statisti- secret messages stuck under park benches and this message will self- cally unusual; almost any sufficiently lengthy body of text will contain destruct in five seconds. The reality is that cryptography embeds pat- words or even entire phrases created from letters that are equal dis- terns for two main reasons: tances apart; these happen naturally as the result of simple statistical probability. In fact, most of the criticism levied against ELS codes in 1. Hiding messages—Of course hiding messages is a common use the Bible is based upon the fact that they are statistically probable of ciphers. within large datasets. So we can dismiss them right? Well, not so fast. 2. Authenticating messages—Equally likely, especially in our in- What is improbable is when clusters of these codes appear bearing creasingly technologically advanced societies, ciphers are used thematic consistency with one another; in other words, a grouping of to authenticate messages. In other words, in order to validate the ELS codes are found who share similar content. For example, sup- source of a message ciphers are used to determine the authorship pose we were reading Jurassic Park and discovered ELS codes within of the message. a particular passage and nowhere else that spelled out Ford, Chevy, Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, Honda, and say half a dozen more vehicle It is this latter point on which we will focus our attention in this ar- names. Well, that would be notable and very unusual. ticle. Specifically, we will be looking at only three kinds of patterns: equidistant ciphers, heptadic structure, and spatial structure in hopes Even more improbable is when the clusters of ELS codes share the- of validating the authenticity of the authorship of the Bible. matic consistency with each other and also with the plaintext reading of the passage in which the cluster appears. To piggyback on our pre- Equidistant Ciphers vious example, suppose that we found all of the vehicles listed above, but we found them in the form of an ELS within the ‘Automobiles” Let’s begin with one of the simplest kinds of codes—equidistant ci- entry in an encyclopedia. That would be beyond belief. phers. These are simple linear codes created by separating the letters of an encoded message at equal intervals within a plaintext message. What is even more improbably, in fact extraordinarily improbable, Let’s look at an example of this: is when these clusters share thematic content with each other and the plaintext and additionally exhibit anachronistic characteristics,

7 8 like being embedded in texts which were written before the historical events which make the words or phrases in the ELS significant. When The implications are pretty staggering. It is more difficult to generate ELS codes appear under these contexts even skeptical and otherwise ELS codes than to find them already generated. It required computers dispassionate statisticians take note. Amazingly dozens of examples to find these codes, which means it took superhuman encryption to put of these can be found in the Bible. I have included two examples them there in the first place. And this says nothing of explaining the below: apparent anachronistic characteristics.

The Many Trees in the Garden The Crucified Savior

In Genesis 2-3 we have an interesting passage beginning with God A vastly more impressive cluster of ELS codes exists in Isaiah 53. planting trees in the garden of Eden then placing in the midst of the Here is the passage in question, which I recommend we read in its garden the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and entirety so that we understand the plaintext for what it is: Evil and concluding with Eve being tempted by the serpent to eat of the forbidden tree. Conspicuously, trees seem to be a rather important 1. Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the Lord object within that passage. Although it took some of the most powerful been revealed? 2. For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, And like a root out of computers available in the late 1980s and early 1990s, scholars and parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty That we should statisticians exploring claims of anomalous ELS codes in the Hebrew look upon Him, Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. Scriptures happened upon something very interesting. In the passage 3. He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and ac- mentioned above they found not one or two or ten but twenty-six spe- quainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face He cific tree varieties hidden in ELS codes within that passage. was despised, and we did not esteem Him. 4. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. This was unusual for a couple of reasons. First, all of the ELS codes 5. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for were types of trees. Secondly, they were clustered in a portion of Gen- our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And esis specifically talking about trees. These two facts alone made this by His scourging we are healed. find absolutely extraordinary; however, one more discovery was to 6. All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him. challenge even the most skeptical critic. It turns out that every single 7. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He did not open His tree—not one more and not one less—found in the entire , that mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, And like a sheep that is is in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, is listed silent before its shearers, So He did not open His mouth. in that ELS code. Why is that so significant? Because all the evidence 8. By oppression and judgment He was taken away; And as for His gen- points to the fact that Genesis was written before the rest of the books eration, who considered That He was cut off out of the land of the liv- ing For the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due? of the Torah. All of the books of the Torah quote or reference Genesis, 9. His grave was assigned with wicked men, Yet He was with a rich man but Genesis does not quote or reference any of the other books in the in His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was there any Torah. In other words, not only did the ELS codes share thematic con- deceit in His mouth. tent internally and with the plain text, but it also demonstrated clear 10. But the Lord was pleased To crush Him,putting Him to grief; If He anachronism; we would expect to see this type of list in the last book would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He written, not the first book written.

9 10 will prolong His days, And the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper 22. Mary x3 in His hand. 23. Joseph 11. As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied; 24. Disciples By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, As He will bear their iniquities. 25. Peter 12. Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great, And He will divide 26. Matthew the booty with the strong; Because He poured out Himself to death, 27. John And was numbered with the transgressors; Yet He Himself bore the sin 28. Andrew of many, And interceded for the transgressors. 29. Philip 30. Thomas This is already a profoundly difficult passage to dismiss as mere co- 31. James incidence even in the plaintext reading. However, what follows is one 32. James of the most profound ELS codes in the whole Bible. In the passage is 33. Simon found the following words clustered together: 34. Thaddeus 35. Matthias 1. Yeshua is my name 2. Messiah The probability of this happening is so astronomically rare that it 3. Nazarene cannot be ignored, and honestly we could simply stop here and have 4. Galilee proved the point. But we’re only getting started. 5. Shiloh (location of the tent of meeting) 6. Pharisee 7. Levites Heptadic Structure 8. Caiaphas (high priest) 9. Annas (high priest) Ivan Panin was a Russian born mathematician and literary scholar 10. Passover who converted to Christianity after discovering within the text of John 11. Harod 1:1-5 a complex set of numerical patterns. His most notable discovery 12. Caesar was what he called the Heptadic Structure of the Bible. According to 13. Let Him be crucified Panin the Bible is constructed in adherence to a Rule of Seven. The 14. Moriah Rule of Seven is the fantastically frequent appearance of overt and co- 15. Cross vert structures in the Hebrew and Greek Biblical texts that are based 16. Pierce around the number 7. He found, for example, 30 linguistic rules of 7 17. The Atonement Lamb in Genesis 1:1 alone. Let’s take a look at a couple of examples from 18. Bread the New Testament, specifically from the Books of Matthew and Mark 19. Wine to discover how these work. 20. Obed 21. Jesse Matthew Chapter One We find in Matthew 1:1-11 the genealogy of Jesus. The truth is that just like Genesis 5 we tend to just skip over this passage because it

11 12 appears to simply be a list of names. It is just a list of names, but if we 1 genealogy obeys, your chances of writing a genealogy that obeyed are too quick to ignore this passage we might miss something rather all 34 rules would be less than 1 in 7^34 or one in 54,116,956,037 astonishing. In Matthew 1 we have one of the most remarkable exam- ,952,111,668,959,660,849. To give you a sense of just how big that ples of heptadic structure anywhere in the Bible—in either testament. number is: if you had a supercomputer that could produce 400 mil- lion tries per second, it would take a million of those supercomputers Chuck Missler plays this thought experiment with his audience. Imag- 4,300,000 years to produce a satisfactory result. Basically, this pat- ine I asked you to write a genealogy, but you couldn’t just write it; tern should simply not exist. But it does. instead you had to obey a few rules: We might be tempted to say that this is just a preposterously rare oc- 1. The total number of words must be divisible by 7. currence, which inconveniently happens to appear in a book which 2. The total number of letters must be divisible by 7. God reportedly authored. But there’s a problem with this theory. These 3. The total number of vowels and consonants must be divisible by 7. same heptadic structures also appear throughout the Bible. Let’s 4. The total number of words beginning with a vowel to be divisible briefly examine another example in Mark 16. by 7. 5. The total number of words beginning with a consonant to be divis- Mark Chapter Sixteen: ible by 7. 6. The total number of words that occur more than once to be divis- Mark 16, in particular, is an interesting case. A debate continues to ible by 7. rage among scholars as to whether or not Mark 16:9-20 should be in- 7. The total number of words that occur in more than one form divis- cluded in the official text of the Bible. The criticism against Mark 16 ible by 7. is that it only appears in later copies of Greek texts. My view, and the 8. The total number of words that occur in only one form to be divis- view of many other researchers, is that Panin’s work might provide a ible by 7. means of settling the question. Below I have listed 10 heptadic struc- 9. The total number of nouns must be divisible by 7. tures present in the text: 10. Only 7 words should not be nouns. 11. The total number of names should be divisible by 7. 1. The total number of words is divisible by 7. 12. Only 7 other kinds of nouns are permitted. 2. The total number of words of Jesus are divisible by 7. 13. The total number of male names should be divisible by 7. 3. The total vocabulary is divisible by 7. 14. The total number of generations should be divisible by 7. 4. The total vocabulary that appears in more than one form is divis- ible by 7. If it took 10 minutes to write a genealogy, and you worked 8 hours a 5. The total vocabulary that appears only once is divisible by 7. day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year, it would take you approximately 6. Total number of letters appearing in the vocabulary words is divis- 3,363 years to meet only 9 of the fourteen criteria. ible by 7. 7. Total number of vowels in the vocabulary is divisible by 7. But I’ve actually misled you. I told you there were 14 of the 7 rules. 8. The same is true for the consonants, divisible by 7. That is not true. There are actually 34 rules 7 rules in total. The aston- ishing reality is that if if you had to obey all 34 rules that the Matthew

13 14 9. The total number of vocabulary words used elsewhere in Mark is of the other people in advance, make a list of vocabulary, and con- divisible by 7. struct his own writing to meet that criteria. In other words, the writer 10. The total number of vocabulary words found only in Mark is divis- would have to write his work last. But they could not have all written ible by 7. last, that’s impossible. What we are faced with is really only two pos- sibilities: We should note that there are other hotly contested texts in the Bible, texts which many argue were added later, in which NO such patterns 1. It just happened by chance, in the same book in which the number exist, including 1 John 5:7—a trinitarian proof text. A topic for fur- 7 is encoded in literally thousands of ways and in hundreds and ther consideration might be to explore the possibility that heptadic hundreds of passages. structures are one of many ways to authenticate texts. 2. The true author of the books in question is someone outside of the time domain who can see the end from the beginning. Unique Vocabulary: Ivan Panin worked his whole life and catalogued over 43,000 pages What is so interesting about heptadic structures is that they appear of primarily heptadic patterns in the Bible, the majority of which are both within single passages and also across many books of the Bible. found in the Torah. However, these extremely rare and statistically improbable structures also appear in the Greek New Testament. One One of Panin’s more intriguing discoveries is the fact that Matthew’s aspect of this latter example is that it demonstrates the cross-author gospel uses 42 words (or 6 x 7) that do not appear in any other book in of the patterns. In other words, the patterns persist re- the New Testament. That is interesting, but not evidence of anything gardless of the author credited with any particular book of the Bible. in particular. That is, until you consider that the same is true for book of Mark; the total of unique vocabulary words in the Gospel of Mark Let’s now turn our attention to one more example which provides a is a multiple of 7. We might even tend to think that this too is a coin- wonderful opportunity to examine how a number of different types of cidence except that the same holds true for the writings of Luke and ciphers in different books of the Bible work together to paint a the- John and Paul. This is already exceedingly unlikely to occur, but it matically coherent picture. gets worse. The same is true for the writings of James, Peter, and Jude as well. Each one of these Biblical writers somehow managed to use Spatial Structure and Superstructure unique vocabulary, which no other writer in the New Testament uses, the total of which is a multiple of 7. The word Hebrew Torah is spelled with four letters, TVRH [TORH]. The first five books of the Old Testament, of course, are called the This becomes very difficult to deal with when we are forced to explain Torah. When we take a careful look at the Torah something amazing how this could have been accomplished. Given that the individual emerges. authors lived at different times and in different regions and without access to all of other writers (in other words, there is no opportunity Starting with the first T in Genesis and skipping 49 letters (7 x 7) we for collusion), the only way to ensure that his writings would have this find spelled out T-V-R-H, Torah. Amazingly, if we look at the first T distinctive characteristic is to have access to all of the writings of all in Exodus the same thing happens if we skip 49 letters—we find T-V-

15 16 R-H. If we look at Leviticus, it does not show up. But then something unexpected happens. In the book of Numbers we find H-R-V-T, or To- Ephraim 40,500 – Ox rah backwards—again at 49 letters apart. Remarkably the same thing Manasseh 32,200 happens in Deuteronomy, Torah is spelled backwards with a 49 letter Benjamin 35,400 separation. When we then return to Leviticus we note something very ------interesting. At 7 letter intervals we find the word YHVH, Yahweh. The TOTAL: 108,100 picture that is created is this: Dan 62,700 – Eagle (formally a serpent) TVRH >>> TVRH >>> YHVH <<< HRVT <<< HRVT Asher 41,500 Naphtali 53,400 The picture that is painted for us is that the Torah always points to ------God. But there’s more. Yahweh is associated with Leviticus. But why? TOTAL: 157,600 What is Leviticus? Well, Leviticus is about the laws of the Levitical priesthood, the requirements that the priests must follow in order to The tribe of Levi was always separate from the rest of the tribes and provide the blood sacrifice for the atonement of sin. Very interesting, was not in a camp. The Levites, which were 22,000 total and consisted but there’s more. of three families, the Kohathites, the Gershonites, and Merarites, plus and the Priests, camped immediately around the Tabernacle. In Numbers chapter two we are given an interesting picture which is not completely obvious. The children of Israel were arranged into 12 Now here is what the Law demanded: tribes in the wilderness. These tribes were then grouped into 4 camps, each camp with 3 tribes. In Numbers 2 the total number of males over 1. The Camp of Judah must be EAST of the Levites. the age of 25 are given as follows: 2. The Camp of Reuben must be SOUTH of the Levites. 3. The Camp of Ephraim must be WEST of the Levites. Judah 74,600 – Lion 4. The Camp of Dan must be NORTH of the Levites. Issachar 54,400 5. No one can be to the Southeast, Northeast, Northwest or Southwest Zebullun 57,400 of the Levites. ------6. Only cardinal directions can be used. TOTAL: 186,400 7. No Camp can be wider than the width of the Levites’ camp. 8. The length of the camp must be proportional to the population. Reuben 46,500 – Man Simoen 59,300 If this camp were viewed from the air, it formed a picture of a cross. Gad 45,650 With the Camp of Levi, the Camp of Priests, surrounding the taber------nacle in the middle of the cross. Yahweh is associated with the tribe of TOTAL: 151,450 Levi because of the provision of the blood sacrifice for the atonement of sin. In this picture Levi is on the center of the cross.

17 18 six years researching Witztum, Rips, and Rosenberg’s findings. Their All of this is 1,000 years before the cross became an instrument of conclusions were that the information itself was correct and the sta- execution and 1,500 years before Jesus Christ died on the cross. This tistical analysis was accurate, and they published the article in 1994. is a colossal anachronism and is so extraordinarily improbable that it Dr. Jeffrey Satinover later published a colloquial synopsis of the JMS defies comprehension. article in The Bible Review in 1995.

Conclusion Doctor Harald Ganz was the senior mathematician at the National Security Agency. When he became aware of the Bible Code phenom- This ever-developing area of Judeo/Christian apologetics has been enon, he decided to check it out himself. So he programmed a com- and is being developed and popularized by the following: puter to run the numbers. It took the computer 19 days to calculate the results, but it confirmed everything that had been previously pub- • Chuck Missler—Researcher and Bible scholar lished. • John Weldon—Author, Researcher, and Apologist • Grant Jeffrey—Leading Bible Code scholar Doctor Harald Ganz and all eight PhDs who peer-reviewed the JMS • Jeffrey Satinover—Scientist and Researcher article quit their jobs and now teach the Torah in synagogues all over • Yacvov Ramsel—Researcher and Author the world. Should we take this stuff seriously? The people who know • Moses Cordovero—the secrets of the Torah is in the skipping of most about it certainly do. letters. • Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl—Studied the Biblical text cryp- Final Thoughts tographically. • Daniel Michelson—PhD in Computer Science and Advanced What we witness in the Biblical dataset is not one or two or ten or Mathematics even fifty patterns but hundreds and hundreds of such patterns, codes, • Doron Witztum pictures, and anachronisms. The statistical probability of even one of • Eliyahu Rips these existing in any book at all is staggering, and the truth of this is • Yoav Rosenberg established in peer-reviewed literature; but to have all of them in one • Ivan Panin book is incomprehensible, and is a brute empirical fact that cannot be ignored or explained by randomness, chance, or even human ingenu- Peer reviewed statistics ity. The data demonstrates extraordinary complexity and the sophis- tication of the information is unmatched anywhere. The dataset dem- Dating back to 1982 Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips, and Yoav Rosen- onstrates that it originates from an unimaginable intelligence outside berg published their work on ELS codes in a number of royal statisti- of space-time. In part one of this course we asked, is it reasonable to cal journals, but it was the publication of their work in the Journal of think that God exists? The answer to that question is, yes! Now we ask Mathematics and Statistics (JMS) that was so important because the the next question, is it reasonable to believe that the God of the Bible JMS is a peer-reviewed journal. Not wanting to publish faulty and is the one true God; to that question too we have logical, rational, and embarrassing information in the JMS, eight mathematicians spent empirical reasons to answer, absolutely, yes!

19 20 Bibliography Missler, Chuck. Hidden Treasures: In the Biblical Text. Koinonia, 2000. Becker, Kate. Is Information Fundamental? PBS.org, April 25, 2014. Nuyten, John. Can the New Testament Canon Be Proved? Session 16 – God’s Grand Design Seminar. http://www.thelivingword.org.au/grand-design/session16.php. Biblical Numerics. http://rl-bibleinfo.com/?p=158. September, 2013. Panin, Ivan. Mathematics Proves Holy Scriptures. New England Bible Sales. 2014. Cardan grille. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardan_grille. Rambsel, Yacov. Yeshua. Frontier Research, 1997. Floridi, Luciano. Semantic Conceptions of Information. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The Metaphysics Research Lab, Center for the Study of Language Sherman, R. Edwin . Bible Code Bombshell. 2005. and Information (CSLI), Stanford University, 2015 Satinover, Jeffrey. Cracking the Bible Code, 1st Edition. William Morrow, 1997. Freiberger, Marianne. Information is Sophistication. Foundational Question Insti- tute, March 24, 2015. Weldon, John. Decoding the Bible Code: Can We Trust the Message? Harvest House Publishers. 1998. Grassberger, Peter. Randomness, Information, and Complexity. Department of Physics, University of Wuppertal, D 5600 Wuppertal 1, Gauss-Strasse 20. 2012. Witztum, Doron; Rips, Eliyahu; Rosenberg, Yoav. Equidistant Letter Sequences in Grille (cryptography). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grille_(cryptography). the . Statistical Science. 1994, Vol. 9, No. 3, 429-438.

Griffiths, José-Marie. Back to the Future: Information Science for the New Millenni- 1 John 5:7 – Does This Speak of three as One God? http://jesus-rlbible.com/?p=1008. um. The American Society for Information Science. Vol. 26, No. 4, April/May, 2000. November, 2009.

Ivan Panan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Panin.

Jeffrey, Grant R. The Mysterious Bible Codes. Thomas Nelson. 1998.

Jeffrey, Grant R. The Signature of God: Astonishing Biblical Discoveries. Frontier Research. 1996.

Lennox, John; Craig, William Lane; Moreland, JP; Hewitt, Hugh. Science & the Big Questions: Leading Christian Thinkers Respond to the New Atheism, Live Broad- cast. Biola University, January 30th, 2015.

List of Plants in the Bible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_plants_in_the_Bi- ble.

Missler, Chuck. Beyond . DVD Series. Koinonia, 2004.

Missler, Chuck. Cosmic Codes: Hidden Messages. Koinonia, 2004.

Missler, Chuck. Cosmic Codes. DVD Series. Koinonia, 2004.

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