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The Perfect Peshitta Text
#1
Dave Bauscher???s new translation ???The Original Aramaic New Testament in Plain English??? is well done and worth having. However, it creats some questions that need to be considered.

In the introduction Dave repeats his former claims about so-called ???long Bible Codes??? which he ???found??? by searching through millions of combinations of the 22 letters of the Aramaic alphabet using a computer program called ???CodeFinder???. [I believe it should be called ???CodeMaker??? since these ???codes??? are created by very extensive systematic letter sorting and have no statistical significance.]

In his introduction Dave states:

???I believe what I have in my possession and from which I have translated here (TheAramaic text, not the translation itself) is the exact, word for word, letter for letter, original and Divinely authored New Testament! It contains no errors of any kind historical, grammatical, orthographical, textual, geographical, scientific, or theological!???

Wow, that???s important if true!

Dave writes, ???The Peshitta NT was written by God Himself!???

So which text is this perfect text? I don???t think Dave is using the Eastern Peshitta as he seems to claim in his book, but rather I believe he is using a version of the Peshitto that he happened to receive when he purchased the ???CodeFinder???. I think it may be the same version that is found in the ???Online Bible??? which is called ???Peshitta??? but which has 27 books and is apparently the Western Peshitto.

I think Dave has somewhat answered this question before, but if he did I forgot the precise answer or got confused by different discussions.

Dave, please specify exactly which text you claim to be the one, perfect text, and where I can find the digital version. If it is a version of the Western Peshitto, it cannot be perfect since it does not agree perfectly with the Eastern Peshitta which most of us believe to be the most reliable. For example, your text has the woman in adultery in Chapter 8 of John. The Peshitta does not.

Thanks in advance for your response,

Sincerely,

Otto
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#2
Shlama Akhi Otto,

I am pretty sure David said he was using the 1905 (aka 1920) Critical Edition as was compiled by the British and Foreign Bible Society. This is the same Aramaic NT text that is used in the "Red Book" (Aramaic New Covenant Peshitta Text with Hebrew Translation--editions 1 and 2) and the "Blue Book" (COE/SOC combined edition). There is only one such Peshitta standardized text for both the 22 and the Western 5.

I am not taking this approach in Mari/PEACE but am instead restoring original Eastern readings in places like--but not confined to--Acts 20:28 and Hebrews 2:9. I have annotated extensively the difference in readings between Khabouris and 1905 and also Khabouris and other Eastern peshitta mss. In almost every case, these variants are insiginificant, but my goal is to provide the reader with enough comparitive analysis so they can make up their own mind in terms of what reading they prefer. I have also restored the more ancient and reliable Aramaic readings on the Western 5 as well, and explain the methodology throughout so there are no surprises.

And for those here who may be curious, we are hoping to get final layout proofs this week, but since I feel worried that I let some folks down with not making the previous deadline I am hesitant to give a date for the physical delivery. Stay tuned on that.

Shlama w'burkate
Andrew Gabriel Roth
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#3
Shlama Akhi Otto,

Sorry for the confusion. I mentioned the text which has been preserved by The Church of The East, since all Peshitta's are essentially the same in those 22 books, whether Eastern or Western mss. are used, and that church is one body which has an unbroken history and tradition of using and preserving The Peshitta from the first century.

The text I used is The 1905 Syriac Peshitta as issued for The Online Bible program. It is free of charge and obtainable with square Hebrew letters from The Online Bible web site with the program, which is also free. This edition of The Peshitta is the one most commonly encountered on the internet at various web sites:Beth Sapra, Beth Mardutho, CAL web site, as well as the printed 1979 Syriac Bible by UBS. This edition has been reprinted numerous times since 1905 and is a critical edition, based on about 70 Aramaic mss., some Eastern, mostly Western, including The 12th century Crawford ms. for Revelation (Crawford includes the entire NT) and Pockocke's 17th cent. edition of the General Epistles (Western 5).

I have Stephen Silver's transcription of The Khabouris, which I have compared with The 1905 Peshitta in the 22 book canon. After tallying the differences of abbreviated spelling of common compound words in the 1905 which are split into two words in Khabouris, I find about 834 letters separating the two versions, after excluding the Pericope Adultera from the letter count for the 22 books both versions share. That is 0.2% of The Letter count of The Khabouris. That leaves 99.8% agreement in letter number between the two Peshitta versions. Most of these 0.2% do not change the meaning of the text significantly, if at all. If half of them change the meaning somewhat, that would leave 99.9% agreement; only 0.1% of any meaningful difference. Out of approx. 100,000 words, that represents about 100 words of any meaningful difference between the two Peshitta's.

As to The Pericope Adultera, Lamsa translated it from Aramaic mss., as did Murdock. Lamsa translated from The Eastern Peshitta elsewhere (even Western Peshitta mss. do not have the Pericope) and The Assyrian edition of The Eastern Peshitta also contains the pericope, with a caveat explaining that it is not in Peshitta mss. but is in other ancient Syriac mss and in Greek mss.

Blessings to you,

Dave

(P.S. - I will post info. on the story of the woman taken in adultery one of these days. I have been studying the Greek and ancient version evidence for that since 1974, as well as the church fathers' quotations.)
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#4
June 10, 2008

Dear Dave,

Thanks, for the useful information. It clarifies much.

However, I think you side-stepped the issue of your contention that the Online Bible version of the Peshitto is the PERFECT TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT as shown by so-called "Bible Codes". You have stated that if even one letter is removed or added you would lose your ???Bible Codes???. Apparently, your faith in your ???Bible Codes??? supercedes all logic about or considerations of textual history or properties.

The Online Bible version of the 22 books of the Peshitta which you believe to be PERFECT does not agree exactly with the revered Eastern Peshitta or the Khabouris manuscript and they CANNOT each be PERFECT.

As I interpret your answer, you still think that the Online Bible version that you used is the ONE AND ONLY PERFECT NEW TESTAMENT, but you will not object to other people (including Andrew) using NON-perfect versions because you believe that the differences are small in terms of number of letters or words (excluding The Pericope Adultera).

Here is what you wrote on page 8 of your new book, Original Aramaic New Testament in Plain English"

"I believe what I have in my possession and from which I have translated here (The
Aramaic text, not the translation itself) is the exact, word for word, letter for letter,
original and Divinely authored New Testament! It contains no errors of any kind
historical, grammatical, orthographical, textual, geographical, scientific, or
theological!"


I think it is important for everyone to clearly understand your inflexible position.

Sincerely,

Otto
Reply
#5
Hello Otto,

Yes, I think it is important that people know this also, and I thank you for pointing it out.

I also think that the textual history of The Peshitta is rather unique and extraordinary. I do believe a good critical collation of the mss.
would and has produced a perfect edition of the original, unlike what exists for Greek mss., or even what exists for the Hebrew Tanach, for that matter, though I expect we can do better for the Hebrew than what has been done thus far.

"Let every person be fully persuaded in his own mind."-Romans 14:15

Dave
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#6
gbausc Wrote:Hello Otto,

Yes, I think it is important that people know this also, and I thank you for pointing it out.

I also think that the textual history of The Peshitta is rather unique and extraordinary. I do believe a good critical collation of the mss.
would and has produced a perfect edition of the original, unlike what exists for Greek mss., or even what exists for the Hebrew Tanach, for that matter, though I expect we can do better for the Hebrew than what has been done thus far.

"Let every person be fully persuaded in his own mind."-Romans 14:15

Dave

Shlama Akhi David:
Could you make clear to the forum just how a good critical collation of the manuscripts would and has produced a perfect edition of the original.

Specifically, which manuscripts are you referring to?

Shlama,
Stephen
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#7
Shlama,

It's my opinion that this "perfect edition" of the P'shitta N.T. could NOT POSSIBLY exist in the WESTERN Peshitta text that Bauscher used.

It's simply NOT possible that ANY New Testament text that men have messed with, like the Western Syriac P'shitta text, could be a PERFECT EDITION, Authored by MarYah, of the P'shitta N.T.

I believe that Dave Bauscher believes this text exists (and that it's PERFECT), but his view of this is faulty, and is obviously biased.

And personally, I find his need to translate YHWH as "Jehovah", insulting.

Why not "Marya" or "MarYah"? I fail to understand this coming from a translator of a Syriac N.T.

Albion





Stephen Silver Wrote:
gbausc Wrote:Hello Otto,

Yes, I think it is important that people know this also, and I thank you for pointing it out.

I also think that the textual history of The Peshitta is rather unique and extraordinary. I do believe a good critical collation of the mss.
would and has produced a perfect edition of the original, unlike what exists for Greek mss., or even what exists for the Hebrew Tanach, for that matter, though I expect we can do better for the Hebrew than what has been done thus far.

"Let every person be fully persuaded in his own mind."-Romans 14:15

Dave

Shlama Akhi David:
Could you make clear to the forum just how a good critical collation of the manuscripts would and has produced a perfect edition of the original.

Specifically, which manuscripts are you referring to?

Shlama,
Stephen
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#8
Shlama all,

Gwilliams and Pusey's critical edition of the Gospels (Tetraeuangellium Sanctum) lists 42 mss. they used and describes each one. Gwilliams later published an edition of Paul's epistles using 7 mss. Hugoye Journal of Syriac Studies has an article on the variant readings of those plus 5 other Peshitta mss.. The Peshitta mss. are each dated and briefly described. Three of the 12 mss. are Eastern. The mss. average about 1 variant reading for every 3 pages from the majority Peshitta text. There are no places where the majority reading is not discernible. The Eastern mss. average 1 variant for every 10 pages of text! The Eastern mss. represented were certainly more carefully copied than the Western text mss.; the Western mss. average 1.5 variants for every page of text.

The above information also demonstrates that an Eastern ms. is much closer to the Critical Majority Peshitta collation edition than a typical Western ms. is. As we compare a sufficient number of Western mss. together and ascertain the majority reading, we come up pretty much with an Eastern text!

It is true that the long codes I found depend on the exact letter number of the slightly flawed original Codefinder edition I used (It had 50 extra letters due to the repeated verse of Luke 6:14) . The subsequent short Name codes experiment I performed does not depend on that same text; it works for both an Eastern text, like Khabouris or the edition Paul has on Peshitta.org as Word documents with just the 22 book canon, and it works as well for the critical edition based mostly on Western mss. with the 27 book canon. It is for this reason that I accept all 27 books of that edition as part of the original inspired Aramaic New Testament, and the text of the majority collation as the original text of The Aramaic NT. This does not mean that the edition is letter perfect as currently presented; it does mean that this 27 book canon is original and that the text is extremely close to its original state, and that the real differences are relatively insignificant.

I personally believe God put codes in the Hebrew-Aramaic scriptures as a sign of His authorship of those scriptures, though not to prove the text is in perfect condition as currently constituted. This means He providentially encoded the editions used to be discovered in our time by computer, to encourage us to see His omniscience in foreknowledge and His guidance in preserving the Holy books intact. I believe He also wants us to more carefully ascertain the original readings using all the materials and technology at our disposal; most of all, He wants us to see the Divinity of the message we have in The Holy Bible and to accept it as such, to live by the faith and hope it gives us, and to practice the love to which it enjoins us.

I would slightly revise my original conclusion in my introduction to read:
???I believe what I have in my possession and from which I have translated here (The Aramaic text, not the translation itself) is the exact, phrase for phrase, (not word for word,letter for letter) original and Divinely authored New Testament! It contains no errors historical, grammatical, geographical, scientific, or theological!???

There may yet be a few minor textual errors and mis-spellings. I know this is true in The Hebrew TaNaKH; I suspect it is true of The Peshitta NT in a few places. I believe we can correct those errors and that the original New Covenant -(Dyatheeqee khadatha) is has been perfectly preserved for us to discover, and is nearly accomplished.

The most problematic text to ascertain is Revelation. The best we have so far is The Crawford ms. which contains all 27 books of The NT. Its text of Revelation is far more Semitic in nature than The Harklean, which is more Hellenized, due to being a revision of a Crawford type text toward Greek readings via Greek translation of certain parts. The places where the Crawford and Harklean agree I would accept as genuine and original; where they differ, generally I accept The Crawford, but there must be places where we cannot be sure of the original, as there is no other ms. like the Crawford ms.. John Gwynn's book The Apocalypse of St John in A Syriac Version Hitherto Unknown is a definitive work on the Crawford, which he first published to the world in 1897. Gwynn was of the opinion that the Crawford of the Western 5 epistles represented the Philoxenian version (A.D. 508) from which The Harklean was taken and revised (A.D. 616). No one believes we have any copies of The Philoxenian version with which to compare these; it was Gwynn's theory alone.

While he believed the ms. was translated from Greek, as was The Peshitta, he characterized its text and style to be very Peshitta like, as compared to The Harklean.
It is markedly superior to the Harklean; see pp. xvi-xxvii in his introd.
Gwynn quotes a Maronite Monk in 1625 concerning the manuscript:

"It would not be difficult to make out a plausible case for accepting it as the Aramaic original. In it, far more fully than in the cramped and artificial diction of its reviser (Thomas Harkel) the Aramaic idiom asserts its power to supply for the burden of the Divine visions an utterance more adequate than could be found for them in the Greek which is their actual vehicle..... In it, I may almost venture to say, more perfectly than in the written Greek, we may read 'the things which shall be hereafter', well nigh in the form in which St. John first apprehended the divine word that came to him, and inwardly shaped into speech the revelation of 'The Lord God, which is and which was and which is to come, The Almighty.'"

Gwynn says The Crawford is of the same character and Aramaic quality as The Peshitta, yet he cannot account for it properly, as he was bound and gagged by Greek primacy dogma. Yet he presents the text, data and a Greek translation beautifully in a critical edition and comparison with The Harklean version.

I know some will want to jump all over me for mentioning Bible codes again & for modifying my original statement about the infallibilty of The Aramaic text I used.

Hey, knock yourselves out.


Blessings,

Dave
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#9
June 24, 2008

Dear Dave,

Your statement above that your "long codes" were found using a faulty Peshitta text is very important. Your long Bible code results are therefore worthless.

I have already shown you that your interpretation of the so-called "short codes" study (I guess that refers to your 95 "divine names" word study), is based on a misunderstanding of the underlying statistics. There is nothing remarkable about your observation of large "Z" values because you wrongly calculated the Z values using incorrect variances. You assumed incorrectlty that the letters in the text are perfectly randomly distributed, but they are not since they are organized into words, phrases, and sentences. Even with the wrong variances you found that about half of the "divine names" were less frequently found than expected. When I chose slightly more realistic estimates of the correct underlying variances of the letters, I found a typical normal (Gaussian) distribution with about half of the observed number of "divine names" slightly more than the calculated expected number and about half slightly fewer. Here is a summary of the results:

(1) the distribution formed a typically Gaussian (or normal distribution) bell-shaped curve demonstrating a correction factor of about 2 for the calculated ideal standard deviations;
(2) 47 "divine names" had fewer than the calculated "expected" number (the ideal number is half or 47.5);
(3) 48 "divine names" had more than the calculated "expected" number (the ideal number is half or 47.5);
(4) within one standard deviation of the mean there were 38 that were fewer than the mean and there were 36 that were more (the ideal number for each is 32.4);
(5) within two standard deviations of the mean there were 43 that were fewer than the mean and there were 44 that were more (the ideal number for each is 45.3);
(6) beyond two standard deviations of the mean there were 4 that were fewer than the mean and 4 that were more than the mean (the ideal number for each is 2.2).

Nothing remarkable about these data. I pointed out that you could change the text somewhat and you would always get the same type of wrong answers if you continued using the wrong variances.

Why do you continue to present your "long codes" as evidence in the introduction of your translations and recommend your faulty book, "Divine Contact"?


It is time to drop this silly Bible Code nonsense. It is an undesirable distraction

Sincerely,

Otto
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#10
Shlama Akhi Otto,

Thank you for responding. I am happy to defend my position.
I have already addressed the matter of the faulty text:
Quote:It is true that the long codes I found depend on the exact letter number of the slightly flawed original Codefinder edition I used (It had 50 extra letters due to the repeated verse of Luke 6:14) . The subsequent short Name codes experiment I performed does not depend on that same text; it works for both an Eastern text, like Khabouris or the edition Paul has on Peshitta.org as Word documents with just the 22 book canon, and it works as well for the critical edition based mostly on Western mss. with the 27 book canon. It is for this reason that I accept all 27 books of that edition as part of the original inspired Aramaic New Testament, and the text of the majority collation as the original text of The Aramaic NT. This does not mean that the edition is letter perfect as currently presented; it does mean that this 27 book canon is original and that the text is extremely close to its original state, and that the real differences are relatively insignificant.

I personally believe God put codes in the Hebrew-Aramaic scriptures as a sign of His authorship of those scriptures, though not to prove the text is in perfect condition as currently constituted. This means He providentially encoded the editions used to be discovered in our time by computer, to encourage us to see His omniscience in foreknowledge and His guidance in preserving the Holy books intact. I believe He also wants us to more carefully ascertain the original readings using all the materials and technology at our disposal; most of all, He wants us to see the Divinity of the message we have in The Holy Bible and to accept it as such, to live by the faith and hope it gives us, and to practice the love to which it enjoins us.

As to the variances for calculating Z scores, I use the square root of the expected number of occurrences to calculate 1 standard deviation. I used it also for the control text, and it yields a mean standard deviation of 0.98 for 367 data points. What formula would you use? Please remember that a professional statistician approved the formulas I used, and I found plenty of corroboration for this from other sources.

While you say the variances are wrong, you then seem to say that I should expect abnormal variances, since the text does not have random letter distributions. Am I reading you correctly? Which is it?
Why should I expect normal Z scores if all literary texts have non random skip texts?
On the other hand, if I get the variances right, I should expect normal Z scores?

Exactly what are you saying?

Other works of literature do not produce high Z scores. You are misunderstanding the nature of skip texts. They are random, especially when you are skipping 1000 letters at a time or more in each word search, as I did for my experiment. Show me results for any text in which the mean Z score for hundreds of searches of 95 different words is 4.85 (in in 1.6 million probability) and I will listen to your argument.

Blessings,

Dave
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#11
I will try to explain this more clearly.

First, the so-called ???control text??? that Dave used is apparently a nearly random distribution of the Aramaic alphabet characters. This is apparent since the results for Dave???s 95 ???divine names??? fit the theoretical variance and standard deviation quite well for this control text. Hence, the control text must be pure jibberish. I think some computer-based randomization procedure was used to create this nonsence text. The fact that the theoretical variance and standard deviation values for the 95 ???devine names??? which assumes that the letters are randomly distributed fit well for the randomly distributed letters in the control text just confirms that the control text has randomly ddistributed letters, nothing more.

The logical error that Dave made was to ASSUME that all of the letters in the Peshitto text that he got with CodeFinder are "perfectly randomly" distributed. They are not! They are, in fact, organized in a very systematic fashion in the form of meaningful words, phrases, and sentences, a virtual mosaic rather than a random mess. This is a common mistake in the logical process involved in looking for "Bible Codes". Dave created a "control" text by randomly shuffling the letters in the Peshitto using a randomization routine, and the results of searching the actual Peshitto text are quite different from the control text because the Peshitto letters are not randomly distributed. No book with real words, phases, and sentences in a real language has letters that are randomly distributed. This is not a miracle. The "square root of the expected number of occurrences" can only be used to calculate 1 standard deviation if the populatation is randomly distributed because the expected number depends on random sampling. Structured equal letter spacing (ELS) sampling is not random sampling when the underlying population is not randomly distributed. Hence, the combination of non-random letters and a the structured ELS method led to biased samples.

Any real text is going to give results that are more disperse than that assumed for perfectly randomly distributed letters. Both the variances and standards deviation of the thousands of copies of each ???divine name??? that are sorted out by the ELS (equal letter spacing) CodeFinder routine are expected to be larger than the theoretical distribution for random letters. How much bigger will these varaince be? How can we estimate them?

Well, every language will present different relationships so Russian or English relationships cannot help us evaluate Aramiac relationships, To make matters even more complicated, every ELS will have different variances and standard deviations all of which are larger than the theoretical values for random letters.

In addition there is another complicating factor. You cannot ASSUME that the actual word that was chosen for the search does not affect the probability of finding the chosen combination of letters. The actual word chosen may have letters that tend to have a commonly recurrent paired relationship in the Aramaic language. Such a paired relationship can affect the result in a complex way for which the simple probability calculation does not account.

Dave added another level of variability by randomly collecting data for different ranges of ELS values and combining them in an invalid way. He thus manufactured meaninglessly large Z and so-called Chi-square values which he claimed were miraculously impossible! Through all this, remember, that about half of the ???divine names??? were found to be MORE than expected and the other about half were found to be LESS than expected. Also, typically he found about a million copies of each ???divine name??? and this so-called miracle is based on a tiny variation of about a few tenths of a percent of those observed. This is quite a stretch.

So, the only way to evaluate the true values of the variances and standard deviations for these ELS searches is to analyze the results. Firstly it is easy to show that the results fit an almost perfect normal (or Gaussian) bell shaped distribution just as expected from traditional statistical theory. Then using graphical or mathematical methods it is possible to fit these actual data to a specific normal (Gaussian) distibution. I did this for the 95 "divine name" grouped data to avoid the additional variability associated with separate ELS groups. Considering the expected differences between the results for the different ???divine names???, the results were remarkably good. The standard deviation for these data is about two times the theoretical standard deviation calculated for randomly distributed letters. There is nothing miraculous about these data!

There were no remarkable trends with about half of the observed number of "divine names" being slightly more than the calculated expected number and about half being slightly fewer. Here is a summary of the results:

(1) the distribution formed a typically Gaussian (or normal distribution) bell-shaped curve demonstrating a correction factor of about 2 times for the calculated ideal standard deviations;
(2) 47 "divine names" had fewer than the calculated "expected" number (the ideal number is half or 47.5);
(3) 48 "divine names" had more than the calculated "expected" number (the ideal number is half or 47.5);
(4) within one standard deviation of the mean there were 38 that were fewer than the mean and there were 36 that were more (the ideal number for each is 32.4);
(5) within two standard deviations of the mean there were 43 that were fewer than the mean and there were 44 that were more (the ideal number for each is 45.3);
(6) beyond two standard deviations of the mean there were 4 that were fewer than the mean and 4 that were more than the mean (the ideal number for each is 2.2).


Dave says some statistician told him that his big Z values and probabilities were correct and significantly different from the ideal theoretical values. Certainly, any statistician would say that the results he got were very significantly different from the theorercial values for randomly distributed letters and random sampling. Dave has definitely proved that the letters in the Peshitto are not randomly distributed. I certainly agree. However, this is not remarkable since we can readily understand that the letters of the Peshitto text are not randomly distributed so the sampling procedure was biased.

I would be amazed if Dave can find a qualified statistician who says that these results are a Godly miracle. Dave, if you know of one, please send me his/her e-mail address. I would like to commumicate with that person directly!

Sincerely,

Otto
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#12
Hello Otto,

You can address me in the second person instead of the third person; I am right here.

You are laboring under a misconception of what a skip text is. Of course a work of literature has orderly letter distributions; The Peshitta does also. I was not searching the plain Peshitta text on the surface for Divine Names; that would be silly; many of the Divine titles were taken from The plain Peshitta text in the first place. I was searching skip texts. A skip text is any text which is searched by skipping letters; it is not searching the plain surface text for non randomness; of course the surface text is non random; it has word patterns everywhere. But when you start skipping letters, the letter patterns become random very quickly, especially if the skips are large, say beyond 10 letters or so.
Have you ever done this kind of search, Otto? Any literary works design quickly breaks down when you do this kind of search for word patterns of any complexity.

Codefinder or any good code breaking program will predict very accurately how many expected findings there are for a particular search word in any text prepared for the program to be searched. For War and Peace in Hebrew or Moby Dick in English, one can test the results of searching for particular "code" words, and the expected number will almost always be within 1 standard deviation of the actual results. The more searches done, the more consistently the results are normal, in which the actual results and expected results are within 1 standard deviation; perhaps a bit more, 1.5 or 1.7.

Every search I did was by skipping 1000 letters minimum all the way up to the maximum allowable skip number, which for a four letter word, for instance, was about 153,000 letters. This I did for each of the 367 searches performed for the 95 Hebrew and Aramaic names and titles of God in The Peshitta.

Whether the deviations from the mean are greater than the mean or less than the mean is irrelevant; what is significant is the absolute value is the variance, that is why a chi square is used to test the statisical significance, Otto; it squares the variance, so that whether the variance is negative or positive, the chi square result is positive. If you know statistics, you should know this. You never add up the raw variances; you square them first. Show me the method you are using cited from a text book on statistics and I might listen to you.

I have tested The 4 Greek NT's, War and Peace, The KJV, Weymouth's translation, Moby Dick, and scrambled Peshitta texts and scrambled Hebrew OT texts for Divine titles and names as well, using the same general skip ranges and analysis methods. I used chi square and ANOVA and Z score analysis. All the above produced normal results, with mean Z scores between 0 and 2.

I even verified results using Randy Ingermanson's (PHD in Physics- a Bible codes skeptic) codecracker program which can test any text for codes by searching for all word patterns (digrams & trigrams) at any skip range. His program automatically computes stat. results of findings and saves results in a data table. His program gives essentially the same stats I obtained using Codefinder, for both The Peshitta and The Hebrew Bible. All other texts test "normal".

The only literary works which show abnormal results are The Hebrew Tanach and The Peshitta NT.
I also tested The Peshitta books individually. They also show intentional coding.

Please, Otto, do an experiment or two of this nature, doing a sufficient number of searches to make the results statistically significant, and then you can speak with authority.

Out of 367 searches, a random "normal" non coded text should and will reveal 98% of the results within 3 standard deviations; only about 2% will be greater than 3. The Peshitta results are that 42% of the 367 deviations (154 of them) are greater than 3.0 SD; that is nowhere near normal. These are not normal random results as are found in other texts, whether literature or scrambled control texts.

You ought to take a more objective position, Otto. You seem hell bent on your a priori bias that codes simply cannot exist and you know it, before even looking for them and using the scientific method to find out.

Ed Sherman certainly is a professional statistician and he used to be a Bible codes skeptic until he examined the evidence himself and also did some code searching. He now believes God put codes in the Bible, and he has published many articles presenting the evidence supporting that conclusion. He has also presented several of mine on The Peshitta, which I have included in my book (now a free download from Aramaicnt.com) Divine Contact. Ed's web site is biblecodedigest.com

You have not searched the Hebrew Bible, Otto; you have not searched The Aramaic NT. How can you know that codes are not there?

Blessings,

Dave
Reply
#13
Shlama Akhi David:
I don't have Code Finder containing the text of the Peshitta New Testament. I do have Torah Codes which I have used to find ELS's as well as to source words in the TN"K (Masoretic Text). It makes a great lexical/concordance. I have found ELS's of TORAH and Yeshua at a skip of 50. The number 50 is significant because it is the number of years in the Jubile (setting free), Sh'vuot (Pentecost) and it is the number of silver sockets which supported the base of the Tabernacle (foundation).

T-O-R-aH 50 ELS is found beginning with the first letter TAV in the first word of Genesis, namely B'rayshi(t).
This same sequence is repeated in V'ayleh sh'mo(t) at the start of the book of Exodus.

Y-Sh-U-A 50 ELS is found beginning in the word "ma(y)im" in the phrase "mayim khayim" Living Water in Genesis 26:19. This is the "first mention" of "mayim khayim" in the TN"K. The word picture of "wells of salvation", is used in Isaiah Chapter 12.

I would like to know if there are any 50 ELS's of either Yeshua, Aurayta or Torah in any of the books of the Peshitta New Testament. For that matter are there any textually low number ELS's in the Peshitta. A textual ELS (equidistant letter sequence) is a significant/symbolic word found in the plain reading of the text at a skip of 3, 7, or 50. These are the most common numbers that can be found of words in the plain reading. Since these textually low numbered ELS's are readily found in the TN"K, I am assuming/conjecturing that the definitive proof of ELS's in the Peshitta New Testament would be their presence in every book of the Peshitta New Testament.
Textually low numbered ELS's would in all probability, not be diminished in the Peshitta New Testament, because the Peshitta New Testament is the "autograph" with very few variations. Akhi David, I challenge you find and list the whereabouts of even a small handful of these simple "textual ELS's, "if" they exist at all. This would simply demonstrate the same "divine watermark" that is present in the TN"K.

Shlama,
Stephen
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#14
June 28, 2008

Dave,

After analyzing the Bible code procedures, I think I could write a duplicate of the CodeFinder program. And after wading through the data that it generated for you, I feel like a Bible Code veteran. I am not ???laboring under a misconception??? as you want to suggest, for the whole process is quite simplistic and readily evaluated mathematically. Making it appear mysterious and profound is a smoke-screen. I don???t care about your studies of other books or other languages because you have yet to find anything miraculous in your ???searches??? of that Peshitto text that you happened to receive. The results are readily explained.

Dave, you keep repeating that same arguments even though I have answered them. I have already clearly described the relationship of your ???control text??? and a real text, and the easily explained nature of your findings. You found nothing miraculous so your Peshitto text has not been proved to be ???perfect???.

A review of the Bible code movement shows that the Bible Code methodology has already been debunked by statistical experts. As a scientist I am only interested in facts, logic, and truth when evaluating Bible Code claims.

I believe that the Bible-code faithful will never accept reason or logic if it conflicts with their ???discoveries??? or preconceived wishes. In my search for Bible Code information I found that Ed Sherman is one of the leaders of the movement, so his position is probably as inflexible as is yours.

I think it was George Gamow in his book, ???One, Two, Three....Infinity??? who wrote that a bunch of monkeys pounding on the keys of a typewriter would eventually produce Shakespearan Sonnets by pure chance. Now the process has been speeded up by replacing the typewriter with a high-speed computer and a letter shuffling computer program.

Otto

P.S. I'm done with this thread....
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#15
Shlama Akhi,

You have answered nothing,Otto, but thank you for making that your last response on this topic.

As to monkeys pounding on typewriters, you seem to have missed the statistical significance of even that scenario. The probabilities of one of billions of monkeys reproducing Shakespeare's work pounding on typewriters would be infinitesmal.

The following article is Associated Press, dated April 2003:
Quote:Give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters, the theory goes, and they will eventually produce prose the likes of Shakespeare.

Give six monkeys one computer for a month, and they will make a mess.

Researchers at Plymouth University in England reported this week that primates left alone with a computer attacked the machine and failed to produce a single word.

"They pressed a lot of S's," researcher Mike Phillips said Friday. "Obviously, English isn't their first language."

A group of faculty and students in the university's media program left a computer in the monkey enclosure at Paignton Zoo in southwest England, home to six Sulawesi crested macaques. Then, they waited.

At first, said Phillips, "the lead male got a stone and started bashing the hell out of it.

"Another thing they were interested in was in defecating and urinating all over the keyboard," added Phillips, who runs the university's Institute of Digital Arts and Technologies.

Eventually, monkeys Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan produced five pages of text, composed primarily of the letter S. Later, the letters A, J, L and M crept in.

Phillips said the project, funded by England's Arts Council rather than by scientific bodies, was intended more as performance art than scientific experiment.

The notion that monkeys typing at random will eventually produce literature is often attributed to Thomas Huxley, a 19th-century scientist who supported Charles Darwin's theories of evolution. Mathematicians have also used it to illustrate concepts of chance.

The Plymouth experiment was part of the Vivaria Project, which plans to install computers in zoos across Europe to study differences between animal and artificial life.


I also found the following blog on this subject of the monkey experiment:

Quote:???I don???t know who it was first pointed out that, given enough time, a monkey bashing away at random on a typewriter could produce all the works of Shakespeare.??? - Richard Dawkins in The Blind Watchmaker

I first heard this from my high school mathematics teacher, who was a very smart and personable guy. It sounds so plausible too, doesn't it. Of course the idea of monkeys "bashing away" on typewriters is supposed to somehow prove that random events can produce truly improbable results. The problems with even this theoretical example have hardly been addressed. At least I have never read or heard anyone challenge them, ever, anywhere.

The problems with monkeys typing Shakespeare on typewriters are:

1. The typewriter is a very sophisticated and complex machine. I could never build one alone if I had a lifetime.
So the example of orderliness coming from a disorderly monkey in Dawkins' example starts out with a man-made machine, which is terribly artificial and contrived.

2. Nobody, not even a proficient typist such as I am, could type any "works" without paper being properly inserted into the typewriter. What is the probability of the monkey placing typewriter paper correctly in the typewriter once?

3. Having successfully inserted one piece of paper in the typewriter in no way assures that after that page has been thoroughly ruined, another fresh page will be inserted by any monkey, if the pages have not been soiled or destroyed.
Nor can the countless iterations of typing proceed unless a fresh page is inserted every time the last one is ruined.

4. Given these huge, but always overlooked, constraints, why would any healthy monkey continue hitting typewriter keys, day after day?

5. Provided that one stipulates all the previous conditions, artificial and unlikely in the extreme as they may be, the equipment still has to remain workable and clean, rather than thrown about the cage, bent, broken, or defecated on.

6. Notwithstanding all of the foregoing, William Shakespeare wrote with quill and ink on paper, not with a typewriter. If the monkey or monkeys are to duplicate Shakespeare's words (let us not ask them to duplicate his handwriting style as well), should they not write them out?

7. Dawkins further simplifies the task of a monkey typing Shakespeare by artificially constraining the typewriter to only 26 characters. No such typewriter exists, of course.

8. My keyboard has about 60 characters. Considering case sensitivity, as Shakespeare certainly did, that brings the total to say 120 characters, not 26.

9. While I do not know how many works Shakespeare produced, it is sufficient to examine only a 100 character string, the probability of typing out which would be first dependent on insertion of paper, and all the other critical factors listed above, and then we would have 1/120 x 1/120 x 1/120... 100 times.

This works out to one chance in 100 to the 120th power, and that's for one long line, not a sonnet, not a play, and certainly not all of Shakespeare's works.

Since Dawkins has stated that one chance in 10 to the 40th power is impossible, any suggestion of a monkey eventually typing "all the works of Shakespeare" is the antithesis of "clear thinking."

There are many more such examples of Dawkins' lack of "clear thinking" to be examined.ReasoningChristian
Newbie

The key phrase in the theory of Gamow is "given enough time". By all calculations of the statistical odds of the above scenario, there just is not "enough time" to get anywhere near to one of Shakespeare's works by the proposed method.


Read the following blog very carefully:

Quote:I like big numbers. I like really big numbers! When I was in great school I read a book by George Gamow called 1-2-3-Infinity! In it he offered a variation on the "3 Monkeys Problem." (If three monkeys pound away at three keyboards, how long will it take them to reproduce the complete works of Shakespeare?) Gamow quantified things neatly by pointing out that the standard printed line (then) was sixty-five spaces, and there were fifty standard characters including letters, numerals, punctuation marks and the blank space on a (then) standard print drum. Fifty to the sixty-fifth power is roughly 10^110, so based upon 1948 figures if you had one printing press for each of whatever used to be the smallest subatomic particle, each one printing at the rate of an atomic vibration (I think the number he gave for that was 10^-16 seconds) with no duplication, assuming they started five billion years ago (not only was I a lot younger back then, so was the universe) the job would be .033% complete. (I think this must be the printer Nack and Paul are using for their book. ;-))
-Jake Jaqobs

Gamow's argument is used to explain the origin of life without a Creator, as I recall. Pure chance could have produced all living things on the planet, according to the theory. I think that is laughable, and I think such an explanation of the Bible codes phenomenon is just as laughable. <!-- s:biggrin: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/biggrin.gif" alt=":biggrin:" title="Big Grin" /><!-- s:biggrin: -->

Dave
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