Einstein famously claimed that “God does not play dice.” In what follows, I argue that God does not play Scrabble, either. That is, the idea of a so-called Bible Code, in which confirmatory words or messages can be extracted from the Bible by reading the letters as they fall at a certain frequency, is completely false. In doing so, I will examine the claims made by one of the Bible Code’s leading proponents, Grant Jeffrey, and I will do the math that he has left conspicuously undone, showing that the purportedly amazing finds are owed to nothing more than the results of combinatorics involving huge numbers of letters. Contrary to Jeffrey’s contention, the math involved is relatively simple, and when properly done, it completely undoes the whole theory.
Jeffrey hedges his incredibly inflated figures with a triumphalist rhetoric. The reader is repeatedly met with celebrations of the supposed overwhelmingness of the “proof” presented, and of the implied dimwittedness of anyone who will not succumb to Jeffrey’s arguments. The best way to test whether this rhetoric fits its target, I think, is to do the math ourselves.
Doing the Math
In English, certain letters appear far more frequently than others. That is why, in Scrabble, the letters a, e, and n are each worth only one point, while j is worth eight points and q and z are each worth ten points. The frequency with which a, e, or n appear in the average word
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