Poll: Do you believe God coded the Bible ?
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Bible Codes in Peshitta
#61
gbausc Wrote:Hello Jerzy,

The text is a western edition of The Peshitta(o)- the 1905 Peshitta New Testament taken from the Online Bible module , which is free with the free Online Bible program as a download.

Dave, Thanks, I needed exactly this confirmation. I'm assuming that your have read Online Bible program licence agreement, specifically this sentence: "You may not rework the published modules and texts for use with other programs or publication in eBook formats or websites". And you have the permission of that program authors to convert OBs Peshitta module into a module of your code finder program. As you can see it is not so free for everyone. Independent verification of your results might be difficult, if not impossible.

Now I can state question number 2:

Do you understand statistical methods which you have mentioned in your book and logic behind them sufficiently enough to defend your methodology and experiment setup in a discussion with me here by yourself? Or when we'll start talking about logic and statistics I will have to talk to a statistician who gave you advice (or a man from Oregon who checked your calculations)?


Judging by many words that you have used in response to my simple question number one and looking at another thread that you have started, which I believe was a defending reaction (please remember that we are discussing YOUR book and not other Bible-code related stuff published by other people), I can foresee serious problems in further discussion. Many threads, long additional personal stories and explanations is exactly what I wanted to avoid in this discussion. Let's focus on the methodology used by you in your book. I'm trying to establish now if it the experiment concept and whole statistical proof methods are yours or I rather need to talk to the organ grinder.

gbausc Wrote:Not so, The Peshitta, no matter which version I used.The results are highly unusual, no matter which statistical analysis is used- ANOVA, Standard deviation, Chi Test, Wilcoxen, Poisson, you name it.

I might be interested in seeing how you are really applying all those. But in a moment, first things first.

Most classical statistical hypothesis testing is based on Jerzy Splawa-Neyman and Egon Pearson's "null hypothesis" method. The test that you have mentioned in your book (U Mann Whitney Wilcoxon) is one of the "implementations" of this method. Without understanding the logic of statistical hypothesis testing we could throw at each other statistical terms, ours and our colleagues PhDs and professionalism, book titles etc and come to no conclusion for months.

Some more clarification of question number 2. I have no problem accepting statistical proofs from a non-statistician if he speaks in a coherent and logical way and understands what he is doing. From what I have seen so far in this thread and in your book I have some doubts about that. I'm not speaking about the actual maths and formulas involved in a particular statistical test (although I have no problem understanding it) but rather the logic of your experiment, assumptions and necessary translation of your experimenters hypothesis(es) to that of a mathematical model which must be used in calculations. If you do not understand it and the logic was laid out by someone else then it is fine, just say it. For example, are you able to state clearly what is null hypothesis for your UMW test ? Who is "we" in most of chapter 12 of your book, is it you or someone else?

Shlama,
Jerzy

P.S. Just for your information - the name of the statistician who designed on of the statistical tests is Wilcoxon, not Wilcoxen. I wrote the same comment to you a year ago, apparently you have forgotten. Similar comment about Chi-test, it is known as chi-square test. Term chi-test is used very rarely (I have not seen it in any statistical book or article, only on some amateur websites). And I wouldn't call standard deviation a statistical method, rather a statistical measure (of variability). Poisson is a type of distribution (or model), I'm not sure what you would call a Poisson method (but as I said, we can come to that later, if you will be kind enough to write one sentence in answer to question 2).
Reply
#62
February 26, 2008

Here is a simple explanation of the misunderstanding associated with Dave Bauscher???s Bible Code ???divine names??? study.

Dave is using a computer program called CodeFinder to sort letters of the Peshitto text by skipping one or more alphabetical letters between letter selection. This is called equal letter spacing (ELS). This program can skip from one to many hundreds of letters in making each letter selection, and can go around through the text in both directions until all possible unique combinations have been made for the desired ELS???s. This creates a very, very, very long string if letters. The program then searches for every occurrence of a desired short string of letters chosen by the user. For a short string of letters like a short word it will typically locate about a MILLIONS copies. Wow! This would not be possible without a modern high-speed computer.

So, if you choose to ???search??? this very, very long string of letters obtained from the text of the Peshitto New Testament for the Aramaic word Yeshua (four Aramaic letters) you might get a million copies ???found???. Dave ran this word and CodeFinder found 944,519 copies of Yeshua.

How would you decide whether this is a ???significant??? find?

This is not an easy question to answer, because that many might be expected to be ???found??? by pure chance considering it was nothing more than a massive shuffling and dealing of alphabetical letters.

One way of evaluating this find would be to ASSUME that all of the letters in the text are perfectly randomly distributed. Then you can ASSUME that the actual word that was chosen for the search does not affect the probability of finding a the chosen combination of letters, the word for which you are searching. The CodeFinder program will tell you how many copies of each letter are found in the whole text and it can use simple probability mathematics to estimate the chance of finding each letter in the word and then estimate the ideal number of copies of the whole word that would be expected for the whole search.

Thus, assuming the normal approximation of the Poisson distribution CodeFinder can estimate the ???expected??? total number of ???finds??? that you should get and ???standard deviation??? of the expected variability. CodeFinder estimated that ???theoretically??? it should have found 942,600 copies of ???Yeshua???. Therefore, it ???found??? 1,919 ???extra??? copies in the 944,519 that it found. That is a mere and meaningless 0.2% of the total, but a simple textbook statistical test would tell you that the probability of this number of extra copies is only 2.4%. Wow! Dave probably concluded that this ???extra??? 0.2% among the 944,519 copies of ???Yeshua??? was a Godly miracle. Both truth and common sense suggest that there is something wrong with this logic.

The logical error is in the assumption part of the process. To believe this result you have to ASSUME that all of the letters in the text 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. If they were randomly distributed the text would be pure jibberish. This is a common mistake in the logical process involved in looking for ???Bible Codes???.

In addition there is a second erroneous assumption. You cannot ASSUME that the actual word that was chosen for the search does not affect the probability of finding a 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. For example, in English the letter ???t??? and ???h??? are often adjacent. If you are searching for the word ???hit???, every ???h??? that is found that is adjacent to a ???t??? removes a t as well as an h from the calculated total of available letters since adjacent letters are not allowed in the equal letter spacing (ELS) process. This suggests that a few extra shortages and a few extra excesses of chosen words at the tails of the distribution are to be expected.

In Dave???s divine names study he used CodeFinder to separately search for 95 words or short phrases in Aramaic or Hebrew which he viewed as being of spiritual significance. There actually 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 typical 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 more than the mean and 4 that were fewer than the mean (the ideal number for each is 2.2).

These results are rather ordinary and certainly not a miraculous finding.

As for Dave???s interpretation, I can only say:

???To err is human, but to really foul up requires a computer!???

Let???s stay with the scholarly study of the Peshitta text one letter at a time, and in the forward direction,

Otto
Reply
#63
Shlama Otto,

You are mischaracterizing my study and claims.
Quote:You wroteBig Grinave probably concluded that this ???extra??? 0.2% among the 944,519 copies of ???Yeshua??? was a Godly miracle. Both truth and common sense suggest that there is something wrong with this logic.
And you are assuming things I never said or thought. I never made any claim about "Yeshua" findings. It was analyzed with the other 94 names and titles and the results were included and averaged out.

You are also lumping search results together rather that dealing with the 150 abnormally high Z scores (standard deviations) I found, for which you cannot account. My experiment was done in good faith and the results presented as I found them. 42% of the 367 ELS searches I did have Z Scores greater than 3. This should not be happening. Nothing close to 42% of the Z Scores should be this high. Normal results would be 0.3% of the Z scores at 3.0 or more. As it is, The number of Peshitta ELS Z scores greater than 3.0 (3.0 represents approx. a 1 in a 1000 probability) is 140 times greater than normal or expected results.
That is not a Gaussian distribution. Until you can show similar results in a control text of any sort, you cannot make the effect go away by simply ignoring it.
Lumping all the search results together is simply to ignore the aberrations uncovered. It is akin to looking at the spectrum of sunlight broken down into its various colors of red through violet and recombining them into their original white light, and claiming: "Sunlight is simply white light, nothing more."

That is not science. It is science in reverse.

The Peshitta reveals a spectrum of Z scores which appears highly unusual.

Please explain and reproduce my results in another control text using Hebrew letters.

Blessings,

Dave
Reply
#64
Shlama Jerzy,

You wrote:
Quote:Do you understand statistical methods which you have mentioned in your book and logic behind them sufficiently enough to defend your methodology and experiment setup in a discussion with me here by yourself? Or when we'll start talking about logic and statistics I will have to talk to a statistician who gave you advice (or a man from Oregon who checked your calculations)?
The answer is , "Yes."
But I am not interested in doing so, as I consider your tone quite condescending and patronizing. You intimate that I don't know what I am talking about, and I don't see that you know any more about the subject of statistics than I do. You can analyze the data yourself. The experiment was honestly done and the module is available on my web site to any who want to download it from the Peshitta Research page.

There is no reason anyone interested cannot replicate my results.

I'm sorry, Jerzy, but I cannot take seriously anyone who writes the following:
Quote:P.S. Just for your information - the name of the statistician who designed on of the statistical tests is Wilcoxon, not Wilcoxen. I wrote the same comment to you a year ago, apparently you have forgotten. Similar comment about Chi-test, it is known as chi-square test.

"Chi test" is the term MS Excel lists under Statistical analysis tools provided in that program. I know it is called "Chi Square test". And I mispelled "Wilcoxon" with an "e" instead of an "o".

Excuse me, but your OCD is showing.

I have seen hair splitting before, but you have carried it to a new quantum level!

Count me out as a subject of your vivisection lab class.
You might consider getting professional therapy. I am serious about this.

Blessings,

Dave
Reply
#65
gbausc Wrote:Shlama Jerzy,
Excuse me, but your OCD is showing.
Dave

Your response comes as I suspected. I listed the facts and you are going to invectives. I am patronizing because I have qualifications to do so.

You do not want to continue discussion with me because the logic in your divine contact book is rubbish and you cannot possibly defend it.
Same was here one year ago, you have not answered my simple questions because you simply couldn't.

Yes, you do not know what you are talking about (I mean your codes experiment in the divine contact book). You do not even know the vocabulary. Excel has never been a statistical tool (read for example this <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.stat.uiowa.edu/~jcryer/JSMTalk2001.pdf">http://www.stat.uiowa.edu/~jcryer/JSMTalk2001.pdf</a><!-- m -->) and as far as I know it still isn't. Just because someone would name a function in a program "Expon" doesn't mean there exists an Expon distribution.

And not every criticism is an attack although some pastors prefer to take it that way. It reveals their character.

The problem is that to some people who have no training in statistics you may sound scientific enough so that they are buying your Peshitta codes theory. You are misleading them. The part of the forum which is "dedicated to the fascinating research by Rev. David Bauscher which scientifically demonstrates the primacy and divine inspiration of The Peshitta Aramaic N.T." is the part which will be repulsive to many persons trained in statistics who having a glance at it might judge the rest by what is there. It servers no good to Peshitta primacy. Wake up. You are not always right.

It was a waste of time on my part writing to you. Same was buying your "codes" book some time ago on lulu, money wasted.
What I wrote above I mostly direct to others because your ears seem to be blocked.

Jerzy
Reply
#66
Quote:It servers no good to Peshitta primacy. Wake up. You are not always right.

It was a waste of time on my part writing to you. Same was buying your "codes" book some time ago on lulu, money wasted.
What I wrote above I mostly direct to others because your ears seem to be blocked.

How was it a waste of time if it showed you that my experiment is fatally flawed? You apparently have gained very useful info. by it.
You write from a sheer burden of emotion. I have no hope of engaging in a reasonable discussion with you. You have shown your proud ignorance and bias in former posts and I have no hope that I shall encounter anything but more of the same.

Write your own book disproving the Bible codes phenomenon. Do an experiment of your own, instead of sitting back and condemning my experiment and book.


I engaged in no personal invectives. I honestly believe you need mental therapy. Is that a sin?

Do you have a PHD in statistics? Short of that, I don't see that you are "qualified to patronize" me in that area of discussion.

BTW, you mis-spelled "serves" and wrote "It servers no good to Peshitta primacy." I can't believe you know English after doing that. <!-- sSmile --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="Smile" title="Smile" /><!-- sSmile -->

I am not always right. Are you?

All your charges are general opinions that have no specificity, so you really have not demonstrated anything wrong with my method.

If you have specific criticisms, level them. You don't need to ask me questions, if you know that my work is sheer rubbish.

Prove it!


Dave
Reply
#67
David,

I'm sending you a PM in response.

Shlama,
Jerzy
Reply
#68
Just a note on Jerzy's objection to my reference to "The Poisson method".
Poisson is indeed a predicted distribution of events, based on randomness. It is also used and referred to as the "Poisson method" thousands of times by experimenters and statisticians, referring to using the distribution as a way of evaluating results. There are thousands of articles on the internet referring to the Poisson method, so Jerzy's late objection to the term is just another example of her hair splitting skills, along with my misspelling of "Wilcoxon" as "Wilcoxen", referring to the "Chi Test" (the MS Excel function for Chi Square test) instead of "Chi Square Test".

I have yet to encounter anyone who has searched for the name codes I have searched for in both The Peshitta text and a control text and found the same random results in the control as in The Peshitta. Yet the Peshitta is available with Codefinder to anyone who purchases it and is a free update from Roy Reinhold's "Private Codefinder page" to all who already own it. I also have the Peshitta module freely available on aramaicnt.com for Codefinder owners. You will find it by clicking the "Peshitta Research and Codes" page link at the top of the home page and then going to the bottom left link to "Download it here" and clicking on that link.

The module I used turned out to have Luke 6:14 printed twice back to back, due to an editing error on Roy Reinhold's part. As it turns out, The Divine names experiment has the same results in the corrected edition as in the misprinted one, so take your pick as to which you want to search for the Name codes.

The long Gospel poetry codes are another story. Those codes depend on the exact number of letters of the original edition I tested with the extra verse in it. The reason for this is that they all extend through The NT one time or more, skipping at least 17,000 letters at a time; one skips over 99,000 letters between each code letter! I cannot replicate any of the long poetry Yeshua codes in the corrected edition. Since the long codes are considered very difficult to analyze, statistically, I decided back in 2002 to do an experiment with short ELS's (codes) with the Divine Names and Titles in Hebrew and Aramaic. These are much easier to analyze and are easier for other researchers to repeat.

Interpret this information as you wish. I see it as Divine providence and foreknowledge in selecting Roy's mis edited edition as the one in which to put long Gospel messages in Aramaic and Hebrew, just to get my attention. It was because I found those long codes that I decided to pursue the question of whether God coded The Peshitta, by searching for 95 Divine Titles and Names as they occur in the Hebrew and Aramaic Bibles. The results are very definitely positive for The Peshitta; negative in the control texts, and it matters not which Peshitta version in which I search these Names- Eastern 22 book canon (I had no true Eastern edition to search as I do now), or 2 Western editions, the results are the same.

And because I found positive results in the experiment, I decided to translate The Peshitta, as I was thoroughly convinced by the codes and by other analyses which I and others performed, that The Peshitta was written by God The Holy Spirit and that the Greek NT is merely a translation of it.And if I was convinced by analysis, I was even more convinced by what I found while translating it. I have included many illustrations of what I found in textual notes throughout my translations, both interlinear and Plain English. It was truly a Spiritual revelation and continues to be so as I read and study it. I get chills even now as I am writing about it. It has been a tremendous time of enlightenment and spiritual growth for me and for the members of our church family, as well as for others who have purchased my translations and have written to me about them.(See testimonials at aramaicnt.com )

So, you see, one discovery has led to another, to another, to another, and the first has been confirmed many times over and continues to be validated as I learn and study more. God always works this way in my life, as I'm sure He does in yours. He multiplies His witnesses until we are surrounded by "a great cloud of witnesses" and cannot deny His Truth anymore that we can deny our own existence.

What I hope comes out of all this is that multitudes will "Take and Read" my translations, study The Peshitta for themselves and realize it is the original
Holy Spirit New Testament scripture, and that Christians and non Christians everywhere will trust in Yeshua as The LORD YAHWEH, Savior and Lifegiver of Heaven and Earth, confess Him and follow Him to the Glory of God His Father into eternity!

God bless us, everyone!

Dave Bauscher
Reply
#69
Apparently gbausc couldn't bear that my last post was concluding the discussion between two of us in this thread and had to respond to "Poisson method". So I must go back to this as well ...

For whoever is following this thread here is what I wrote to David on 01-Mar-2008 in my PM:

---- PM sent by me to gbausc on 01-Mar-2008

gbausc wrote:

enarxe wrote : It servers no good to Peshitta primacy. Wake up. You are not always right.

It was a waste of time on my part writing to you. Same was buying your "codes" book some time ago on lulu, money wasted.
What I wrote above I mostly direct to others because your ears seem to be blocked.

gbausc wrote:How was it a waste of time if it showed you that my experiment is fatally flawed? You apparently have gained very useful info. by it.


Reading your book and discovering that your experiment is fatally flawed was of course a gain, as many experiences of life are for all of us. But I have done it already some time ago. And I could have gained something else instead. Spending any money on the book wasn't a gain, as in my opinion it wasn't worth it. Mistake. Happens. It is written in a very strange way, quite difficult to follow your train of thought. Writing here (on the forum) to you now seems to be a waste of time (apparently, I will see if it was or not, after all).

Didn't I tell you right from the beginning that it will go slowly and I need ask questions first ? Please see my previous post (by enarxe on Sun Feb 17, 2008 4:16 pm)

enarxe wrote:I will try to deal with the matter asking one question at a time so we do not get entangled in too many threads. Please bear with me, it may take some time until we get to real methodological problems but there is no hurry. And thanks in advance for your patience.



I asked so far two simple questions to establish two simple things : 1. which text you have taken as a base and if this is available in electronic form so anyone could repeat the experiment, and 2. who should I talk to, to you or rather to your "professional statisticians" that you were calling now and then. What I got in response was a lot of words from you alongside the answers.

How can I be specific without proper data first and without knowing who I need to be talking to and what language should I use?

gbausc wrote:You write from a sheer burden of emotion.

And you have studied some sort of remote psychology to know my motives or what I "write from". All that just from two or three posts on the forum? Or you have that knowledge about me from the Holy Spirit ?

gbausc wrote:Write your own book disproving the Bible codes phenomenon. Do an experiment of your own, instead of sitting back and condemning my experiment and book.

Don't you think people have better things to do than investing time in writing books about flawed books? For what? So you could get flattered by getting printed criticism? This book is not taken seriously by any statistician, is it? You were praised by people from whom you bought the software and by others who do not understand statistical hypothesis testing. Am I correct?

gbausc wrote:I engaged in no personal invectives. I honestly believe you need mental therapy. Is that a sin?

This was not an invective in your opinion? Ok, good, I learned something new about American English.

gbausc wroteBig Grino you have a PHD in statistics? Short of that, I don't see that you are "qualified to patronize" me in that area of discussion.

I have a PhD. Not in statistics but very close to that. And good training in statistics and logic. I was also teaching statistics (on a university level, with good understanding of the logic of statistical hypothesis testing). Credentials good enough? [..]

May I ask what are your statistical qualifications?

gbausc wrote:BTW, you mis-spelled "serves" and wrote "It servers no good to Peshitta primacy." I can't believe you know English after doing that. <!-- sSmile --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="Smile" title="Smile" /><!-- sSmile -->

I do not know English on a proficiency level, it is not my mother tongue and it is easy to notice. But "servers" was just a finger slip. Thank you for pointing that out. It is not on the same level though as your usage of statistical terms. For me it simply shows that you are using tools in which you have no professional training, but for you it is hair splitting. I wrote about it in the P.S., not in the main question. It was a "BTW" and you turn it into main point. Can I suggest some sort of a treatment to you?

gbausc wrote:All your charges are general opinions that have no specificity, so you really have not demonstrated anything wrong with my method.

David, I have not even started putting any charges to your method yet, as you well know. And you said already that I need psychological treatment and you do not want discussion with me. So my previous post was a conclusive end of the discussion on my part as well.

And now you want it back? C'mon, make up your mind. Are we talking about the logic in your book or "you don't like this guy and won't talk to him"?

gbausc wrote:If you have specific criticisms, level them. You don't need to ask me questions, if you know that my work is sheer rubbish.

Prove it!
Dave

So in the end you want it and will be responding on a scientific level? Ok, see my next post coming soon.

And I need to ask questions because what you wrote in the book is not clear enough. It is not stated as in a work written by a professional statistician. I need to ask questions also because I need to build a simple argument, easy to understand for everyone, instead of jumping straight to "abnormally high Z scores" and getting from you what would be for most readers a technical mumbojumbo. And it must be in a step by step discussion with you, not in a longish article or post (like some try here), where you would pick up different bits and attack them instead of responding to the main thought.

Sorry, you must be on the defensive and answer questions. If you do not want to play this way and pull off, OK. But you have already accepted it some time ago, at least it seemed so. As I said I will post the first question about the method and your experiment soon (unless you try to stop me again by saying "no discussion, I don't like you, get a treatment"). Sorry for the delay but I need carefully and wisely word it, so there are no misunderstandings. Also due to my family, church and work I also do not have so much time on my hands, so it must go slowly.

So my question to you now is again: will you be answering my questions in the forum or avoiding them (or adding to them)? I can promise not to follow your way (of talking about many different things) and the questions will be now only about statistics, logic and methodology of your experiment. Can you do the same in your responses ? Answer the questions and not "suggest treatments" or talk about things other than statistics, logic and STATISTICAL experiment from your book?

Shlama,
Jerzy

---- end of my PM dated 01-03-2008

Some comments now, after two more weeks have gone by and we exchanged some more PMs.

Yes, I am biased and I already have my conclusion. I do not like David's codes book, in my opinion the statistical proof in it is flawed, seriously. If anyone has read the book and thinks it is great and proves something then fine, they have a right to their opinion. If it motivates someone to do something good then even better. If anyone wants to read the book, I'm not stopping them, have fun, check it for yourself, if you can. But "judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment".

In my original question to David posted here well over a year ago I criticized the choice of sample for hypothesis testing (in my opinion he was comparing apples to oranges) and asked what is the actual null hypothesis that he was testing. David had responded to some initial clarifying questions that I needed to ask then in order to make head and tail of the statistics listed by him in the book. The crucial question however went unanswered although I have repeated it after it was covered by some "thread mud". David, I think that you have not even understood my question then. I started this again this year trying to arrive at some answer from you.

Any discussion about the logic of experiment from the book and how statistics is used there is probably void in view of : 1) the fact that David was analyzing an electronic version of Peshitta which contains errors (very minor but still the text is not exactly the Peshitta text) and 2) that he writes in his book: "The codes I have found would not exist if one letter were added to The Peshitta NT edition I have used ! This particular edition did not exist (as far as I can tell) until December of AD 2000. If one letter were deleted, the codes would not exist !". How can you reconcile those two, I do not know.

Shlama,
Jerzy
Reply
#70
Hello Enarxe, If you have no need for David's translation of the New Testament you bought, I know someone who would like to study it, but hasn't the resourses to purchase it....I would be willing to pay your shipping charges to get it to him if you are willing.

Thanks,
Chuck
Reply
#71
Thank you Jerzy for rehashing everything, but we already know your position, and you and I agreed that you are not going to change your mind; it is already made up, so I'm not interested in your questions here, as they are not sincere. You asked about Ed Sherman, since he wrote the articles you had questions about, so please ask him what you will.

This is my forum, and I will post what I will on the subject. I have every right to have the last word. You seem compelled to have the last word yourself, even after you agreed to move on with your questions.

Or do you have doubts yourself? Perhaps you are willing to concede the possibility of Divine codes in The Peshitta?

Shlama,

Dave
Reply
#72
March 17, 2008

Dear Dave,

Your supposition that the alphabetical letters in the Peshitta are perfectly randomly distributed is obviously wrong. Therefore, all of your calculated Z values are meaningless. In addition, the distribution of your observations is not surprising, as I have shown.

The smaller fractional samples that you analyzed for each ???divine name??? would be expected to have greater variability than the total sample, and then those Z values are also meaningless.

You are obviously a skilled linguist and translator. Your Bible Code theories will tend to detract from the more important issue of Aramaic/Peshitta primacy because knowledgeable people will view them as goofy. Please stop marring your excellent translations with references to these irrelevant ???Bible Code??? theories.

Sincerely,

Otto
Reply
#73
Dear Otto,

Thank you for your kind words about my translations. It really is those "goofy" codes that led me to translate The Peshitta.

The Peshitta's letter distribution is not random; in that you are correct, but I did not search The Peshitta's surface text; I searched the skip texts, starting at a skip of 1000 letters and going up to a skip rate of over 100,000 letters at a time. I also searched the Hebrew translation of War and Peace in the same way.

Any text should show random letter distribution at skips beyond 50 letters or so. War and Peace certainly does. The King James Bible does. The Greek NT in five editions does. Greek Josephus does. Moby Dick in English does. Williams NT translation does. All these have been tested for codes with negative results.

Only two texts have yielded positive results,statistically, with highly abnormal long and short ELS occurrences; those texts are the Hebrew Tanach and The Peshitta NT. I have not seen any other claims for codes in any other text, in any language, which have statistical significance.

I am sorry to be an embarassment to you, Otto, but I cannot simply turn away from what I have found, simply because it is embarassing to some. I expect that the public will be slow to consider Bible codes seriously. Perhaps I am wrong, and we will find such phenomena as I have in Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes, or some such text. Until such time, I stand by my hypothesis as a valid theory, and all the subsequent discoveries in Aramaic-Greek word comparisons, internal evidence, etc., showing that The Peshitta is Divine in origin and the original New Testament from which the Greek was translated.

I am reminded of the scripture:
???When Paulus had thus rendered a defense, Festus cried out with a loud voice, "You are insane, Paul; much study has made you insane." Paulus said, "I am not insane, excellent Festus, but I am speaking words of truth and integrity." Acts 26:24-25

And another:"We are insane because of The Messiah, but you are sensible in The Messiah. We are weak and you are mighty; you are praised and we are despised." 1 Cor. 5:10 - (My translations, of course)

Suddenly, I feel I am in good company. Of course, I do not place the codes on a par with the testimony of The Messiah and His Gospel. I do believe, however that the codes are merely an instrument which have brought me to a clearer understanding and discovery of the original scripture, and has enabled me to present the pure Divine text of scripture to many in a wonderful and new way.

Please forgive me my foolishness. I fear it may only get worse.


Many blessings, Otto. You have a good heart, and I am appreciative of your support of my work of Peshitta translation and analysis. I know your motives are pure, and it is right to be concerned for how people view The true word of God. I can only pray that our Lord will direct hearts and minds to Himself, whether I am right or not. Some who do not necessarily believe in the codes still read my translation with great benefit. You are one of them. Others who turn away because of the codes claim may never really want to believe in the truth, anyway.That issue is in His hands and theirs, not mine.

Dave
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#74
Shlama all--

Just a word if I may...

I think David is correct. This is his forum and his topic of expertise. He has the total right to present things as he sees fit without fear of embarassment or recriminations from others. However things may look to the wider communities of faith that view Peshitta primacy and make an association with his codes research, the value of what Reverend David has done in general remains undiminished.

Now I know I got in a bit of trouble on this some time back so I will try to word things more carefully this time out. Obviously Reverend David's faith in Christianity comes from a deep place that is not confined to Peshitta studies alone. Having said that, his drive to affirm Peshitta primacy seems very tied to his codes research, and I for one don't want to attack any mechanism that helps a person believe in the Peshitta as the original NT. There are codes in all Scripture. I have seen them. The question remains as to what forms they take and how they should best be represented.

On the other hand, what I see here is simply that those who disagree with David just continue to express well-established positions over and over again. Calling his work "silly" is surely NOT HELPFUL. I know I would not like it if my life's work was termed as such although it would hardly prevent me one jot from carrying out my objectives. I think David probably feels the same way about his work, but he can speak for himself.

I make a request, not a command in any way, that those who oppose the NT codes come up with new threads other than going back and forth on the same data interpretation. Are there no other issues in the full volume of David's extensive treatises that others can explore with him? Also is there ever a middle ground on these matters, somewhere between absolute certainty and absolute condemnation of the total premise? Is it just possible that there may be areas of exploration open to interpretation that need further dialgue to properly determine? I ask because it seems that all I have seen thus far are people 100% convinced of their iron clad positions without any room for discussion. If there is no room for discussion than what are we doing except posturing?

Just wondering...

Shlama w'burkate
Andrew Gabriel Roth
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#75
Thank you Andrew. I was getting to feel fairly lonely over here in this neck of the fora <!-- sSad --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/sad.gif" alt="Sad" title="Sad" /><!-- sSad --> .
I appreciate a kindred and open mind such as yours.
You have brightened my day with your post. <!-- s:biggrin: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/biggrin.gif" alt=":biggrin:" title="Big Grin" /><!-- s:biggrin: -->

Nebrak lak Alaha,

Dave
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