Is it possible that there are hidden messages inside the Torah texts ? Ive read a book – “the bible codes” in which there are many instances where there are sentences quoted in vertical or horizontal matrixes which are extracted from the torah predicting about the current and future events. Can the future be written in the texts of the Torah ?
Hi! Here I’m giving you nothing but my personal point of view: Is it possible that this is true? It’s certainly possible. G-d could put whatever he wanted in his Torah. Do I believe in it? I don’t know. There are a lot of people who have spent lots of time and effort on this, but I can’t tell you if it’s really valid (and I was trained as a statistician). When one starts looking through that many letters and words, and is willing to allow many different ways of combining them, and to accept many different results, it becomes very hard to know what are the chances of finding something interesting just out of coincidence. In other words, could one take a dictionary, do the same kinds of analysis, and find interesting results just because one is trying out so many different possibilities?
As I understand it, this question is hard; it has never been settled by statisticians, and there are some who fiercely hold both sides of the question. I would add that I understand that Christians and Muslims have done similar studies with their own books and also claim interesting results. So anyhow I can’t tell you if it’s valid, nor whether G-d would want to hide this secret in the Torah till the day when we have computers. In any event, I have not seen any useful predictions be made this way, just neat references to things we know about already. You don’t get nice long clear speeches giving inspiration or tips on the elections, just a word here and there. So I think there are plenty of other parts of the Torah which you may get more out of studying first. But I know there are those who disagree with me.
Best wishes,
Michoel Reach