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France Encoded in the Torah

It is the glory of God to conceal a thing:
But the glory of kings is to search out a matter.

Proverbs 25:2

Introduction

During the last few decades and mostly in the recent years, a fiercely disputed subject emerged before the public attention. This subject is closely linked with the boost of computer technology which is continuing to gain speed rapidly. On the other hand, however, and may be this is the reason that makes it a subject of debates, it is ancient enough, springing at the dawn of script, especially the phonetic alphabet. The amazing fact is that in the course of many centuries numerous learned individuals believed that there is additional information hidden beneath the text of a particular document written long ago. Most of these individuals are deceased now but they contributed to the heated discussions in a very peculiar way. They have made their best to make the text available unchanged. And the unchanged text is a prerequisite for the phenomenon. If the text was not reliably authentic, the whole subject would hang in the air: even the most powerful computers would be useless. The text is the Hebrew Torah, which are the five books of Moses. The phenomenon is the so called Bible codes (or Torah codes).[1]

How the information had been hidden? A given text containing normal, “surface”, information is arranged in such a way that after discarding all intervals and punctuation marks, beginning from a certain letter of the resulted string and counting a specified number of letters, the second letter of a given word will be found in the text. After skipping the same interval again, the third one will appear, etc. The process may go both forward and backward. If we know that there is a word encoded in a text, the only thing we should do is to begin at random and count equal intervals of letters in either direction. If we fail, we try again, changing any parameter among the starting point, skip or direction. The process is to be repeated until we find the hidden word. That is why decoding, with a powerful computer in hand, is simple in principle. The encoder’s job is much more difficult and it is easy to realize why: the text must be meaningful. Humans have used this method for passing information in intelligence matters. In these cases, however, the plain text is a meaningful-seeming by-product.

I suppose that this is one of the main reasons for defiance of the Bible codes by believers. While atheists understand that only God could possess the mental power of encoding more information hidden in His words, many believers think that if this is the case, He must have used the Scripture in the way human spies have used it. In other words, Bible code studies should lead to a devaluation of the Word of God. But this is just another example of assessment of the acts of God by human measures.

Others believe that the codes repudiate the free will. But in that case the same reasoning should be applied to any prophecy given in the plain text of the Bible. Therefore neither the Jews had their free will when disobeyed the Lord’s commandments nor did Judas Iscariot have his own one when he betrayed the Lord Jesus. It could be claimed on the grounds that these events were predicted in prophecies long before they happened. So, if opponents claim that Bible codes researchers have it in mind to use them as a crystal ball, they should apply the same way of thinking to the prophecies.

The tremendous difference between a prophecy and a Bible code is that the former is stated explicitly while the latter is hidden. But this does not mean that it can be revealed and used as instrument for prediction of events with a 100% certainty. The Bible codes are statistical phenomenon and even in the most unambiguous cases only probability could be estimated for the future. Generally, the disputed codes are about events that have already happened.

My own belief is that the Power of God is immeasurable. He may express His abilities in all the ways He is fond of and the Bible code is one of these ways. Even more, the Bible code may appear to be the way in which the Lord expresses His omnipotence. The fact that our generation is blessed to possess the means of appraisal of the most eminent acts of God may be an additional indication that we live in the Latter Days, the time when many shall run to and fro, and the knowledge shall be increased. And maybe the powerful computers are indispensable for them that be wise to understand (Dan. 12:4, 10).

The code I’m offering to the reader has not been discovered by intention. Anyway, the history is worthy to illustrate that computers do not “spit out” scare stories. The researcher needs knowledge and understanding in advance in order to manage the experiment and evaluate the results appropriately.

About a year ago I began a research on safe countries for Jews during the Holocaust encoded in the Torah. The research was successful: the method proposed distinguished the states without death toll from the other ones.[2] The method was based entirely on statistics: I checked intersections of the (encoded) name of each European state with Israel in the plain text of the Torah. Intersections were just recorded and I hadn’t paid any attention to the particularities of the slides. In order to validate my method I checked all encoded names for intersections with other, relatively frequently appearing names in the plain text such as Egypt, Abraham, Moses, etc.: 14 words altogether. I managed to collect a large statistical material. Recently I started to evaluate this material as a next phase of my research. It was in the process of this work when I came across something interesting.

France

France has been a key European state for more than a millennium. The origin of France as organized state is linked with Clovis, a pagan king of the Franks, who was baptized in 496 AD. The 1500^th anniversary of this event was celebrated in France in 1996. When a state is established, it should have to take up a name. The new state was called most appropriately after the tribal name of the German tribe Franks.

There is something interesting with the name of France in Hebrew. Most of the names of the European states in Hebrew are derived phonetically from their original languages. The only exceptions are France and Spain. In Hebrew, France is צ ר פ ת (TsaRFaT) and Spain is ס פ ר ד (SFaRaD). [Hebrew reads from right to left!] These names are mentioned only once in the Old Testament, significantly together, in Obadiah 20, transcribed in English as Zarephat and Sepharad, respectively: “And the captivity of this host of the children of Israel, which is among the Canaanites, shall possess even unto Zarephath; and the captivity of Jerusalem, which is in Sepharad, shall possess the cities of the South”. Centuries later, these names were given to two of the most powerful Catholic countries in Western Europe.

Zarephath means refinement. It is an Old Testament town remembered mainly because Elijah resided here during the latter half of the famine caused by the draught. Its Hellenized variant is “Sarepta” (Luke 4:26). There is a village in Lebanon that bears the name Sarafand, apparently a variant of Zarephath.[3]

The reason for assigning these ancient names to France and Spain is shrouded in mystery. In the case of France, it could be assumed that there is a distant phonetic resemblance to the name of the tribe of the Franks. F and R are definitely there and maybe once K had been pronounced more likely as Ts. An echo of this could be found in the contemporary German name Franz and the fact that France is pronounced Frantsia in many east European languages. On the other hand, as a rule, Hebrew does not use vowels. So far, although transposed (arranged in reversed order), three of the four consonants are present. The fourth one, N, is but replaced with T. The significance of this at first glance negligible fact will become clear later.

Pharaohs, Lands and…

As it was shown above, France is a 4-letter word in Hebrew. It does not appear in the plain text of the Torah but yields between 25 and 30 thousand encoded occurrences.[4] With such a vast number of occurrences, France may intersect with almost every word in the plain text through one or more of her occurrences. The lower the skip of an intersection, however, the higher is the significance of the latter. In the method I have propounded, the lowest recorded intersection skip is multiplied by the number of occurrences of the encoded word. The lower the product of this multiplication, the better. Due to her high number of occurrences, France is “doomed” to yield relatively high products even at low skips. What was my surprise to see that France has yielded very low values in three of the Tables. I looked over the Tables. They were those of Pharaoh, Land and Egypt! The value in all three Tables was the same one. This could mean only one thing: all three names are sharing the same intersection skip of France, i.e. they take part in a common matrix… Pharaoh… in the land… of Egypt. I doubt there is even a single Bible scholar, who is worth his salt and who wouldn’t associate these three words with the Exodus. Next come the ten plagues … and a fourth word readily comes up in mind:

…Frogs

That France and French people are associated with frogs to a fabulous extent is a well-known verity.[5] But it is not just a funny fabricated story. It falls back on such important matter as the coat of arms. Brother Paul Billington wrote an excellent article on the subject and I recommend it to the reader because very important issues on links with prophecies in the Book of Revelation are masterly elucidated there.[6] The next thing I had to do in the situation was to look in the dictionary for frog in Hebrew. There are four words for frog in the dictionary attached to the program. So I judged against the word used in the Torah. It is צ פ ר ד ע (perhaps pronounced TsFaRDA, but I am not sure). I hardly believed my eyes! The first three letters are just a permutation of the first three letters of France! The word is used 11 times in the plain text of the Torah, only in the story of the second plague and nowhere else. This made me examine more closely the actual matrix, where the skip of France is -9. It appeared to be well away from the real story: in Deuteronomy 11:3, where Moses refers to these events while instructing the Chosen People always to remember God’s miracles and to teach their children to obey His commandments. I hastily began checking intersections coincident for Pharaoh, land, and/or Egypt at other skips.

Pharaoh, [King of] Egypt and land usually go together in the narrative, so it did not surprise me that France intersects concomitantly with two of these words every now and then. What did surprise me was that the skips of such intersections are much higher than 9 (hence on absolute values will be meant only). The maximum “density” of these concomitant intersections is at skip values somewhere between 100 and 300. The next matrix of comparative significance came into view at skip 150. But even with these data in hand I still failed to realize that there are more objects hidden in the matrix.

From France through le Francais to la langue francais

I was staring at the slide with all 3 intersections trying to spot something interesting. I was just about to give up all the matter when I noticed the yod (י ) immediately above the end letter of France. But צ ר פ ת י (TsaRFaTI) is a French(man). I checked the word and it showed no lower skip than 9. So, Mr. Frenchman intersects with the three Egyptian words at his lowest skip. Well, this is more than nothing.

I continued to gaze at the slide in the search of something significant. Another letter, this time immediately above the yod, caught my eyes. The letter was tav (ת ). Even with my scarce knowledge of Hebrew I guessed that it may mean French (language). I checked in the dictionary. It was there: צ ר פ ת י ת (TsaRFaTIT). Starting with a 4-letter word I came at a 6-letter one. This is already much, exponentially much more than nothing.

IQ vs. Odds

I immediately ran the program to find the number of occurrences. It appeared to be 80. Needless to say, the lowest skip was the same: 9. Relying on my own experience with about 40 names, I dare say that the lowest skip of a word with such a rate of occurrences could be expected with highest probability to be somewhere about 400. I checked the lowest skip of the word for French (people), which differs by its last letter only: צ ר פ ת י ם (TsaRFaTIM). With 113 occurrences, the lowest skip of this word is 331.[7] A good verification. Generally, based on the statistical data I have gathered, the lowest skip for צ ר פ ת י ת should fall with about 95% probability somewhere between 100 and 1000. I haven’t recorded such deviation of this parameter with any word I have examined save Austria (א ו ס ט ר י ה ). But Austria occurs only twice in the Torah and is not suitable for statistical estimation.[8]

Then I closely examined the verse. It reads as follows: …And his miracles and his acts, which he did in the midst of Egypt unto Pharaoh the king of Egypt, and unto all his land. (Deut. 11:3). The words in bold characters indicate the words in the plain text that intersect צ ר פ ת י ת . The word for his miracles is derived from א ו ת and is used in the sense of signs and significance. It occurs for the first time in Gen. 1:14: And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven, to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.

The word for his acts is derived from מ ע ש ה . The matrix is shown on the slide in Figure 1.

Then I looked for a rival verse in the Torah containing the words in the plain text and of approximately the same length as the verse in Deut. 11. Someone may claim that there are quite a number of verses crammed with Egyptian paraphernalia. And he would be right. That is why I had to set a criterion for differentiate the suitable verses. The criterion was the presence of acts (signs) in the form א ת ת י . I decided so because it is the border word in the matrix and because the key words Pharaoh, Egypt and land go together more often, while the other words change according to the specific storyline.

The only verse I managed to disclose appeared to be Ex. 7:3: And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt. It contains all the key words in the first matrix except for acts, which is replaced with my wonders (מ ו פ ת י ).

The total number of letters in these two verses is 98. So, a rough estimation of the probability that a verse of this size will hold entirely a specified word encoded with a fitting skip and occurring only once is less than 1/3,000. But in the particular case of צ ר פ ת י ת , this number should be decreased at least by an order of 10 in view of the skip deviation discussed above.

The overall probability thus appears to be not more than 1/30,000. A thumb rule for estimation of such probability is a fair coin, thrown 15 times, falling all 15 times head up.

Figure 1. Intesection of French language (צ ר פ ת י ת ), skip = -9, with words in the plain text of Deut. 11:3: his miracles (signs), א ת ת י ו , lilac; his acts, מ ע ש י ו , blue; Pharaoh, פ ר ע ה , green; Egypt, מ צ ר י ם , red and land, א ר ץ , turquoise. The ת in dark grey intersects with the first letter of midst, ת ו ך

But, in my view, it is not the low probability that is most interesting in this code. A number of code-breaker can boast with codes of dozens and even hundreds of times lower probabilities. More precise calculations may lower the probability in this case too. What would mean a probability, say, about 1/130,000? The thumb rule says that the coin should be thrown 2 times more and all the 17 times should fall head up. After all, probability is defined as the number of favourable events related to the overall number of events. So if the total number, N, of outcomes is limited, however large it may be, the lowest possible probability – that of a single favourable event – is 1/N. In our case, it is clear that the probability of the matrix shown in the Figure being formed by chance is close to the lowest possible value just because there are very few possibilities for obtaining the same intersections otherwise.

Another feature of this code is interesting too. It is believed that the Torah was given to Moses letter by letter and the division in words has been done later. All the more, the division in verses has been performed even later. But though done by humans, these divisions have been carried out according to a basic reason: the words must be reasonable and the verses should contain a distinctive piece of information. In the latter case, it means that the information in the whole verse is more than the sum of the bits of information taken from all its parts. It is similar to the rhyme: suggests the word that follows. For instance, land can be found in a lot of verses in the Torah. But if there is Egypt in the same verse, we are prepared for the Pharaoh to enter. So, in my opinion, the fact that an encoded word is wholly in a verse is more significant than just the occurrence at a certain skip.

But there is more to the story. I was impressed by the three “froggy” letters tsade (צ ), resh (ר ) and pe (פ ). It was they that intersect the three characteristic words that attracted my attention. As it turned out to be, they are unique for France and are not found together in any other European nation. Tsade, for instance, is present again in Switzerland and Swiss only. But these two words do not contain pe. And there is no Swiss language!

This fact urged me to check the rate of occurrence of each of the 22 Hebrew letters in both verses cited above. Letters that do not appear in either verse are coloured in blue, while those, which do not appear in both verses are coloured in red. The results are shown below. (The letters are arranged from left to right for convenience.)

Deuteronomy 11:3 (the code)

Letter	א	ב	ג	ד	ה	ו	ז	ח	ט	י	כ
Occurrences	5	1	-	-	2	7	-	-	-	4	3
Letter	ל	מ	נ	ס	ע	פ	צ	ק	ר	ש	ת
Occurrences	4	5	-	-	3	1	3	-	5	3	5

Total: 52 letters.

Exodus 7:3

Letter	א	ב	ג	ד	ה	ו	ז	ח	ט	י	כ
Occurrences	7	3	-	-	3	4	-	-	-	6	-
Letter	ל	מ	נ	ס	ע	פ	צ	ק	ר	ש	ת
Occurrences	1	3	1	-	1	2	2	1	4	1	7

Total: 46 letters

Looking at the tables above I realized the significance of the dropped nun (נ ), which is N, from Franks. There is no such letter in the code-verse! Moreover, it can by no means accommodate, say, English (א נ ג ל י ת ) or Bulgarian (ב ו ל ג ר י ת ) even if the skip is compressed accordingly. In fact, the only word I managed to find fitting the theoretical conditions of the code in this particular verse was Irish (א י ר י ת ). And the modern Irish speak basically English!

Idle Man’s Contemplations on History

Sitting in my room I tried to imagine the sequence of events and the thoughts that these events provoked in different men. I tried to estimate the real influence of incidents, which seem minor to us, the modern Europeans, on the history of our continent during the last 2,000 years. I reflected again and again on what the cause is and what – the effect. I mentally went back to the middle of the first millennium. There were the pagan tribes who were to form the modern nations of Europe. There was also an old nation wandering for several centuries from country to country in search for a better place to settle. This nation was keeping the Wisdom of God…

What was the cause and what was the effect, really. Was it a learned rabbi, who distorted unintentionally the just heard name of a tribe? Or was it a merchant? Did the name was established instantly or it took decades or even centuries to acquire its final form?

I almost heard the quacking of frogs somewhere in the marshes of what is nowadays Northern France. Had this quacking something to do with the name given to the tall blonde bearded men who have just baptized their king by a handful of men coming from the South where they had a glorious kingdom more than millennium ago?

I just don’t know. But what I know is that there are not quacking frogs only in this story. It was Champollion, the French, who translated the words coming out of Pharaohs’ mouths, pronounced perhaps amidst quacking frogs in the distance, first into French language, using as a key a stone discovered by French troops in the land of Egypt.

Mathematics and statistics cannot tell us how to analyze that.

April 16^th 2004

Sofia, Bulgaria

[1] What the Bible code is is explained first in Michael Drosnin,s Bible Code. A book of more scientific insight is Dr Jeffrey Satinover’s The Truth behind the Bible Code. In the latter book, Dr Satinover explains extensively, backing up his theses with historical sources, the role of the Torah for the Jews and pays special attention to the accurate copying of these 5 books, a process without a rival in the handing down of any other Old Testament scripture.

[2] A reference to my study was printed in the January 2004 issue of The Testimony, p. 23f. The whole study could be freely downloaded from http://exodus2006.com/3code.htm

[3] The New Compact Bible Dictionary, Edited by T. Alton Bryant, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, 1967.

[4] The program I have used, the free Tora4u2, downloaded from http://exodus2006.com/torah4u.httm, gives maximum skip 65,000. Because any 4-letter word can have skips up to beyond 100,000, the overall number of occurrences of such words could be estimated only. The figure given above is my own estimation.

[5] A fine compilation of anecdotes could be found in http://allaboutfrogs.org/weird/general/frenchfrogs.html

[6] “Spirits Like Frogs Gather the Nations…”, in: The Bible Magazine, Vol. 11, Issue No. 2. The article can be freely downloaded from Internet.

[7] Any word I have checked, which lowest skip is 10 or less, even in cases of less than 6-letter words, occurs more than 2,000 times. A good estimation is also the next-to-the-lowest skip. It is 902 for French language but 545 for French people. The increase is over 100 times in the first case, while in the latter case it is less than 2 times.

The word among those with a higher number of occurrences, which showed the closest deviation to צ ר פ ת was found to be the 24 times occurring פ ל ש ת י נ ה (Palestine). Notice that it also contains pe (פ ) and tav (ת ). Interesting.

[8] Even with Austria, the second skip increases less than 40 times.