bible code: "Teaching them [wrong] things", The

These writers seem willing in theory to grant the impact that addition or subtraction of letters in the source text would have on the feasibility of a Bible code. Their problem is that they either deny or unduly minimize the existence of such variation in the Biblical text. However, there are not only minor changes in the Hebrew manuscripts that must be taken into account but major ones as well. The level of stability for the text of the Hebrew Bible that is required by the Bible code theory simply does not exist. It is not found in our extant manuscripts, nor is it found in the various printed editions of the Hebrew Bible. In order to bring home the implications of this idea I wish to call attention to certain historical facts pertaining to the transmission of the Hebrew Bible.

1. Variations within the Masoretic manuscripts. While the degree of textual uniformity found in that group of medieval Hebrew manuscripts known as the Masoretic text is perhaps sufficient to justify speaking of the Masoretic text, that general uniformity should not be allowed to obscure the fact that within the MT there is also considerable variation. Kennicott and de Rossi have published much of this variant evidence, based upon extensive collations of Masoretic manuscripts available to them in the eighteenthcentury. 37 In hundreds, perhaps thousands, of places these Masoretic manuscripts differ among themselves with regard to minor details.

These differences are rather vaguely referenced in the critical apparatus of Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia by the following hierarchy of groupings: pc (i.e. pauci) refers to what is found in a few medieval Hebrew manuscripts (i.e. three to ten); nonn (i.e. nunnulli) refers to what is found in several manuscripts (i.e. eleven to twenty); mlt (i.e. multi) refers to the reading found in many manuscripts (i.e. more than twenty). In the case of the books of Samuel a fourth category is found: permit (i.e. permulti), which is used to refer to the reading of more than sixty manuscripts. The need for such a hierarchy in the apparatus of our Hebrew Bible implicitly calls attention to a very important fact: Masoretic manuscripts, while showing general agreement among themselves, nonetheless disagree in a multitude of details.

This disagreement is present to such an extent that to refer to this body of evidence as the Masoretic text is actually somewhat misleading. As the Jewish scholar Harry Orlinsky used to point out, we actually should speak of Masoretic texts (in the plural) rather than the Masoretic text (as though it were a monolithic entity).38 In reality there is considerable variation among Masoretic manuscripts with regard to various minor details. But my point here is this: If there is a code to be found in the Torah or in the Tanak, in what manuscript are we to discover it? Is it in the Leningrad manuscript that forms the textual basis of BHS? Or is it in the Aleppo Codex that is the basis of the Hebrew University Bible Project? Or is it in one of the other Masoretic manuscripts? The particulars of the Hebrew text will vary, depending upon the choice made. The notion that the Biblical text has been transmitted without variation is simply not true. Bible code advocates have not sufficiently wrestled with this problem of textual disturbance. In fact, it absolutely demolishes their theory.