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

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Dec 2000 by Taylor, Richard A

The reality is that there is no single manuscript or printed edition of the Hebrew Bible that has been so well transmitted as to have no need for extensive text-critical adjustment. Let me make my point as clear as possible: If there are significant textual problems in the Hebrew Bible-whether in the form of pluses, or minuses, or substitutions, etc.-such a problem causes a fatal disaster for any theory of ELS, even if it were theoretically possible to allow for such a phenomenon in the non-extant original text.

3. Other text-critical problems in the Torah. I now wish to shift the discussion from acknowledged problems in our manuscript tradition for the Hebrew Bible to less easily detected problems that are frequently encountered in the exegetical process. In order to illustrate the type of problem that I have in mind I will restrict myself here to the issue of correct text for just two verses of the Torah-Gen 1:9 and Deut 32:8. My purpose here is merely illustrative; similar examples could be multiplied many times over. In Gen 1:9 the LXX has the following reading (absent in the MT): "and the water(s) that were under heaven were gathered to their gathering places, and the dry land appeared."56 This Greek reading is now at least partially supported by 4QGen^sup k^, which has the final two Hebrew words of this plus. The shorter MT reading is most likely due to haplography, as Davila suggests.57 The scribe's eye apparently jumped from (...) in v. 9 to (...) in v. 10,58 and it is this parablepsis that caused omission of the intervening material. But if this analysis is correct, it means that Bible code advocates are working with a Hebrew text of Genesis that lacks some thirty-five letters that were originally present in this verse. The effect that this omission has on any theory based on ELSs hardly needs elaboration.

A second example comes from toward the end of the Torah. According to Deut 32:8 in the MT, God set the boundaries of the peoples "according to the number of the sons of Israel." However, much of the Greek tradition understands here a reference to angels, although the concept is expressed in two different ways. The original Greek rendering was in all probability "sons of God" (...).59 But in some Septuagint manuscripts this allotment is said to take place "according to the number of the angels of God" (dy,cov OF_oS). Similar readings are also found, not surprisingly, in the Old Latin (filiorum Dei), the Syrohexapla60 (...), and more importantly in a Hebrew fragment of Deuteronomy from Qumran.sl It is very likely that the MT here reflects the result of a theological toning down of an earlier reading that had (...) ("sons of God"), or perhaps (...) ("sons of gods"), correctly interpreted by some ancient translators as a reference to angels. But if this analysis is correct, the original text of Deut 32:8 was several letters shorter than it is in the MT. Any theory of ELSs is damaged by this fact, in that the distances between letters are being calculated by Bible code advocates on the basis of a text that has undergone change. All of the numerical calculations are thereby thrown off. When this is multiplied many times over due to numerous text-critical issues affecting particular Hebrew manuscripts and/or printed editions not only for the Torah but for the rest of the Hebrew Bible as well, it seems obvious that the necessary stability of text required for such an enterprise is simply not present-not in our current printed editions of the Hebrew Bible nor in our extant Hebrew manuscripts.62 This is a fatal flaw for any Bible code theory that bases its conclusions on an uncritical use of such tools. 63