The Bible Code is a best-selling book by Michael Drosnin, first published in 1997. A sequel, The Bible Code II, was published in 2002 and also reached best-seller status.
Drosnin describes an alleged "Bible code", in which messages are encoded in the Hebrew bible. The messages are purported to be hidden in the Torah, and can be deciphered by placing the letters of various Torah passages at equal intervals in a text that has been formatted to fit inside a graph.
Drosnin suggests that the Code was written by extraterrestrial life (which he claims also brought the DNA of the human genetic code to Earth). Drosnin elaborates on this theory in The Bible Code II, suggesting that the alien who brought the code left the key to the code in a steel obelisk. Drosnin attempted to find this obelisk, which he believes is buried near the Dead Sea.
Drosnin's book is based on the technique described in the paper "Equidistant Letter Sequences in the Book of Genesis" by Professor Eliyahu Rips of the Hebrew University in Israel with Doron Witztum and Yoav Rosenberg. The Bible Code makes numerous predictions and post-diction, such as the false prediction of the apocalypse in 2006, and a claim of "proof" that Lee Harvey Oswald was destined to assassinate John F. Kennedy.
Famous quotes containing the word code:
“Motion or change, and identity or rest, are the first and second secrets of nature: Motion and Rest. The whole code of her laws may be written on the thumbnail, or the signet of a ring.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)