Over the years, many claims have been made of miraculous
patterns occurring beneath the text of sacred texts.
Included are the Hebrew scriptures, the Greek text of the
New Testament, the Arabic text of the Qur'an, and even
the Book of Mormon.
This page contains a collection of resources on the subject.
Our position is sceptical, and that is reflected in our
choice of material.
Ivan Panin was a Russian emigrant who claimed to have discovered
numerical patterns in the Hebrew scriptures and in the Greek
text of the New Testament.
His patterns involved counting of letters and words as well as
gematria (numerical values of letters).
Rather similarly to the claims of Panin, there are alleged
patterns in the Qur'an, usually involving the number 19.
Also called "Bible Codes" after Michael Drosnin's best-seller,
these claims are the most serious.
Words and phrases are found by picking equally spaced letters
from the Hebrew text of the Torah.
Creator: Brendan McKay;
bdm@cs.anu.edu.au;
http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm.