French Liaison Encoded in
the Torah
Lyuben Piperov
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 task 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 a statistical
phenomenon and even in the most unambiguous cases only probability could be estimated for any
future events. 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 1500th
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 צרפת
(TsaRFaT) and Spain is ספרד (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 צפרדע
(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 next matrix of comparative significance
came into view at skip 156. 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 Français to la langue français
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
צרפתי
(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:
צרפתית (TsaRFaTIT).
Starting with a 4-letter word I came at a 6-letter one. This is already much,
exponentially much more than nothing.
Intuition vs. Statistics
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: צרפתים (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 צרפתית
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 (אוסטריה).
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 צרפתית.
The word for his miracles is derived
from אות 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 מעשה.
The matrix is shown on the slide in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Intersection of French language (צרפתית), skip = -9, with words in the plain text of Deut.
11:3: his miracles (signs), אתתיו, lilac; his acts, מעשיו, blue; Pharaoh, פרעה, green; Egypt, מצרים, red and land, ארץ,
turquoise. The ת in dark grey oval intersects
with the first letter of midst, תוך
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 differentiation of suitable verses.
The criterion was the presence of acts
(signs) in the form אתתי.
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 (מופתי).
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 צרפתית, 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.
But, in my view, it is not the low probability
that is most interesting in this code. A number of code-breakers 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 distinctive pieces 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: it hints at 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 skip of the same value.
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 (אנגלית)
or Bulgarian (בולגרית)
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 (אירית). And the modern
Irish speak basically English!
An 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? Or was it the three frogs that formed the
coat of arms of the newly-born nation? Was the name established instantly
or it took decades or even centuries to acquire its final form?
I almost heard the croaking frogs somewhere in
the marshes of what is nowadays Northern France. Had this croaking 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 do know is that
there are not croaking frogs only in this story. There is also Mr. Champollion,
the French, who translated the words
coming out of Pharaohs’ mouths in
a language already forgotten by the time
when his nation adopted a name in Hebrew, pronounced perhaps amidst croaking
frogs in the distance, first into French
language, using as a key a stone unearthed by French troops in the land
of Egypt.
Mathematics and statistics cannot tell us how
to analyze that.
April 16th
2004
Sofia, Bulgaria
