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In September 1994, Israel's prime minister Yitzhak Rabin received an urgent letter, it was from an American reporter named Michael Drosnin. The messenger told Rabin it was a matter of life and death as the prime minister opened the note.

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His eyes widened in surprise. Drosnin had sent him a warning. He believed Rabin was going to be assassinated.

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No. Michael Drosnin was an investigative reporter. He hadn't received this information from a spy or an informant. He learned about Prime Minister Rabin's impending assassination from a secret message, a mathematical cipher that had been hidden for thousands of years in the Bible.

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Using that code, Drosnin found Yitzhak Rabin's full name in the text alongside. It was the phrase assassin that will assassinate. He urged the prime minister to take precautions. Perhaps the prophecy could be averted if it was taken seriously. But Rabin disregarded the letter.

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One year later, on November 4th, 1995, the prime minister was gunned down by an assassin in Tel Aviv. His killer was a 25 year old extremist named Yigal Amir.

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The assassination shocked the world and changed the political landscape of the Middle East in America. Michael Drosnin revisited the Bible and took a second look at the coded warning.

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Shocked Drosnin realized he'd missed something in the Bible code.

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There was more to the cipher just above Yitzhak Rabin's name. He found the prime minister's assassin. The code had also predicted the word Amir.

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Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify original from cast every Monday and Wednesday, we dig into the complicated stories behind the world's most controversial events and search for the truth. I'm Carter Roy. And I'm Molly Brandenberg. And neither of us are conspiracy theorists, but we are open minded, skeptical and curious.

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Don't get us wrong. Sometimes the official version is the truth, but sometimes it's not.

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You can find episodes of conspiracy theories and all other Spotify originals from Park asked for free on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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This is our first episode on the Bible code, a mathematical cipher allegedly hidden in the Old Testament, according to prominent statisticians. It describes events that happened thousands of years after the text was written. The code predicted the United States economic crash of 1929, the date of the Gulf War, and Prime Minister Rabin's assassination.

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This episode will examine the mysterious origins of the Bible and the early attempts to decipher its hidden messages will see how the advent of computer technology allowed mathematicians to finally crack the code. And we'll explore how an investigative reporter named Michael Drosnin supposedly used the Bible code to stave off nuclear Armageddon.

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Next time, we'll cover three possible theories for the code's existence. It may just be a statistical artifact, an intriguing example of coherence found by random chance. Or perhaps it's a warning from a higher power or aliens or even a future civilization. We have all that and more coming up. Stay with us. The Bible is the most famous book on the planet. It's existed for thousands of years.

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And is the religious scripture for two of the world's most populous religions, Judaism and Christianity.

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In just the last 50 years, it's sold over three point nine billion copies.

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The Torah, sometimes called the Hebrew Bible, is Judaism's religious text. It contains scriptures on the creation of the world and the history of the Israelite people.

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The Christian Bible includes many of these same texts in one section called the Old Testament. The second section is called the New Testament, which records the life of Jesus Christ and his apostles.

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The mathematical cipher said to predict future events commonly known as the Bible code has only been found in the Old Testament, and it only exists in the original Hebrew translation.

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Michael Drosnin, the greatest proponent of the Bible code, believed it contained probabilities of what could happen, not what would happen, meaning its predictions could possibly be avoided.

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But as the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin proved, sometimes that's easier said than done. As for the origins of the code, it's as old as the Bible itself. Historians believe the Torah originated as oral accounts amongst the tribes of Israel. They were passed down verbally for centuries before they were ever written down.

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The stories in the Torah can be dated as far back as 2000 BCE and some are likely much older.

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But historians agree that the Torah was finally recorded in a written format roughly between the year 1000 BCE and 500 B.C. It was used as the religious text that defined God's laws for the Jewish people, or, as Drosnin claims it was a message to be preserved and decoded at a later date. The author of the Bible and the code hidden within it is still unknown, but historians have several theories about its origins.

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One theory, known as the documentary hypothesis, states that there was no author at all, at least no singular author.

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Some scholars believe the Torah is a combination of four independent texts written by different people who likely never met and lived hundreds of years apart.

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These records of Jewish history were then edited together. Over the course of 400 years, they were compiled between around 900 BCE and 500 BCE into the Torah.

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We know today the evidence for this theory is based on lexical discrepancies within the Bible. For instance, in some sections God is referred to as Elohim, while in others he's referred to as the way some scholars believe God is referenced by these two distinct terms because language evolved over time.

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Thus, it is proof of multiple authors.

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Another theory on the Bible's origin will call the Persian imperial hypothesis. It suggests that the Old Testament was written around 538 BCE and that's the year that Cyrus the Great, a Persian king, freed the people of Israel from captivity by the Babylonians.

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Cyrus returned them to Jerusalem and promised them autonomy in his empire under one condition they needed to present a cohesive rule of law. That document became the Torah.

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The third theory is known as Mosaic authorship, and it has been the traditional theory for centuries. It claims that God dictated the text of the Old Testament to Moses on Mount Sinai.

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Despite its origins, the Torah was likely completed in the 5th century BCE. From there, it became the core religious text for the Jewish people. 500 years later, it inspired Christianity, a new religion founded by Jesus Christ and his apostles.

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Over time, the Bible spread and was translated into other languages. But transcription isn't a perfect science. Scholars in the past had a lot of leeway to edit or change those texts in the process. In fact, one man in the 4th century CE named Saint Jerome, transcribed the Christian Bible as he saw fit.

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At the time, there were several versions of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, they existed not only in their original language, but also in Greek and Latin by 380. See, Christianity had become a dominant power in the Roman Empire and Pope Damos realized they needed to consolidate their scripture.

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This task fell on the shoulders of Pope Damasio's Secretary St. Jerome in 382 seeI Jerome turned his attention to revitalizing the Latin translation of the Bible. He claimed that scripture at the time was rife with errors and he spent the next two decades revising both the New and Old Testaments.

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Jerome had an enormous amount of influence over the contents and language of the Christian Bible. He made some translational errors, which persisted for thousands of years. Many believe that the Torah could have gone through a similar process.

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For most of the modern era, the oldest existing versions of the Torah were known as the mass erratic texts. They were dated to the 10th century CE, but there had already been several different translations of the Torah.

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Generations of scholars had copied and may have reinterpreted it. There was no way to know if the Masaryk tax were as accurate as the ones written in 1000.

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BCE Jewish tradition reportedly stated that if a written Torah was translated with even one incorrect letter, it needed to be buried. But traditions weren't always followed. It would be impossible to tell if a few subtle mistakes or changes had slipped by in the last three thousand years.

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The only way to see how the Torah had changed was to compare it against an ancient copy. Unfortunately, it seemed like everything older than the mass heretic texts had been lost or destroyed. But in the twentieth century, archaeologists learned this wasn't the case.

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As the story goes, in the spring of 1947, a young Bedouin goat herder named Muhammad the Wolf made a surprising discovery. That fateful day he was watching his animals on the western shore of the Dead Sea in Israel.

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The area was filled with natural caves and to pass the time, Mohammed and his friends were throwing stones into a cavern when suddenly they heard something unexpected the sound of breaking pottery.

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The boys explored the cave. Inside, they found several clay jars filled with parchment. It was covered in a strange language. They gathered what they could and brought it to the city of Bethlehem to sell their find.

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Merchant after merchant refused to buy these withered scrolls. Eventually, one prospective buyer recognized the text as ancient Hebrew. He sent word to the Archbishop of Jerusalem, a man named Maurice Samuel. Perhaps the Christian Orthodox Church had a need for these old curiosities.

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He was right more. Samuel was interested in the scrolls. After reading them, he realized they weren't just any old Hebrew text.

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They were fragments of the Torah, but their age was unclear. So in 1948, he contacted American archaeologist and biblical scholar Dr. John C. Trever, who was eager to take a look at the relics.

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Dr. Treva realized that these copies of the Bible were ancient, at least a thousand years older than the mass erotic texts, the world would come to know them as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

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The origin of these scrolls remains a mystery. One theory is that they were written and preserved by a Jewish sect known as the Acehnese. In the first century BCE, the Acehnese were a hermetic and pious order who lived on the Bank of the Dead Sea. The caves were likely used as their library to protect sacred text from the elements.

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The second theory is that the Dead Sea Scrolls originated in the temples of Jerusalem in 70 CE Roman legions besiege the city, crushing the Jewish revolt against Rome during the attack. It's hypothesized that priests and scholars smuggled these texts through the sewers to safety. They hid them in the caves for protection, where they remained untouched for nearly 2000 years.

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After a thorough excavation of the caves, archaeologists found parts of nearly every book of the Old Testament. It was a priceless discovery.

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Analysis of the scrolls showed something even more intriguing. Much of the content was nearly identical to the macerated text. This meant the words hadn't changed, despite centuries of copying and translating.

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Today, every Torah has the same text, and the Bible code can only be found in these original Hebrew versions.

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But the idea that more information is encoded underneath the tales of Abraham, Isaac and Moses isn't new. In fact, it's been a source of debate for the greatest minds in history, and it would take centuries for humanity to decode its secrets.

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Coming up, scholars like Isaac Newton search for hidden messages in the Bible.

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Hi, pastors, it's Carter, like you. I have an eclectic mix of can't miss podcasts that I listen to each week. And one of my favorites is Supernatural with Ashley Flowers. Every Wednesday on Supernatural, host Ashley Flowers explains some of the biggest mysteries in the world. Taking you on a journey through baffling events and sharing all the possible explanations.

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No matter how strange or surreal they get, whether it's sudden disappearances, alien abductions or even mystifying murders, she presents the facts we know for sure, and the theories that might be closer to the truth than we think. If you haven't had a chance to catch this Spotify original from podcast yet, you're in for a wild ride. Follow Supernatural with Ashley Flowers free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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High power Castor's, it's Carter like you, I have an eclectic mix of can't miss podcasts that I listen to each week and one of my favorites is Supernatural with Ashley Flowers. Every Wednesday on Supernatural, host Ashley Flowers explains some of the biggest mysteries in the world.

[00:16:06]

Taking you on a journey through baffling events and sharing all the possible explanations. No matter how strange or surreal they get, whether it's sudden disappearances, alien abductions or even mystifying murders, she presents the facts we know for sure, and the theories that might be closer to the truth than we think. If you haven't had a chance to catch this Spotify original from podcast yet, you're in for a wild ride. Follow Supernatural with Ashley Flowers free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Now back to the story. The Bible is one of the oldest books on the planet, and despite the centuries of transcriptions, the Torah has remained unchanged from its original form. However, many religious mystics believe there's a deeper meaning behind the stories of the Bible, a special code embedded into the documents text.

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It's unclear what sparked Manz interest in decoding the Bible. Humanity has always looked for meaning in the earth, the stars, even their own stories. But it's possible some mystics knew the Bible was encoded with secrets from the beginning, one of these schools of thought was known as Kabbalah.

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Its followers were devoted to finding a deeper secret understanding in the Bible. In the 13th century, a Kabbalist from Spain named Rabbi Bahía Ben Asher claimed to have finally found a hidden message in the ancient text.

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Rabbi Asher was a renowned Jewish scholar, and people took his discovery very seriously. He found a code in the Torah inside the Book of Genesis, which described God's creation of the universe.

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In those pages, Asher found a pattern. He read four letters, skipped 42, then read four letters again. After repeating this throughout, a message was revealed. This hidden phrase mentioned the secret birth of the moon.

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It's unclear how Asher came up with that number, but its relevance is undeniable. He reportedly discovered a reference to the lunar month as exactly twenty nine point five three days.

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It apparently wasn't until seven centuries later, in 1996, that a NASA satellite officially calculated the exact length of a lunar month. The code, Asher found was off by less than a second.

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Decoding the Bible wasn't restricted to religious mystics.

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Many well-known scientists devoted their lives to it as well.

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Sir Isaac Newton is famous for his three laws of motion and his creation of calculus. But in the sixteen hundreds, Newton's interests weren't confined to just physics or math. He was also obsessed with religion and alchemy.

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When Newton died in 1727 at age 84, he left over 10 million words worth of unpublished essays and treatises, the majority of it focused on the Bible.

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Like Rabbi Asher, he believed that God had hidden prophecies and predictions in the Bible. Newton tried to uncover them, but he was unsuccessful at finding any meaningful messages.

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Research into the Bible code languished for nearly 300 years. But in the 1950s, Slovakian Rabbi Michael de Vise Mandel made a breakthrough. He revived ASHers method of skipping letters to find messages. Vice Mendel called it an equidistant letter sequence or skip code.

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This method is deceptively simple. It can be applied to any large dataset, like a book letter, even random numbers.

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It works like this. Pick a starting point in the text. That's your first letter. Then pick a skip. No, it could be three, four, five, even 100. Use that number to skip forward from your starting point, keeping track of every letter that you land on.

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And a message may be revealed by Mandel proved several skip codes existed in the Bible. He spent many years searching for other skip codes, but the process of finding them by hand was arduous.

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By the 1980s, one particular technological development revolutionized this method the computer. For the first time, humans were able to manipulate large datasets with extraordinary speed to Israeli mathematicians.

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46 year old Dr Eliyahu Rip's and his colleague, Dr. Dawn Bitstamp, used a computer to try and decode the Bible. Instead of having to count skip codes manually, these machines could test thousands of possibilities in minutes.

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Dr Rip's and Dr Wisdom were both religious, but their approach to this experiment was purely scientific. They knew that as with any large dataset, the ZIP code would inevitably reveal words and sentences. However, they wanted to prove these results weren't due to random chance.

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To do that, they needed to find coherent messages more often than they found strings of random letters, for instance.

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If they found the word umbrella in one part of the text and rain in a completely different section, it wouldn't be meaningful. But if those two words were placed close together, along with the date that it rained, it could be part of a significant message.

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If the Bible code existed, it seemed likely to include history's most famous Jewish scholars. Dr. Rip's and Dr. Wisdom called this the great rabbis experiment. For this test.

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They made a list of 34 famous rabbis from the Encyclopedia of Great Men in Israel.

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Their goal was to discover whether those 34 names, as well as their dates of birth and death, were hidden in the text of the Torah.

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The computer program started at the first letter of the Torah and looked for every possible skip sequence, meaning it checked every two letters, every three letters, every four and so forth. It did this until it found the keywords it was searching for.

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Then it took all of the letters in that particular zip code sequence and turned it into a large grid. The result looked like a word search puzzle.

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In that group of letters, terms appeared horizontally, vertically or diagonally. For the program's results to be statistically significant, information had to be encoded close together on the grid, for instance, umbrella and rain might intersect at the letter A, to their amazement, the program worked.

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Not only did they find the names of these rabbis along with the dates of their births and deaths, but it was all grouped together in the grid as if it had been intentionally coded in the same place.

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Dr. Rip's and Dr. Wisdom performed a second experiment with 32 other rabbis names.

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Again, they appeared in the Bible code. They calculated the probability of the names accidentally appearing in the Bible code.

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According to reports, it was less than one in 10 million.

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In 1994, Rip's and victim submitted their discovery to a scientific journal called Statistical Science.

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The doctors presented their theory as more of a puzzle than a prophecy or proof of an omniscient God. Ultimately, they wanted this study to be assessed on its mathematical accuracy, not its religious implications.

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The editor of Statistical Science brought in three experts to review Dr. Rip's and Dr. Wisdom's paper. Each of these experts was unable to find an error in the method.

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It seemed that the names of these 166 men really had been encoded in the Bible thousands of years before any of the rabbis were born, and it did not appear to be a case of random chance.

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The experiment was published and it immediately gained notoriety in the scientific community. However, many statisticians maintained their doubts.

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They felt there had to be another explanation. Harold Gans, a senior codebreaker, the National Security Agency, was a vocal critic of the study when he heard about this paper. He immediately dismissed it as off the wall, ridiculous. He decided to try his own experiment to test the validity of Rip's and Bitstamp study.

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If the Bible really had encoded information about these rabbis, then perhaps it also included the cities they were born in.

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Gan's spent four hundred and forty hours building his own computer program. Then he searched for references to their birth cities. In those graphs, he found them.

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The name of each rabbi was encoded near the exact city where they'd been born. The skeptical codebreaker had set out to refute evidence of the Bible code. Instead, he proved it further. In 1990, Dr. Rip's, from the original study, attempted a different and less scientific experiment without his old partner, Dr. Viksten, instead of searching the Bible for someone who died centuries ago.

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He decided to look for a man who was still alive. Perhaps the Bible would have information relevant to the world's current political landscape in December 1990.

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Tensions were rising between Israel and Iraq. So Dr. Rip's searched for the name of Iraq's military dictator, Saddam Hussein.

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It worked. The program uncovered the words Hussein Russian missile and the phrase fire on third Charvat Group together. At first, Dr. Rip's wasn't sure what to make of this cryptic message.

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Three weeks later, it became clear on January 18th, 1990, one third of Shabad in the Hebrew calendar, Iraq launched a Russian made missile into Israel.

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It was the start of the Gulf War and it had been encoded in the Bible 3000 years ago. Coming up, reporter Michael Drosnin uses the Bible code to avert nuclear disaster. Now back to the story.

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In the 1980s, an Israeli mathematician named Dr. Rip's discovered a coded cipher in the Bible. Not only did it predict the birthdays and deaths of history's most famous rabbis, it also hinted at modern events. Now he was about to cross paths with an American reporter who'd bring the idea of a Bible code into the geopolitical spotlight.

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In June of 1992, investigative reporter Michael Drosnin flew to Israel to interview the chief of Israeli intelligence. Drosnin was researching an article about the future of warfare, but a chance encounter drove him a different direction into the past.

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As Drosnin was leaving Israeli intelligence headquarters, a young officer stopped him. The man who Drosnin was a reporter. He suggested he interview a mathematician in Jerusalem named Dr. Eliyahu Rip's. He said Dr. Rib's had predicted the exact date of the Gulf War through a code in the Bible.

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Drosnin was immediately skeptical, but the claim was too strange to ignore. He went to see Dr. Rip's in Jerusalem, who excitedly showed off his work. Drosnin only intended to visit the mathematician for an hour. He stayed there for days.

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In that time, Rip's to Drosnin all about the equidistant letters sequence code.

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He claimed the Bible was an advanced computing system capable of holding billions of skip code sequences.

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It had the potential to describe every event in human history as an atheist.

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The reporter was unconvinced that the Bible predicted the future. He didn't believe an omniscient God existed, let alone that he had hidden a code in the Bible.

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Nevertheless, Drosnin was intrigued. He stayed in contact with Dr. Rip's. He downloaded a copy of the code finding program so that he could search through the Bible in his own time. He even learned Hebrew so he could interpret the results himself.

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Drosnin believed that if he searched hard enough, he could find a flaw that would debunk the Bible code. But that never happened.

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Instead, over the next five years, Drosnin and Dr. Rip's discovered over 1000 historical events encoded in the Bible. They found the term economic collapse next to the words depression stocks and the year 1929. It was a clear reference to the stock market crash that triggered the Great Depression.

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The phrase man on moon was encoded with the words spaceship Apollo 11 and July 20th, 1969. This was the exact date Neil Armstrong became the first man to step foot on the moon. This hidden message was discovered in the Book of Genesis, where God tells Abraham, look now toward heaven and count the stars if they'll be able to number them.

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Dr. Rip's and Drosnin also found the names of many historical figures alongside their accomplishments. The name Einstein is found in the Bible code, intersected by the phrases they prophesied a brainy person, and he overturned present reality and a new and excellent understanding. The events weren't limited to Earth, the code held information about our galaxy as well.

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In early 1994, astronomers believe that the mile wide shoemaker Levy Comet may collide with Jupiter that used advanced astronomical models to predict its course. The outcome was far from certain, and there was a large margin of error.

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No one could tell for certain when or if it would happen on a whim. In May of 1994, Drosnin searched the Bible code for references to Shoemaker Levy. He found it encoded with the phrase Will Pound Jupiter and the date July 16th, 1994.

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Two months later, on July 16th, the Shoemaker Levy comet crashed into Jupiter. Scientists were dazzled by the collision, which left an Earth sized dark spot on the giant planet's atmosphere.

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But even after finding all of this evidence of the Bible code, Drosnin still had a hard time believing it was real. He remains skeptical until he uncovered the message that Yitzhak Rabin would be assassinated in 1994.

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Despite his misgivings, Drosnin wrote his letter to the prime minister that September, warning him of what he'd found. But Rabin ignored the message.

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A year later, he was assassinated in Tel Aviv by the extremist Yigal Amir.

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Just as the code predicted, the prime minister's death finally convinced Drosnin that the Bible code was more than a mathematical puzzle or the results of random chance. More importantly, he realized he could no longer be a passive observer, even if the Bible code foretold tragic events. It was possible they could be averted.

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On November 4th, 1995, the day the prime minister was assassinated, Drosnin found a new message beside Yitzhak Rabin's name. Aside from the mention of his killer, the Code Red, all his people to war, he believed the Bible code was telling him that Israel and perhaps the entire Earth was on the brink of World War Three.

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Drosnin immediately booked a flight to Israel to confer with Dr. Rip's together. The two men deciphered a new precaution. They believe that Yitzhak Rabin's assassination could trigger a nuclear battle between Israel and an unknown adversary.

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This Armageddon was the end of days that the Hebrew patriarch Jacob warned about in the Book of Genesis. Supposedly, it would last three and a half years and bring many nations to everlasting ruin.

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The threat was encoded with a date 1996, only a few months away.

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Drosnin also realized that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had been killed in the Hebrew year 57 56. In this language, numbers often equate to characters. This means that the number 57 56 also spelled out a phrase.

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It said, Will you change it? It seemed that the Bible code was not just predicting the end of the world, it was asking Drosnin to prevent it.

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Drosnin felt compelled to contact Israel's new prime minister, Shimon Peres. He was able to explain his findings by Mr. Peres was unconvinced.

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The new prime minister responded, quote, Astrologers and fortune tellers are contacting me all the time with one warning or another. Paris dismissed Drosnin claims until an aide presented him with a warning Yitzhak Rabin received before his death, the evidence felt indisputable. Paris agreed to meet with Drosnin.

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On January 26, 1996, Drosnin went to prime minister paresis office in Jerusalem. This was the same place that Prime Minister Rabin had read and disregarded the Bible code two years before. Now the current leader of Israel was willing to listen.

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Drosnin explained that he and Dr. Rip's had also found the phrase atomic holocaust crossed with Libya and the current Hebrew year. The Bible code was saying that a nuclear missile would be launched from Libya within the next few months.

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Prime Minister Peres listened quietly and thanked Drosnin for his time. The very next day, on January 27th, 1996, the prophecy was already coming to pass.

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Libya's leader, Moammar Gaddafi made a rare public statement. He claimed the Arabs who are threatened by Israel have a right to buy nuclear weapons in any way possible.

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Tensions between the nations were high, but this was an extraordinary escalation. Again, the Bible code seemed to be right. The possibility of nuclear war loomed larger in Drosnin mind. He asked his contacts in the Israeli government if Prime Minister Peres was taking his warnings seriously, but he never received a clear answer.

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In May 1996, Harris ran for re-election against an opponent named Benjamin Netanyahu. Every major poll predicted Paris would win by a landslide. But a week before the polls opened, Drosnin found the results in the Bible code suggesting the opposite. It read, Prime Minister Netanyahu crossed with the phrase elected.

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And sure enough, on May twenty ninth, Benjamin Netanyahu was voted prime minister in a shocking upset with just fifty point five percent of the vote. Upon second glance, Drosnin found another hidden phrase crossing Netanyahu's name. Surely he will be killed.

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The day after Netanyahu victoriously addressed the nation, Drosnin called the new prime minister's father, Benzion Netanyahu.

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Benzion agreed to meet with Drosnin in Rip's to learn more about the threat.

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Drosnin presented Benzion with the evidence he gathered over the past four years. Every prediction and prophecy, all of which had come true with startling accuracy. Now the latest message foretold the death of Benzion son, along with the atomic destruction of his country, Benzion was shaken by these revelations.

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Drosnin urged him that the Bible code was not written in stone. It only predicted probable outcomes, meaning there was time to avert the disaster.

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The elderly man promised to talk to his son and set up a meeting.

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Days later, Drosnin received word that Prime Minister Netanyahu did not want to speak with him. Benzion claimed his son was not a mystic. He's very practical, very hard headed, and he just doesn't believe it.

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It seemed the Drosnin and Dr. Rip's efforts were in vain. But back home in America, Drosnin continued to pore through the Bible code, seeking more clues about the coming Armageddon. He narrowed down a date September 13th, 1996. It appeared multiple times throughout the code, and it was always related to death and destruction.

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Furthermore, Drosnin learned that Prime Minister Netanyahu had scheduled a diplomatic trip for July 25th, 1996.

[00:39:11]

He was set to meet with Hassan ibn Talal in the city of Amman. Drosnin realized that the phrase joli to Amman was hidden in the Bible code beside the prediction that Netanyahu would win the 1996 election crossing. That phrase was the word death. Seeing this, Drosnin was convinced that Netanyahu would be assassinated on his diplomatic mission to Jordan and the reporter was powerless to stop it. Then days before the trip was to take place, it was delayed. The official story was that King Hassan had fallen ill.

[00:39:52]

The trip was rescheduled for August 5th, 1996, meaning for the first time the Bible code was wrong.

[00:40:02]

September 13th came and went without a nuclear Armageddon. The doubt Drosnin felt when he first encountered the Bible code had returned. Maybe there was no intentional cipher. Perhaps it was a false pattern.

[00:40:19]

Drosnin returned to Israel to ask Dr. Rip's for answers. When he showed Rip's his work. Predicting Netanyahu's death, they found something startling. The word delayed also crossed the message. It seemed the Bible was right. After all, Drosnin believe the postponement had saved the prime minister's life and altered the course of history. He thinks that if Netanyahu had gone to Amman in July, he would have been assassinated, plunging the world into nuclear war.

[00:40:54]

Drosnin said the events of 1996 proved the Bible code could be used to change the future. The purpose of the Bible code wasn't a prophecy is the end of days. It was meant to give humanity the knowledge it needed to prevent it.

[00:41:11]

Michael Drosnin summarized his findings in his 1997 book, The Bible Code. It quickly became a New York Times bestseller. He appeared on talk shows like Charlie Rose and The Oprah Winfrey Show. His work inspired a surge of other authors who released similar books on their Bible code findings.

[00:41:30]

In 2002, Drosnin released a sequel, The Bible Code, to the Countdown. He claimed to have new information that narrowed down the date of Armageddon to the year 2006.

[00:41:43]

Notably, nuclear war did not happen that year. So when Drosnin released his third and final book, The Bible Code three Saving the World in 2010, it wasn't as successful this time.

[00:41:56]

He explained that President Barack Obama was the Messiah. He also said that extraterrestrials buried a physical key to the Bible code in the Judean desert before his theories could be confirmed.

[00:42:11]

74 year old Michael Drosnin died on June 9th, 2020. He left behind a controversial legacy after the publication of his first book. Dr. Eliahu Rip's publicly denounced it, claiming Drosnin methods were unscientific.

[00:42:29]

In a public statement, Dr. Rip's claimed Drosnin misrepresented his role in the Bible code. Dresden's book alleged that they worked together to decipher the code, but Rip's claims that that wasn't the case.

[00:42:44]

Furthermore, he categorically denies that the Bible code can be used to predict future events and that this aspect was manufactured by Drosnin.

[00:42:55]

However, Rip's stands by his original scientific publication. Information about the Great Rabbis is encoded in the Bible, and it is not due to pure random chance. Rip's believes it is intentional and if it exists, someone must have put it there.

[00:43:15]

Next episode will cover three conspiracy theories about the origin of the Bible code conspiracy theory. Number one, it was given to early humans by an advanced extraterrestrial race using superior quantum computing. This alien race predicted the future and hid clues in the Bible until humanity developed the technology to decipher it.

[00:43:39]

The second conspiracy theory is that we gave the Bible code to ourselves. Humans from the future traveled back in time to adjust the past and deliver a warning about what's to come.

[00:43:53]

The third conspiracy theory is that there is no code at all. The secret messages found by Dr. Rip's and Michael Drosnin weren't intentionally placed in the Bible. They're the result of human error and logical fallacies.

[00:44:08]

Until then, we're left to wonder, was Drosnin on to something? After all, maybe humanity's ultimate demise is somewhere within the pages of history's oldest text, and we may be running out of time to stop it. Thanks for tuning in to conspiracy theories, we'll be back Wednesday with part two of the Bible code. You can find all the episodes of conspiracy theories and all other Spotify originals from Parkhurst for free on Spotify.

[00:44:50]

Until then, remember, the truth isn't always the best story, and the official story isn't always the truth.

[00:44:58]

Conspiracy Theories was created by Max Cutler and is a Spotify original from past. Executive producers include Max and Ron Cutler, Sound Design by Anthony Vasic with production assistance by Ron Shapiro, Carly Madden and Travis Clark. This episode of Conspiracy Theories was written by Evan McGahey with writing assistants by Lori Gottlieb and Allie Whicker and stars Molly Brandenberg and Carter Roy.