The Bible Code [Paperback]

The "evidence" sounds pretty good at first. Drosnin constantly repeats the fact that the Bible Code predicted the assassination of Israel's Prime Minister Rabin, the collision of the comet Shoemaker-Levy into Jupiter, the start of the first Gulf War, etc., all to the very day. Tell me more, you think to yourself. This is where Drosnin starts to slip, however. He spends most of his time talking about Armageddon, specifically how Jerusalem will be destroyed by a nuclear bomb. He was certainly right in naming terrorist acquisition of weapons of mass destruction to be the greatest threat to the modern world, but prophesying trouble in the Middle East doesn't exactly require a Karnak. He predicts that then-Prime Minister Netanyahu will be assassinated and that Israel will be attacked in 1996. This book was published in 1997, completed after 1996 came and went. Suddenly we find Drosnin discovering that the word "delayed" just so happens to turn up alongside all of those dire predictions of his. He actually expresses the opinion that a delay in Netanyahu's visit to Jordan prevented the Armageddon he had predicted. The Bible Code, he now decides, must include eventualities, things that may come to pass, things that we can prevent from coming to pass. This back pedaling hurts his credibility quite a bit in my eyes.

In summary, I can't argue the mathematical validity of The Bible Code in any way, shape, or form, but Drosnin's arguments fail to convince me that he is right about this subject. He can barely find anything in his code until that "thing" has already happened, and it seems to me that finding a few related words after the fact on a sheet full of letters is no difficult feat. I do know that there is one definite error in the book, as Drosnin (and the Bible Code) shows that FDR declared war on Japan on December 7, 1941, when war was not declared until the following day, December 8. As for the predictions he did make about the future, he doesn't exactly go out on a limb. There will be strife in the Middle East and a series of earthquakes in Japan. These things happen every year, so these are hardly convincing prophetic tests of his code. I can't say The Bible Code does not exist the way Drosnin says it does, but it will take a whole lot more evidence to ever convince me of such a fact.

As for challenging your belief systems, that is an open question you must ask yourself at the end of the book - why did i buy/read this in the first place? I guess that is where Bible Code 2 comes in... but as a reader, this book was one of a few that started me off on my own 'investigation' of the answers. Suffice to say that, while at the time of release there were plenty of 'Doomsday-ers' publicising the end of the world in 2000, Michael Drosnin presented a 'thriller' to the world under a subtle context that 'we can change the future', and in that regard i found reading this book rewarding. Unless you are inquisitive and open minded at the same time, once you have read it, leave it on the book-shelf. If you are, and don't mind buying the next book, then the Bible Code 2 has more material that will impact on belief systems - but you must have read Bible Code 1 first.