Introduction
If the millions of aficionados of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, are anything to go by, many people have a sizeable appetite for mystery. Mr. Brown’s best seller is, of course, a work of fiction. Nonetheless, because he suggested that some of its premises may have a historical basis and that the established Church may be suppressing this information, his book and the film made from it have generated feverish interest among sensation seekers in the possibility that Jesus may have had a wife and left a bloodline.
Now, for those adventurers whose appetite is not satisfied by fiction and speculation, I would like to present a very real mystery. What if someone found the signature of Jesus Christ? Moreover, what if this signature had been placed within a modern version of the Christian Bible, the NIV (note 1), evidencing that Jesus had a hand in shaping it and that therefore he is in some way very much alive, just as Christians claim? What if there were in fact six such signatures, amounting to a kind of authenticating watermark on this version of the Bible? This is not fiction, nor is it in any way speculative. These are the conclusions to which I have come after years of revelation, research and discovery, as I slowly and painstakingly uncovered what appears to be a real bible code.
Alphabetic Numeration
Before I can show you the signatures I have to teach you the language in which they were written, a language in which words can be read as numbers. This is something you are already familiar with in Roman numerals. Seven letters from the Latin alphabet have been designated as numerals, representing numbers from 1 to 1000 (note 2). Under this scheme, any number can be represented as a string of these letter-numerals, the individual numerical values of the letters being summed or subtracted to give the desired total. For example, the number 1160 can be represented by the letters MCLX,
MCLX = 1000 + 100 + 50 + 10 = 1160
Latin is not the only language in which letters can substitute for numbers; this is also the case for Greek and Hebrew. Hebrew letters double as numbers according to a scheme first used in biblical times, where the first nine letters of this twenty-two-letter alphabet were assigned the values 1 to 9, the next nine letters took the values 10, 20, 30...90 and the last four took the values 100, 200, 300, 400. This was derived from an earlier Greek system (note 3), which was similar. In written Hebrew and Greek, therefore, any number can be represented as a string of letters, the number being the sum of their individual numerical values (note 4).
Now words are also strings of letters, which means that they too can be assigned a numerical value. For instance, the Hebrew word transliterated as ‘Yahweh’, which means ‘the Lord’, has a value of 26, calculated as shown:
The English language employs Arabic numerals to represent numbers and therefore has no need for any alphabetic numeration scheme. Nevertheless, the Hebrew system of alphabetic numeration can still be applied to English letters. Under this scheme the letters from A to I take the values 1 to 9, J to R take the values 10 to 90 and S to Z take the values 100 to 800. This yields a number called here the standard value of the word or phrase for which it is calculated (note 5). This numeration system is in fact one of two on which the code I have found is based. The other system is even simpler: the place value of each letter of the alphabet becomes its numerical value. So the letters from A to Z take the values 1 to 26. This yields a number I call the ordinal value. The two keys are shown below.
Keys To Two Letter-Numeration Systems
Here is an example of how English words and phrases are numerated under the ordinal value and standard value systems (identified by their initial letters in parenthesis):
God (s) = 7 + 60 + 4 = 71
God (o) = 7 + 15 + 4 = 26
Therefore, the standard value of the word ‘God’ is 71 and its ordinal value is 26. We now have enough information to decode the signatures, so let’s now turn to the first verses of the NIV Bible.
The Signatures
Each of the signatures are found only after the same decoding procedure is followed. This procedure has two steps:
1. A passage of text from the NIV is converted into a number under the ordinal value system.
2. This is the standard value of a name or title for Jesus Christ.
An example will make things stunningly clear. Here are the first twelve words of the NIV Bible, numerated under the ordinal value system.
Genesis 1 (NIV): words 1 to 12
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the...
Ist 12 words NIV Genesis (o) = 515
Jesus (s) ..................................= 515
This is, I believe, the first signature of Christ. Notice that the signature is found within a block of twelve words. In the Bible the number twelve is associated with God, who led the twelve tribes of Israel, and Jesus himself, with twelve disciples. “One swallow does not a summer make.” said Aristotle. In similar vein, a sceptic could say: “One apparently meaningful connection does not a code make.” So let’s see if the next twelve words are also meaningful.
Genesis 1 (NIV): words 13 to 24
earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the...
Words 13 to 24 NIV Genesis (o) = 654
Word (s) ......................................= 654
In the prologue of John we are told that “In the beginning was the word...”. John’s ‘word’ is of course a reference to Jesus Christ, who was the Word Incarnate, therefore this appears to be another signature.
If we bisect each of these twelve-word segments, further apparent signatures are revealed. Here are the first twenty-four words of the NIV Genesis, broken into six-word segments, with their ordinal values.
“In the beginning God created the...”
1st 6 words NIV Genesis (o) .......= 252
“...heavens and the earth. Now the...”
Words 7 to 12 NIV Genesis (o) ...= 263
“...earth was formless and empty, darkness...”
Words 13 to 18 NIV Genesis (o) .= 391
“...was over the surface of the...”
Words 19 to 24 NIV Genesis (o) .= 263
Now here is the value under the Hebrew system of numeration of the Hebrew word for Jesus (transliterated as ‘Yehoshua’) and the standard value of the English title by which he is also known: ‘Messiah’.
Incredibly, it would appear that three of these shorter segments also contain signatures! Finally, if we sum the second and third numbers we again obtain 654, the standard value of ‘word’. So there appear to be six numerical signatures, forming a highly ordered pattern within the NIV Bible’s first twenty-four words (see below). The signatures are displayed in figure 2.
‘Jesus’ and ‘Word’ Intertwined
A recent (September 2008) discovery I have made is that the intertwined standard values of ‘Jesus’ and ‘Word’ run through the six signatures. ‘Jesus’ is the standard value of the even-numbered words within the first twenty-four words of the NIV, ‘Word’ the standard value of the odd-numbered words.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the...” (Genesis 1 (NIV), first 24 words).
Even words in 1st 24 of NIV Genesis (o) .= 515
Odd words in 1st 24 of NIV Genesis (o) .= 654
Jesus (s) .....................................................= 515
Word (s) ....................................................= 654
This new phenomenon runs like golden braid through the signatures and further evidences that the NIV Bible’s opening words have been divinely woven. In conformance with the pattern of sixes and twelves associated with the signatures, each encoded number is found within twelve words. Therefore the standard values of ‘Jesus’ and ‘Word’ are encoded in yet another way within the NIV Bible’s initial twenty-four words.
Finally, I discovered in the summer of 2008 that 24, the number of words within which this incredible phenomenon rests, is the reduced value of the Greek word for Jesus!
Verification Of the Signatures Through An ELS Encoding
The signatures appear to be an example of an alphanumerical code, whereby numbers are encoded and decoded by means of gematria (note 6). This is in contrast to the more famous equidistant letter sequence (ELS) codes, supposedly found in the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. In this type of code, words and phrases are encoded within the text by separating their constituent letters from each other, rendering them undetectable to the reader of the text. The message can only be decoded by knowing the number of letters (the ‘skip interval’) between each encoded letter (the skip interval is always the same between each letter of information thought to be encoded). The search for ELS codes requires the decoder to render the text as a continuous string of letters, chop it up into equal numbers of letters, then place them below each other in sequence. Any information that might be encoded at that skip interval will then be clearly visible, running vertically down the text.
The search for ELS codes normally requires a computer programme. However, a simple manual search can also be undertaken, if the skip intervals are small. This is what I have done with the opening few verses of the NIV bible, with the following result obtained at a skip interval of 29.
Notice how the word ‘CODE’ intersects the plaintext words ‘GOD CREATED’. The skip interval of 29 is significant, as this is the reduced value (note 7) of the word ‘Messiah’, the standard value of which is already found twice in this portion of text.
I discovered this apparent ELS encoding in about 2004 and at first I thought it might be coincidental. However, that was before I discovered the numerical signatures at the same location. On rechecking this phenomenon in April 2007, I noticed something truly astounding: the last letter of the word CODE is also the last letter of the NIV Bible’s first twenty-four words! These are of course the words within which the signatures themselves are found. In fact one letter is found within each group of six words, as shown below:
Therefore we have further evidence for the reality of this phenomenon (note 8), apparently encoded by an entirely independent method. This lends further credence to the idea that the signatures should be attributed to purposeful design, rather than random action.
Afterword
Could random forces have produced such an elegant, highly ordered structure? Proponents of the chance hypothesis are confronted by an astounding confluence of unlikely features, each independent of the others, which combine to form this wonder:
a) There are six numerical signatures, found within the same tiny portion of text.
b) These signatures delineate four consecutive blocks of six words (if the signatures spanned variable numbers of words, or if they began or ended in the middle of words, or if they overlapped or were separated from each other, there would be far less inherent order and this phenomenon would be much less significant).
c) The number six, clearly woven into the structure of the signatures, is identified later as the number of days God took to complete His Creation.
d) Three signatures are associated with three of the six-word blocks, the other three are revealed by pairing adjacent blocks to form twelve-word blocks.
e) The signatures form three pairs: Jesus/Yehoshua, Messiah/Messiah, Word/Word. This pairing is a further layer of order on the signatures and contains the essence of the message that the entire code conveys.
f) The signatures are found at the very apex of the NIV Bible, within words of immense theological import, rather than within some obscure, unimportant passage.
g) These words begin the biblical description of God’s creation of heaven and earth; the underlying signatures are all of God Incarnate.
h) The signatures are all revealed by the same two-stage decoding process, employing two well-established systems of alphabetic numeration adapted to the English alphabet.
In other words the signatures form a distinctive, eye-catching pattern, are found in the most significant location within all of Scripture—where they would be most likely to be discovered—and are meaningfully related to the subject matter of the text, despite the fact that the numeration process obliterates any meaning conveyed by the words. To find one of these features within the text, in isolation of the others, would be without significance, but in this instance they come together to form an integrated whole, characterised by order, harmony and meaning and in defiance of what must be astronomical odds against such an occurrence. Furthermore, as shown in other pages within this website, the first few verses of Genesis are the site of further interesting numerical patterns. Therefore I draw the conclusion that, far from being explainable by random processes, these numerical signatures are clearly and magnificently the result of intelligent design. Moreover, the Designer has signed His work, so you are left in no doubt as to His identity. All that remains for us to know is why he signed this particular version of His Word, a mystery this website attempts to unravel.
Bill Downie
20/6/06
Latest update: 13/3/09
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Notes
1. New International Version Bible, 2001 Edition, British English. The reader may be wondering why the NIV Bible was chosen as the repository for such a code. A clue as to the motives of whoever was responsible may be in the fact that the NIV is the most popular modern English translation of the Bible. In addition, English is now the international language of choice. This would suggest that the aim was to expose as many people as possible to the encoded information, maximising the chances of discovery.
2. The substitutions are as follows: I = 1, V = 5, X = 10, L = 50, C = 100, M = 1000. There are other numerals, but these are seldom used.
3. The Greek numeration system is called Ionian numerals.
4. Unlike the Roman system, where letter numerals can be subtracted, the Greek and Hebrew systems are purely additive.
5. As far as I am aware, the first person to apply the Hebrew system of numeration to the English language was the retired Welsh mathematics lecturer Vernon Jenkins, although others may have preceded him.
6. Gematria, the art of discerning meaningful numerical patterns within languages, is primarily associated with the study of the Hebrew scriptures by Jewish kabbalists. Opinion is divided over whether gematria should be applied more widely, although I hope this website will convince many people that this is most certainly the case.
7. The reduced value system of numeration is the reduction of the ordinal (or standard) value to a single digit. So Z would have a reduced value of 2 + 6 = 8. All three substitution schemes - standard, ordinal and reduced - are used in Hebrew gematria.
8. This is also supporting evidence for the reality of the Torah codes.