review of Dan Harlap's book,
The Bible Code: A Journey to Judgment Day
written by Roy A. Reinhold

Recommendation: interesting reading on codes from orthodox jewish viewpoint, neutral

Dan has written a book which portrays the Bible codes, end-times, and Judgment day from an orthodox jewish vantage. In reading the book, it might shock some christians to see that orthodox jewish people generally expect the Messiah to be a person born on the earth, who grows up and becomes the Messiah. This is because there are many prophecies such as: that the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem. If one keeps these things in mind, then you can find The Bible Code: A Journey To Judgment Day an interesting and entertaining read.

The book is well written and flows well (even though I as a christian might disagree with some concepts in it). Dan shows a number of matrixes at a level just a little higher than done by Michael Drosnin in The Bible Code book. The book doesn't have many advanced matrix terms using phrases or sentences, so the statistical significance is not up to leading edge Bible codes work. Nevertheless, Dan's work is probably worth reading for background knowledge.

One concept in the Bible code, in which I disagree with Dan is giving any statistical significance to surface text terms at an ELS of +1. Why? Because we know the surface text is there, so portraying the surface text terms as chance doesn't seem worthwhile or statistically correct to me. If you are looking for leading edge codes work, this book is not it; but if you want an entertaining read then it is OK.

The Bible Code: A Journey To Judgment Day was published in January 2001 and is available at Amazon.com and Barnes&Noble.com.

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