Contributing editor David Gelernter writes to THE SCRAPBOOK:
“Those of us who are interested in the Bible and also computers have just had a strange week. (I don’t know how many people belong in this dual category, but the number can’t be small. Neither topic is what you would call out-of-the-way.) People kept asking us to hold forth on a new book called The Bible Code, which purports to reveal vital messages hidden in the Hebrew text and just now decrypted by sophisticated computer analysis, in the nick of time for Simon & Schuster to make a lot of money. One outfit even asked me if I would debate the author on TV. The idea that you would have to be an expert on the Bible or computation or anything else to comment on this book is a victory for the publisher and another defeat for common sense. But as we know, there’s a sucker born every minute. I can’t wait to find out what vital messages can be extracted under torture from the Passaic phone book or a collected edition of Hustler. A famous sentence in the Talmud says that one is not to make of the Torah “a crown with which to magnify yourself, or a spade with which to dig.” The Bible Code is contemptible.”
