What can we conclude from Dr. Randall Ingermanson's book, "Who Wrote the Bible Code"?

In this book, Dr. Ingermanson tests an interesting issue, marginally related to Torah codes, in a very clever and readable style. However, his issue is not one that code proponents ever claimed was part of the phenomenon. Oversimplifying somewhat, the book shows that there may not be much difference between the number of ELS's forming real Hebrew words in the Torah, from the number of such ELS's found in other Hebrew texts. It questions how a document that is purported to contain everything in history could manage to do so without containing an excess of such ELS's.

But note that the number of ELS's is not a factor that proves or disproves the proposed codes phenomenon. Rather, the number of significant ELS relationships is key. This is the property that all of the code categories indicate has a night and day difference between the Torah and other texts.

Whether everything in history could be recorded in the Torah, no one knows. The study of ELS's is only one possible area of investigation. Though ELS's are enough to keep us busy for decades, the Kabbalists did list other methods, such as secrets contained in the first letters of consecutive words, letter combinations, or the switching of letters.

A more detailed review of the book is given by Dr. Robert Haralick in Appendix D of Harold Gans' primer.

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