Digital images encoded in Torah revealed for the first time
Converting the gematria values of the Torah's text into binary reveals pixillated illustrations of the Biblical story.
By DONNA RACHEL EDMUNDSThe word 'El' emerged from the first four words of the Torah(photo credit: COURTESY SEFART)
Is the Torah a code-book for pictograms of the events recorded in its pages? Three lay researchers in Spain believe so – claiming to have found the name of God encoded in the first four words of Genesis alone.The three Spanish friends – Guillermo Bergmann, Mercedes Navarro, and Daniel Rios – have combined kabbalah, gematria, mathematics and computer science to unlock a secret code embedded in the words of the Torah that have lain dormant for thousands of years. By applying coding functions to the text, images spring from the pages: of trees, lions, Pharaohs and even Moses at the parting of the Red Sea.Driven simply by a feeling that the Torah contained images within its pages, the friends mused the problem of how to unveil them for months before inspiration struck: they realized that by using the gematria numerals for each word in the Torah and converting the numbers into binary, they could create pictograms.In formulating a method to do so they drew on the work of Frank Drake who, with the help of Carl Sagan and others, in 1974 created the Aricebo message, an interstellar radio message broadcast from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico to the globular star cluster M13, 25,000 light years away.A tree embedded within a passage on creation (image courtesy Sefart)The friends decided to begin at the beginning, literally, and set about converting the first four words of Genesis – בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת ("In the beginning, God created") into its gematria values (gematria being the value reached when the numerical value of each letter in a word is added together). They then converted those four numbers into binary, and filled in a bitmap grid using white squares for 0 and black squares for 1, much like a pixelated image on a computer.To their amazement, as they filled in the grid, the word 'אל' (God) appeared before them."So noticeable was the letter Alef that it served as an inspiration for emerging doubts of giving up or continuing during our research, especially when we doubted about the elaborate handwritten method," they said "Having arrived at this point, our inner struggle turned into the common assurance, that it was a purposely placed letter."As they continued, however, they made a further interesting discovery: that the pictograms that were emerging appeared to be one half of a symmetrical pattern, with the full pattern revealed by placing a mirror along the length of the grid."One of the questions we asked ourselves at this point of research was why we need to use a mirror to look at the picture in its entirety," they recounted. "The kabbalah itself has its origin in the word cabalah, which means parallel or parallelism. From a philosophical point of view, we deduced that the resulting image comes from the real and spiritual conjunction the Torah."
However, they wanted scientific confirmation that the images were supposed to be mirrored, so they set about proving it - from the text itself. To do this they used two methods. The first involved converting the gematria of the Hebrew word for mirror into binary, and cross-referencing it against the first eight letters of the Torah - doing this revealed the message 'connect mirror'.To confirm, they applied the Fibonacci sequence to the first word of Genesis, which in Hebrew is "Bereshit," (בראשית) then read only the letters which cross-referenced with the sequence. The result was the word 'בראי', which translates as 'in the mirror'. Effectively, this message was the equivalent of a winzip code unlocking the rest of the file."Both experiments leave no room for doubts. As an answer we found the use of the mirror in the actual Torah," they said.The trio have presented their findings in a book titled Sefart – a portmanteau of "sefer" (the Hebrew word for "book") and "art" – replete with bitmap illustrations of the Bible stories, from the Ark of the Covenant to the Tree of Life, the Temple and various snakes. Within the section on 'strange gods' taken from Deuteronomy, Chapter 4 verse 26-30, the team found images of a Mayan temple, Assyrian winged horses, and even the crucifixion of Jesus.The crucifixion in binary (image courtesy Sefart)And the examples were not all historic. David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of the modern State of Israel, was unveiled among the images, as were prophetic images of rockets and nuclear destruction.But they point out that so far they have only translated 1% of the Hebrew Bible. In the expectation of finding many more wonders, the team have invited others to get involved."We are interested in the intellectual and total imaginative level of humanity," they write in their book. "Everyone who wants to participate in this fast-paced project is very welcome. If you are a biologist or a mountaineer, and at some point see a chemical formula in the binary spider web, or a natural landscape in which you are well versed, do not doubt to share your knowledge openly with us."On a personal level, the trio note that the project has forged a great friendship among them as well as opening their eyes to the potential of the Torah. But the benefits, they hope, won't only be personal."Regardless of what Sefart does on a personal level, we expect to be able to open another door in the Kabbalistic environment, with the help of supercomputers. We do not exclude that we receive answers to certain mysteries that still leave mankind in some aspects in the Stone Age. To take advantage of this in the scientific field would be a great goal. We would be thrilled to see how, as the years progress, physics finds answers to unresolved problems," they wrote.And they hope that the discoveries can heal the rift between the scientific and spiritual worlds."In order to end the endless struggles between science and religion, certain reforms and compromises are needed on both sides," they wrote. Calling on scientific teachers and spiritual leaders alike, they have called upon them to present to their students "mathematical concepts according to the most sacred study of the Holy Scriptures. Let's connect all possible variants," they conclude.
