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Chanukah candles in War and Peace |
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This article demonstrates an extraordinary convergence of words related to the Candles of Chanukah, hidden in the Hebrew translation of War and Peace. Using the methods established by Doron Witztum, we calculate a significance level of 1 in 4 million.
Mr Witztum is fond of the following analogy: "What I show are genuine $100 notes, but the skeptics have only produced counterfeit $100 notes". On the contrary, what has been clear for a long time is that Mr Witztum can't produce any genuine $100 notes or even a particularly good fake. The real dialogue runs like this:
Please enjoy the following 100% genuine fake $19 note.
As every Jewish child knows, the Chanukah candles are central to
this Holiday of Lights, so choosing them as the central theme was
a natural thing to do. On Chanukah, Jews are commanded to light
one candle a day, though it is a custom to light more than one.
Thus, we chose as our central words "Chanukah candle" in both its
singular form
and its plural form
.
Note that
is the correct spelling by Rule 3, as
appears in the Tanach but
does not.
We began our exploration of the candles of Chanukah by consulting the
famous authority on Jewish law, the Shulchan Aruch, on the subject of
lighting the Chanukah candle. In article 675 of the section Orech
Chaim, we found the statement
(the lighting fulfils the commandment), and so selected the words
and
.
(The verb
is a common word with no particular relevance to our subject.)
Before a candle is lit, the
(blessing)
is said. We selected that word also.
The candles are lit in a special lamp called a Chanukiya,
which recalls the Menorah (Temple lamp) involved in the famous
Miracle of Chanukah. Thus, we included both Chanukiya and Menorah.
According to the spelling rules, we were forced to include two
spellings of Menorah,
and
,
as both are used in the Torah. In the case of Chanukiya, the word
does not appear in the Masoretic Text at all, so the spelling
rules do not select any single spelling.
Therefore, we took the two spellings which appear
in the standard Even-Shoshan dictionary,
and
.
In summary, we have the following:
Central words:
,
Related words:
,
,
,
,
,
,
.
First, we considered our central words.
Neither was found as a sequential word, and
did not appear as an ELS either. We were left with
as our only
central word, to be investigated as an ELS. The singular form is quite
appropriate, as "candle" appears in the singular in the blessing.
Second, of the related words only
and
appear sequentially. Words shorter than five letters
are excluded from being tested as ELSs by the rules of [WRR1-3].
Thus, we are left with testing
and
as sequential words,
and
,
,
and
as ELSs.
The method of calculation according to [WRR3] is to compute the
P2 score from all the word pairs. This gives a single overall
closeness score. Then the similar score is computed when the letters
of each of the related words are permuted at random. For example, the
related word
can be permuted
to
,
,
and so on. However, since both positive and negative skips are used,
and
are regarded as the same. See [WRR3] for more details.
The result: 1 in 4 million
We conclude that this convergence does not appear in War and Peace by chance.
By way of comparison, exactly the same experiment performed in the Book of Genesis produces a result even worse than average: 964 in 1000.
The theme of hidden supernatural codes is supported by the nearby
appearance of the unique minimal ELS of
(hidden code) just above the phrase
(supernatural) in the plain text.
The name of the famous family central to the Chanukah story is also
there in minimal skip, using the form
(Hashmani) that appears
in the well-known song that is sung on all eight days of Chanukah
while the candles are burning, and a macabre reference to their victory
over the Greek army appears in the expression
(Greek blood).
In the text with skip 1 or -1, we also found
(oil) and
(miracle on the 25th).
We also found the expression
(in those days), which is part of the second blessing said on Chanukah.
Finally, the phrase
(as the consequence of trust) in the
surface text reflects the victory of this small group of people over
their powerful enemy, which could not have been achieved without
trusting in God.
The description of the method in [WRR3] has a missing detail. Since words are sought as ELSs with both positive and negative skip, a word and its reverse are basically the same. However, the distance measure is not precisely symmetric, and sometimes gives a different result for a word and its reverse. The rules in [WRR3] do not specify which to use in the case of words with their letters permuted. We have adopted the following rule consistently: if the unpermuted word comes before its reverse in Hebrew dictionary order, we use only permutations of it that come before their reverses. If the unpermuted word comes after its reverse, we use only permutations of it that come after their reverses.
The choice of rule matters quite a lot. Our first, less systematic, calculation produced a result of 1 in 14 million. It would be no problem at all to devise an alternative definition that appears just as objective as the one above but produces 1 in 14 million as the "correct" answer.
Another unsatisfactory aspect of [WRR3] is its practice of
removing words that do not appear. For example, we removed the
word
because we were following [WRR3]. However, some permuted
versions of it do appear. Removing the word entirely because
of the nonappearance of its unpermuted version artifically
separates the permuted from the unpermuted and violates the
tenet that they should have equal footing. In other words,
there is a mathematical error in [WRR3].
Correcting this error by not removing
improves the result from 1 in 4 million to 1 in 6 million.
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