Michael Drosnin and Shoemaker-Levy 9

The fragments of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collided with the planet Jupiter over several days centered at July 19-20, 1994. Michael Drosnin's book, The Bible Code, claims that he predicted the exact date of the collision "two months before the collision". In interviews with the media Drosnin has been known to expand this period to a whole year.

By way of comparison, the date of collision (though not the certainty of it) was precisely determined by astronomers already by mid-1993 and successively refined during the following months. By January 1994, it was known to within 10 minutes.

Drosnin shows two pictures that feature the name of the comet. On page 36 there is a portion of Isaiah with "on the 8th of Av", "Jupiter" and a word he translates as "will pound" though it strictly means "crush" or "mince".

On page 37 there is a portion of Genesis, so large that he can only display a part of it. It shows the name of the comet and "Jupiter", a remarkably weak achievement for a picture using nearly 10% of the entire book.

Drosnin got the date wrong...

The Jewish date 8th of Av in that year began at sunset on July 15 and ended at the following sunset. However, in Israel where the Book of Isaiah was written, the collision occurred very late on the 16th, making it the 9th of Av.

...but War and Peace got it right!

The date was also the 9th of Av where War and Peace was written, as well as where it was translated into Hebrew. The following portion of the Hebrew translation of War and Peace shows the right date, as well as much supporting evidence.

Minimal skip?

The key features "a comet will fall", "on the 9th of Av" and "heavenly body strikes" have skip which is minimal in the first 78064 letters of War and Peace (the length of Genesis). In addition, much of the supporting evidence is directly forward or backward in the text.

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Creator: Brendan McKay, bdm@cs.anu.edu.au.