So it is with today's gold prospectors, the text miners searching for coded, hidden or concealed messages: determined to be right in the face of the evidence, they strive to unearth the slightest clue that might bolster their theories. When the desire to find a message is coupled with certainty that something is hidden there—that the text is "necessarily" miraculous, "necessarily" written by a higher power—the temptation to make reality fit the theory at any cost is plain to see. Of course, among all the books in existence, many focus relentlessly on the Book, the most widely printed and sold of them all: the Bible (2.5 billion copies). Unbelievers would have to admit their error if they were shown, with evidence to back it up, that this text recounts humanity's future and foretold Alexander (the Great), Vladimir (Putin) and Donald (Duck and Trump)!
Many have therefore tried their hand at it, and a recent American author, Michael Drosnin, has published several books on the subject, drawing on computer technology and the work of numerous researchers. In particular, he claims that the Bible foretold everything, including the assassinations of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Anwar el-Sadat and Yitzhak Rabin, as well as many other historical events.
The Drosnin method ------------------
We begin with a standard text and remove everything that is not a letter (typically punctuation). We then look for words using the so-called arithmetic-progression method: choose any starting letter in the text and a positive or negative integer n. From the starting letter, move to the letter n positions away in the text, and continue in the same way. If this spells a word, then it must have been hidden in the text!
Since Drosnin was studying the Bible, he used the "most authentic" version, the Hebrew text. He then searches the text for predetermined words—from a dictionary, for example—and interprets the result once a certain number have been found. Drosnin became fascinated by this game and found many "disturbing" coincidences, including references to historical events. But how much weight do these observations really carry?