Birth Of Jesus

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The Birth of Christ is the introductory example given in the author's Theomatics web site. He claims: "There are approximately sixty references in the New Testament, and a handful from the Old Testament, that refer, in one form or another, to the conception, the birth, the babe in the manger, the child Jesus, etc. Virtually all of these references are saturated with multiples of 111... The mathematical odds of the following pattern being in the Bible by chance, are millions to one... We must understand right here, that the mathematical probability of these huge multiples of 111, occuring within these short explicit phrases, is naturally impossible. There is no way that this could happen by chance ~ unless somebody with intelligence, pre-arranged all this. We are witnessing here what may be the single most significant discovery in the history of makind."
 

Comments

The author admits that he does not present this example in a scientific manner. However, unfortunately, it is also apparent that the author does not obtain his result in a scientific manner either. The author has clearly deviated from established Theomatic principles employed elsewhere in his publications, evidenced by specific instances in this context.

    1. He requires no specific reference word to be contained in any of his phrases.
    2. He permits up to as many as 8 words in a phrase.
    3. He arbitrarily removes words from phrases instead of taking words in juxtaposition.

In this manner, the author consistently violates the phrase construction techniques used in more rigorous studies in such a manner as to severely diminish the significance of his result. In order to retain any statistical significance he must become quite subjective in his deviation. We are not aware of any valid purpose for so doing, other than perhaps such deviations provide better Theomatic results than following his normal convention. These deviations from scientific methodology are apparent from examining his results.

First, the author does not require that a phrase contain any type of reference word, as he does in more systematic studies. There is obviously a subject being considered, the Birth of Christ, but phrases relevant to this subject need not be defined by the fact that they contain any particular word or phrase referring to this subject. Phrases appear to be appropriate so long as they are merely in the context of a passage that contains the subject. This type of deviation is quite convenient in this particular context since the key words IHSOUJ (Jesus) and XRISTOJ (Christ) both happen to be divisible by the claimed Theomatic factor: 111. Hence, any phrase yielding a multiple of 111 that begins or ends with either IHSOUJ or XRISTOJ implies another such phrase. The author does capitalize upon this feature by including the following hits:

                                    JESUS, THE NAME CALLED BY THE ANGEL ... 111 x 22
                                    Ihsouv to klhjen upo aggelou

                                    THE NAME CALLED BY THE ANGEL ... 111 x 14
                                    To klhjen upo aggelou

Constructing phrases consistently in this manner, allowing simply any phrase within some extended context, implies an explosion in the number of phrases in the phrase pool, severely diminishing the significance of the final probability.

Secondly, the author does not meaningfully restrict the length of a phrase in this example, thus permitting phrases containing as many as eight base words, as in Mat 1:23:

                  BEHOLD, A VIRGIN SHALL CONCEIVE AND BEAR A SON ... 111 x 27
                  Idou h parjenov en gastri ecei kai tecetai uion'

This long phrase length, double what he permits in more rigorous studies (e.g. Lk15), is a second deviation which results in a much larger phrase pool from which hits are selected.

Thirdly, the author does not require words to be taken from the text in juxtaposition when constructing phrases. From the text of Matt 1:18: "...before they came together, she was found in womb having by the Spirit Holy," he includes the hit:

                                       SHE WAS FOUND IN WOMB BY
                                
      EUREQH EN GASTRI EK

which is actually:              EUREQH EN GASTRI EXOUSA EK
                                       SHE WAS FOUND IN WOMB HAVING BY.

The author admits that this particular maneuver is nonstandard: "Note: The word 'having' is not necessarily essential to the thought. Usually, the patterns are always present with words in juxtaposition or side by side. This here is a rare exception." He apparently thinks that arbitrarily removing words from the text will not significantly affect the number of multiples of 111 that occur, that finding additional multiples in this manner will be uncommon... the "rare exception." He also apparently feels he is at liberty to decide which words are "essential" to the text and which words are not. It is significant that he is considering such broken phrases even though it is unconventional for him to do so. How many other non-"essential" words did the author remove in his search for hits? What guidelines were used? It indicates a great deal of subjectivity in his exploration of the phenomenon.

In each of these diversions from the scientific method, which the author himself defines in T&SM, he creates a theoretical increase in the phrase pool and a necessary deterioration of the significance of the result. The phrase pool implied by consistently following just two of his deviations, the first two, is quite large: 5455. This is the number of possible non-redundant phrases of 8 words or less that can be composed according to phrase construction rules from all verses containing references to the birth of Christ.

As he admits in the Luke 15 study, this type of rigorous approach is necessary in order to avoid subjectivity in the "quality" of composed phrases, and is apparently the most optimistic manner in which this particular experiment can be objectively examined; it gives him the benefit of the doubt by ignoring the fact that he arbitrarily removes "non-essential" words from the text in his search for hits (the third deviation above). There is no objective method available to determine the precise number of additional phrases implied by this third type of deviation... unless, of course, the author defines what he means by "essential."

Even giving him the benefit of the doubt and ignoring this last deviation, the phrase pool implied by the author's phrase construction techniques implies that the number of hits expected within a cluster radius of 2 in this context is:
                                                          5455 x 5/111 = 245
When the experiment is done with this type of objectivity, 250 hits are obtained from the pool of 5455, which is expected about 40% of the time in a completely random environment (where there is no Theomatic event).

In order to maintain significant results the author must either locate many more hits or introduce a great deal of subjectivity in selecting certain phrases and omitting others as he constructs his phrase pool. He has evidently chosen the latter approach.

Clearly, some phrases constructed in the proposed manner will not be acceptable to the author -- he will find them irrelevant or "non-sensical." Yet, by his own admission, such decisions are subjective and out of place in such an analysis. He certainly never gives us an instance of a Theomatic hit that he excludes due to it being of poor quality, non-sensical, or irrelevant. No further guidelines are evident as to how this type of decision may be objectively formalized. How the author constructs his phrase pool is the critical issue in this Theomatic example, and it appears to be implicitly fraught with subjective bias.

Conveniently, in the last chapter of his first book (THM) the author extensively elaborates upon his phrase pool methodology in this particular study. His methodology is evidently incomplete and entirely subjective.

In the last chapter of Theomatics (THM), the author presents the detail of his research into 40 references to the birth of Christ, the initial coming of Christ, and the child Jesus in the New Testament. He constructs his phrase pool by subjectively determining "any combination that has intelligible meaning and could be used for a feature." (p. 263) He begins by stating that the first reference he will consider is Matthew 1:20, for some reason ignoring clear references to the birth of Christ in verses 16 and 18, in which he does happen to find hits in the web site version of this example. From verse 20 he takes the last part of the verse as that part which should be considered for producing phrases for the total sample:
                       FOR THE ONE HER BEGOTTEN OF SPIRIT IS HOLY

From this text (in the Greek), he only finds ten possible phrases to construct, formed by removing or including non-translatable variables from the following six phrases:
                       FOR THE ONE HER BEGOTTEN OF SPIRIT IS HOLY
                       THE ONE HER BEGOTTEN OF SPIRIT
                       THE ONE HER BEGOTTEN
                       HER BEGOTTEN OF SPIRIT IS HOLY
                       HER BEGOTTEN OF SPIRIT
                       HER BEGOTTEN

The objective guidelines for choosing the above phrases and omitting the others are not clear. Evidently, the following phrases were inappropriate to consider:
                       FOR THE ONE HER BEGOTTEN OF SPIRIT
                       FOR THE ONE HER BEGOTTEN
                       THE ONE HER BEGOTTEN OF SPIRIT IS HOLY
                       BEGOTTEN OF SPIRIT IS HOLY
                       BEGOTTEN OF SPIRIT
                       OF SPIRIT IS HOLY
                       SPIRIT IS HOLY
                       FOR THE ONE
                       THE ONE
                       OF SPIRIT
                       IS HOLY
                       BEGOTTEN
                       SPIRIT
                       HOLY

How many phrases were omitted from his phrase pool due in this subjective manner? There are 45 possible phrases that can be constructed from the Greek text. He only likes 10 of them, though we never find him tossing out a Theomatic hit due to it not being of acceptable quality. This is a 78% reduction in his phrase pool size in his first attempt at "taking into consideration every possible combination that could be used for a reference."

His second attempt to produce all reasonable phrases from a reference is in verse 21. He finds 12 phrases by manipulating variables in the following four structures:
    AND SHE WILL BEAR A SON AND THOU SHALT CALL THE NAME OF HIM JESUS
    AND SHE WILL BEAR A SON
    AND THOU SHALT CALL THE NAME OF HIM JESUS
    THE NAME OF HIM JESUS

Again, apparently, the remaining possible phrases were deemed inappropriate for some reason:
            AND SHE WILL BEAR A SON AND THOU SHALT CALL THE NAME OF HIM
            AND SHE WILL BEAR A SON AND THOU SHALT CALL THE NAME
            AND SHE WILL BEAR A SON AND THOU SHALT CALL
            AND SHE WILL BEAR
            A SON AND THOU SHALT CALL THE NAME OF HIM JESUS
            A SON AND THOU SHALT CALL THE NAME OF HIM
            A SON AND THOU SHALT CALL THE NAME
            A SON AND THOU SHALT CALL
            A SON
            AND THOU SHALT CALL THE NAME OF HIM
            AND THOU SHALT CALL THE NAME
            AND THOU SHALT CALL
            THE NAME OF HIM
            THE NAME
            OF HIM JESUS
            OF HIM
            JESUS

Here again, how many phrases are omitted from the author's phrase pool? He likes 12 phrases out of 174: a 93% reduction in his phrase pool.

In our opinion, any of the above phrases would have been good enough (as good as SHE WAS FOUND IN WOMB BY... which he includes as a hit above) for the author to include had they produced a hit. We do not understand what criteria were used in developing his phrase pool. He claims that he has very carefully included every possible reference that could possibly be used to determine a hit... implicitly saying to his reader: "Trust me..." even though the author considers one of the omitted references, SHE WILL BEAR, appropriate when he examines the Hebrew text of Isaiah 7:14 and draws our attention to this phrase as a hit, as one may clearly note from his web site.

By subjectively reducing the size of his phase pool in this manner repeatedly across the 40 references, the author does obtain incredible statistical odds. However, it is unclear how this can be presented as evidence of Theomatic design because the experiment is apparently subjectively biased.

The general technique is not new to the author: retaining a legitimate phrase pool by an objectively blind consistency appears to invalidate all of his published results. While reducing his sample size, the author never gives any indication that he discards a phrase that produces a hit due to its poor quality... it is apparently only non-successful phrases that are discarded. We are reminded of Proberbs 20:10: "Divers weights, and divers measures, both of them are alike abomination to the LORD."  The author's experimental design is invalid due to this subjectivity.

However one dissects the author's research, it evidently boils down to the author's subjective opinion concerning what phrases are "good enough"  to include in his sample... that is, after he has located a number of hits and elects to include these particular phrases to seed his result. He has published no objective standard to follow in this process. We cannot see that he employed, as an objectively consistent analyst, the rigor that is necessary for his conclusion to be certain.

In order to publish compelling results, the author must define exactly what criteria are used to determine a valid phrase. If similar results could be obtained with such a definition, and this definition employed through out his research, we would be willing to accept the experimental design. As it stands, we cannot.

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