Haim Shore, a professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer Sheva, has written an extremely interesting book, named Coincidences in The Bible and in Biblical Hebrew (2nd Ed, 2012). Dr. Shore is tenured in the Dept of Industrial Engineering and Management; his research interests are in the area of statistical modeling, and quality and reliability engineering. He brings forth many and varied “coincidences” of the special uniqueness of both the Bible, and of the original Hebrew language as used and written in it.
Incredibly, and sadly, like too many others, Prof. Shore uses the source book for the Jewish people — and through them for all people — for his own primary source of inquiry and conclusions, but practically rejects the Source of the inspired account and language. Dr. Shore indicates an intelligent design for the creation, but does not know the Designer! (This is like Deism.) His calculations are not gematria, but statistical analyses, using the unique qualities of the Hebrew alephbet, in which each letter does also have a numeric value. His findings also lend credence to the hypothesis that Hebrew (in a purer form before the Tower of Babel) could be the original, Edenic language.
I only want to take a couple of his paragraphs from two of his chapters (14 and 22), and shine some light into the darkness. For, as it is written, “In Your light we see light”. (Ps 36:9)
Ch 14
The book of Genesis starts with the story of creation:
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void.”
• Linguistic analysis of tohu and bohu, the only words describing the created Earth, indicates an allegory with desolate wilderness, where an individual is staring amazed and startled because he or she has nothing to observe, or because no sense can be made of what is being observed. Comparison with another Hebrew word for wilderness, shmamah, reveals a similar pattern of evolving verbs that indicate amazement and anxiety, but also boredom.Ch 22 … time zero does not coincide with the instant of the big bang — time zero is roughly 3 Gyr (giga years: 1 Gyr=1 billion yrs) earlier …. Given the peculiar new concepts of “Dark energy” and “Dark matter”, now widely entertained by modern cosmology, is it possible that cosmologists, at some future point in time, would update their estimates to claim that only the visible universe was created at the big bang, however the “Dark” constituents of our universe preceded the estimated instant of the big bang by approximately 3 Gyr???
Prof Shore partially quotes the first two verses of the Bible in the book of Genesis. Interestingly, he leaves out the fact of the darkness, and of the Spirit of God’s activity in the pre-time event. Dr. Shore also rejects the literal six-day creation, but sees it as the model for scientific understanding and research findings in a number of scientific fields.
Logically, if Science were the determining factor in understanding the Universe and all that is in it, then it should have come before Moses wrote what he did as inspired by the Holy Spirit. Man could possibly have written after-the-fact in some clever way about the truth of matters, but never before-hand with the wisdom and revelation that has intrigued scientists, and all people of every profession and academic accomplishment throughout our history.
It seems that Prof. Shore is unwittingly speaking of himself as he describes the meaning of “tohu and bohu”: he is looking at something, but not really seeing anything, like staring at a wall. It is just uniform desolation — without form — as fascinating and amazing as a desert is, with its “boredom” of uniformity! Without seeing the Creator, who is Light, all one can see is the darkness, with whatever light filters in. But we see YHVH God in the face of Yeshua the Messiah, His Son, who is the uncreated Light of the world and confirms what Moses has written. (Lk 16:31; Jn 5:46-47) God has called light out of the darkness! (2Cor 4:6) We can praise God with our lips, but our hearts can be far from Him by not knowing Him personally.
When Dr. Shore speaks of new findings of ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ as existing before the birth of the universe, this perfectly corresponds to the part of the verse in Gen 1:2 which states that “darkness was on the face of the deep. . . .” In the beginning what God created was outside of Himself, and therefore “without form, and void”, in “darkness”. But the Spirit of God was there supervising from the very outset of the creation. Measured Time begins from v.3, when the light and the darkness were separated on Day One, and YHVH began to bring shape and form to the Heavens and the Earth that He had created. This is similar to a child coming into the world through birth, having been “fearfully and wonderfully made” in the darkness of the mother’s womb. Those first nine months are not “counted” when we think of birthday celebrations, yet the creation had begun “in the beginning”.
Does this pre-existing darkness not remind us of a pregnancy — formed in the darkness — beginning months before the visible birth and birthday?; and like the darkness of the New Moon days before the visible light is first seen? In all these cases, the “substance” was “there” already before anyone — other than our Creator and Redeemer — could know it and see it. Faith believes without seeing, and when we do see, we also know that what we now see already was — before time began! With our Father’s desire to dwell forever with His redeemed children — those who believe in Messiah Yeshua and His sacrificial death on the cross for our sin, and in His resurrection from the dead on the third day — He does not need nor want billions of years to accomplish that. Love wants to hasten the day as much as possible, rather than to put it off. And if Man is the LORD’s greatest image-bearer, with whom He wants to spend eternity, what purpose is served by having billions of years before He created male and female, and hundreds of thousands or millions or billions of years since Man was created? God has told us in His Word enough of what, when, how, and why, and that as little children believing their Father, we enter His Kingdom as we anticipate the consummation of His plan of redemption.
Here is a link to a recently produced movie produced to demonstrate the incredible correlations of the scientific “coincidences” that Dr. Haim Shore has researched using the Bible and the Biblical Hebrew: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvKlP7hEo-Q&feature=youtu.be
The end of the film quotes from Deuteronomy that the LORD is God. (In the movie, which I only knew about after I wrote the reflection, Prof. Shore does correlate the “dark matter” time before the “big bang” with the darkness over the face of the deep in Gen 1:2. When God spoke the world into existence, I am sure there was a loud sound to break the silence!)