From: Nichael Cramer (nichael@sover.net)
Date: Mon Oct 02 1995 - 19:23:17 EDT
On Mon, 2 Oct 1995, Eric Weiss wrote:
> THEOMATICS is the title of the book written by Jerry Lucas, former basketball
> star (college? pro?), married to Sherrilee Lucas, Christian singer (at one
> time). He devised a memory system using pictures for memorizing the entire
> New Testament, though it was only published (as REMEMBER THE WORD) for the 4
> gospels.
Tiniest of footnotes: Although _Remember the Word_ *strongly* implies
otherwise, Lucas definitely did not invent the memory system in his
book. I have at home a book by someone called Furst from the '40s which
lays out the same system; and I suspect even Furst simply adapted a system
that predates him.
(Forgive me for nit-picking, but I was pretty steamed when I first
discovered this blatant misrepresentation.)
> The book may still be in print; I got my copy at a used book store. The
> thesis is that set patterns of words, or repetitions of significant words,
> are encoded in the text of the New Testament. I'd have to read the book to
> remember much more than that.
Repetition and set patterns in and of themselves shouldn't be too
surprising. As you've noted here, there are clearly a boon to
memorization. This was, of course, one the standard tools of the
Rhapsodes who chanted Homer before the ancient festivals.
> ... It's interesting that the current issue of
> Bible Review (hardly a conservative magazine)--the one I got in the mail last
> week (it may not be on the newsstands yet)--has an article about much the
> same thing with respect to the Torah, and how some respected scientists in
> Israel, I believe, did a scientifically and statistically valid series of
> studies proving this phenomenon in 1988, but their results were ignored
> because no one wanted to admit the compelling proof they were offering that
> the Torah's source was not human. [...]
> I, too, would like to know what anyone out there thinks of Lucas' THEOMATICS
> and the "Torah codes" hypothesis with its demonstration of hidden names in
> the Torah, names which could not have been known to the biblical author(s).
I too read the BR article and have been trying to chase down a copy of the
original article. The author of the BR article --in his obvious
enthusiasm-- leaves a number of unanswered questions. Perhaps the
original article makes a better case, but on the basis of the BR article I
think "demonstartion" or "compelling proof" is perhaps stating the case a
little too strongly.
N
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:37:29 EDT