The Prophetic Band

From the days of the Prophet Samuel, the Israelites had a band of prophets who sought to obtain the word of the LORD for their time. We first read of these prophets in I Samuel 10:5 when the Prophet Samuel prophesied that Saul that he would encounter them. When Saul did encounter them, they were playing music on a variety of instruments. The music must have had some kind of prophetic property, because every time Saul encountered these prophets and their music, he prophesied. King Saul even prophesied under the influence of their music after Samuel told him that G_d was done with him and that he was finished being King of Israel.

As we read through the Old Testament, we frequently encounter the Israelite Prophetic Band. They would help King David, Asaph, and the rest of his wise men write the Psalms, the Proverbs and the rest of the "wisdom literature" with the exception of the Book of Job. After the split and decline of the Israelite Kingdom, the Prophetic Band was separated from the government and became almost an outcast ministry.

The Discovery of the Bible Codes

During the Babylonian captivity, the prophetic ministry merged with the priestly, as was the case with Ezekiel. After the restoration, we again see this with the ministry of Zechariah, one of the last prophets of the Old Testament. According to the historian Josephus, Zechariah was the initial discoverer of the Bible Codes. Josephus said that Zechariah and his code researchers could predict future events with uncanny accuracy. The Jews maintained this technology until the fall of Jerusalem in C.E. 70.

After the fall of Jerusalem, material about the Bible Codes appeared to be lost for about twelve centuries. Then, three famous rabbis in Eastern Europe began to make references to the topic. While they sometimes mentioned the subject in passing, none of them ever went into detail about the subject, except to their rabbinical peers. It is ironic that it would take the Nazis to bring the Bible Codes to the West.

The last in a long line of East European Code Researchers was Slovakian Rabbi Michael Weissmandl. Considered a "Torah prodigy" he had started doing code research when the Nazis moved into his country and started "resettling" his fellow Jews. When the Nazis shoved him into a box car, friends broke him out and smuggled him out of Eastern Europe. He eventually resettled in New York where he started his own Yeshiva. In his Yeshiva classes, he sometimes discussed Bible Codes from time to time, but never in any detail. His students took his research to Israel, where researchers then studied Weissmandl's work in considerable detail. Most of of our modern code research is based upon Weissmandl's original work.