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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.
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
THE NAME CALLED BY THE ANGEL ... 111 x 14
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
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
which is actually: EUREQH EN GASTRI EXOUSA EK
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. 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: 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:
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: The objective guidelines for choosing the above phrases and omitting
the others are not clear. Evidently, the following phrases were inappropriate to consider: 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: Again, apparently, the remaining possible phrases were deemed inappropriate for some reason: 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 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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