Give Me Something to Believe In
Book Review: The Bible Code by Michael Drosnin
Originally published in Creative Loafing in August 1997. I am reprinting some of my early writing here, which is no longer available online.
We’re forever looking for signs. In the 1970s, a since-debunked story circulated that vultures were laying double-yolked eggs in the Middle East, yielding twice their normal offspring — a story that has been read as a sign that the Biblical war of Armageddon is imminent and that God had engineered this surplus to clean up all the carrion.
Similarly eager to clean up in a different manner, book publishers have provided the public with what it wants — texts concerning signs. The Bible Code is the latest manifestation of this bothersome phenomenon. Its author, Michael Drosnin, has written for the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. Now he has turned from his reporting skills to prophecy.
Serving to warn us of future troubles, this remarkable code, we’re told, was transmitted in an instant and encoded in the Bible not by God, but by some sort of extraterrestrial “intelligence.” So, like a cast-off from a certain cult TV show, Drosnin keeps drearily reminding us, “We are not alone.” Aliens contacted us 3,000 years ago, and we’ve just had them on hold. Surprisingly, the tabloid papers haven’t…
