The Bible mentions five colors in Hebrew: red (adom), Yellow (tzahov), green (yerakon), blue (tchelet) and magenta (argaman).  One curious observation is immediately apparent, in that this list not only includes the primary colors - red, yellow and blue but it also includes the only two other colors green and magenta that are necessary to produce the complete color palate for four color printing. As interesting as this observation is it pales in comparison to a discovery made by Haim Shore a professor of Statistics and Engineering at Ben-Gurion University. What Professor Shore discovered is that the numerical values of the Hebrew words for these colors is correlated with the spectral wave frequency for these colors. 

Hebrew is an alpha numeric language - in that every letter is also equal to a number.  So if you add the values of each letter you get a number for the total value of the word. This is commonly used in “gematria”, the Rabbinic Cabalistic system of Biblical interpretation and prophesy, but what Shore did is not gematria. After calculating a total value for each word, he then plotted them on a graph.  He plotted the numerical value of each word on the horizontal graph and the color’s wave frequency on the vertical axis .  To Shore’s amazement he discovered that the graph yielded a straight line.

“It’s a universal principle of engineering that if you have two sets of data, you put them in ascending order, plot one set on the horizontal axis and the other on a vertical axis and if they fall on a straight line, that means that both data sets are measuring the same thing, only on a different scale. “I was astonished.  The five points on the graph formed a straight line, which means that the names of the colors related directly to their wave frequencies.” It was purely a statistical analysis Shore said,”I didn’t manipulate a single number in doing the analysis.” “When I saw this result I was stunned.” “I was completely astonished. Then I went on to other words in the Hebrew Bible, plotting the value of the letters against known scientific data. The whole thing blew me away.” Shore went on to investigate similar cases in the Bible and so far has preformed over 20 different analyses with statistically verifiable findings, for example he has found a similar correlation between numerical word value a planetary diameters.

Shore began as a Bible skeptic and did not expect to make any of these findings.  He says that he does not want to tell anyone what his findings mean but their theological implications are unavoidable.

Sources:

“Mere Coincidence or divine truth?”, by Yocheved Russo, Jerusalem Post, December 3, 2009.

“Coincidence in the Bible and in Biblical Hebrew”, by Haim Shore, 2008, iUniverse, New York.

The Bible mentions five colors: red (adom), blue (tchelet), yellow (tzhov), green (yerakon) and purple/magenta (arganam).  Black and white are special cases from the stand point of the physics of light because black is the absence of all light and white light is all colors combined.  This list of colors by itself has some surprising properties in that it is limited to the primary colors plus the two additional colors that are needed for tinting to cover the full range of what the human eye can see. However Professor Haim Shore of Ben-Gurion University made a much more startling discovery about these colors and their Hebrew names.  Dr. Shore a Professor of Statistics and Engineering discovered that, “The Hebrew word for the color actually matched the colors wave frequency.” This is a breath taking discovery: in Dr Shores own words, “How could that be?” Shore had started out as a total skeptic regarding such phenomena, believing that claims of empirical knowledge being encoded in the Bible were a myth.  “In the scheme of things that’s an outrageous suggestion - why would anyone think that the Hebrew name of colors mentioned in the Bible - red, green, yellow - would bear any relationship to the wave frequency of the color itself.” “When I saw the result I was stunned.”

What Dr. Shore did was to take the five words and calculate the total numerical value of the letters added together.  He then plotted them on a graph with the vertical axis being the colors electromagnetic spectral wave frequency and the Colors Name Value on the horizontal axis. When complete Shore was “astonished” because what he had was a straight line. ” The five points on the Graph formed a straight line - which means that the names of the colors related directly to the their established wave frequencies” “I didn’t manipulate a single number”, it was a straight statistical analysis.  After making this discovery Shore was disconcerted. “When I saw it, I was like a lion in a cage, pacing around. I couldn’t believe it.”  “The whole thing blew me away.” 

Professor Shore then decided to try plotting the value of of other words against known scientific data for them.  What he found continued to surprise him, he found that the Bible contains many examples of similar coincidences of numerical word value being associated with scientifically established phenomena which the same word is related to.  For example he found another straight line fit for the words Sun (shemesh), Earth (eretz) and Moon (yareach) when plotted on a log scale against  their diameters.

Shore went on to write a book about his discoveries called, “Coincidences in The Bible and In Biblical Hebrew.” He feels that this work is very important because, “It’s a universal principle of Engineering that if you have two sets of data, you put them in ascending order, plot one set on a horizontal axis and the other on a vertical axis and they fall on a straight line, that means both sets of data are measuring the same thing, only on a different scale.” 

 While Shore is reluctant to make specific theological claims about his research, it has ended his own skepticism about the authorship of the Bible.

Source: “Mere Coincidence or Divine Truth”, by Yocheved Russo, The Jerusalem Post, December 3, 2009.