A Bible code (also Torah code) is the notion that there are information patterns encrypted or coded form in the text of the Bible, or, more specifically, in the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.The existence of such codes has been hypothesized by students of Kabbalah since the Middle Ages.Contemporary discussion and controversy around one specific encryption method began in 1994 when Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips and Yoav Rosenberg submitted their paper, "Equidistant Letter Sequences in the Book of Genesis" to the peer-reviewed journal Statistical Science[1]. After unexpectedly surviving an unprecedented three rounds of peer review, the paper was published by Statistical Science and the "ELS" phenomenon was "presented as a puzzle" to its readership. A storm of controversy immediately ensued.

Since then the term "Bible Codes" has been popularly used to refer specifically to information encrypted via the ELS method.Since the Witztum, Rips and Rosenberg (WRR) paper was published, two conflicting schools of thought regarding the "Codes" have emerged among proponents. The traditional (WRR) view of the codes is based strictly on their applicability to the Torah, and asserts that any attempt to study the codes outside of this context is invalid. This is based on a belief that the Torah is unique among biblical texts in that it was given directly to mankind (via Moses) in exact letter-by-letter sequence and in the original Hebrew language.