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Obres de Gerard Bodson

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Wow! What an inexorably horrible book.

First, I understand that it was first written in French, and translated not by a person but by some British outfit named Rosetta Translations, but do French people really write so horribly? I hope not. Bodson decided also, in this non-fiction book, to present his findings as they unfolded in a story-like fashion, instead of just presenting his argument. The problem with this approach is, that unless he had a tape recorder and his "team" really talks this way, it seems so damned fake. Bodson and his cohorts are all able to quote facts and books as if they are reading them from the page, which I'm sure they weren't. I mean, who talks like this: "It was during the first half of the third century BC that the Scythian tribes arrived in Iran. Called Parnes or Aparnes by historians, these tribes are thought to have emigrated from the region near the Aral Sea...." I am a professor of history and I don't talk like this, unless I am reading a class lecture straight from my notes! And do Frenchmen really refer to people all the time by their occupation? "The theologian..." and "the computer technician..." and so on. Do Frenchmen really say such inane things, directly to a person's face, as: "Could the computer expert check the concordances of the word 'hail' in the Bible?" Forget that the sentence makes little sense thus translated.

And second, who ever this "Myriam" is should be mad at the author Bodson, because she does the lion's share of the work. And her smarmy know-it-all, self-righteous, awkward dialogue makes her seem like the type of person you'd want to slap in the face after about thirty minutes of listening to her, or reading her bitchy e-mails.

And third, their methodology. I can somewhat agree that there might be something numerical going on in the book of Revelation, and I might even accept that John may have used Hebrew as opposed to Greek gematria. But pick one, back or forth doesn't work. If one word doesn't fit because the Hebrew numbers don't match, they switch to Greek and, lo and behold, they match. And picking and choosing words to make the numbers fit is disingenuous. Take the number of the beast, 666. Bodson and company decide it is Hitler, but only when you count the letters of his name thus: Adolf-Hitler-Austria." That's the only way it reaches 666. They don't do it for FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt America) or Goebbels (Joseph Goebbels Germany). Just silly. Sometimes, they leave the full value of a word to judge it - like "Adolf-Hitler-Austria" equals 666, so he's the beast, and "Hitler" and "Roosevelt" both equal 254, so they must be linked. This is how most Kabbalists do play the number-word game, but then Bodson and his team practice what they call "theosophical reduction," which most true Kabbalah folks don't do. So thus "the dragon" is 364=3+6+4=13 and "fascism" equals 436=4+3+6=13. Oh they must be connected! And the beast, in this case, isn't just 666, but 6+6+6=18 and these three numbers are found in Revelation 13:18! I guess nobody told Bodson that the chapter and verse divisions of the Bible came way after John wrote. Also most of the time the "theosophical reduction" is taken down to one digit. Thus "the locusts," 63, and "powerful people," 225, and "Wermacht," 495, all reduce down to 9. They must be linked. Forget that a whole scad of words can be "reduced" numerically down to the number 9. I'm sure that some U.S. President like Millard Fillmore round down to 9 numerically, but that makes no sense. Their worst sin, sometimes they reduce a number by 10 because it is an evil (like "Joseph Paul Goebbels" on p. 50) to make it match another number. Other times they don't. Crap.

Bodson and company tie all of this rigmarole together to make Revelation seem like it is talking about the Second World War, and they do a decent job of it, if you accept their flawed methodology. But by "theosophical reduction," I'm certain that scads of historical moments can be made to fit the weak numerological connections that Bodson's team make between people, figures, and nations.

But you shouldn't.

Then the team moves on to the future, and set the final apocalypse's beginning in 2043, why? They take the 1,000 years of Revelation 20:2 and reduce it to 100. How? I must quote this hilarious exchange in full, from p. 163:

"'A thousand years' is symbolic here... It implies 'many years' but not necessarily a thousand. If I go by the gematria I would say that a thousand years in fact represents one hundred."
"How do you arrive at that figure?"
"God, the absolute truth, is represented by the figure 10. Satan, on the other hand, is represented by the figure 2. Why? because in the Hebraic tradition, the figure 2 personifies the two spirits of evil: the Leviathan, the beast of the sea, and the Behemoth, the beast of the earth. It is no coincidence that John should mention the four synonyms of evil (dragon, serpent, Devil, Satan) in chapter 20 (value 2) and in verse 2."
"What are you driving at?" David asked impatiently.
"Since God is worth 10 and Satan only 1, we can conclude that the time of the Devil is one tenth of God's time. In other words, one hundred years."

I'll wait for you to finish laughing.

And, no, I did not mis-type any of that. That is the actual, factual, quotation.

Thus, the end of the world is 100 years after Stalingrad (1943), not 1,000 years after. I assume that the real reason is because a book about the end of the world wouldn't sell pretty well if the end of the world was in far off AD 2943. But let us go through this quote one hilarious mistruth at a time:

(1) Who, anywhere, has ever said that God is worth 10 and Satan 2? I've never come across this bit of info, ever.
(2) Who said that the number 2 "personifies the two spirits of evil"? Nobody, that's who.
(3) The whole chapters and verses connection 20:2, is bunk because chapters and verses didn't come about in a complete fashion until the 1500s.
(4) Then, all of a sudden, God=10, Satan=2 becomes God=10, Satan=1. Huh? Really?

This is all patent and utter crap.

Shall I continue? In one section they note that D-Day was undertaken on June 6, at 6:00 am, thus 666. Forget that it was 6:30. Why? Later they use Hebrew months to determine something, and pooh-pooh the idea of using Western months. This is a prime example of changing the rules of the ballgame for your benefit, and it is wrong in so many ways. On pp. 210-211, Australia is ignored. Sorry. Also, p. 246, in 2008 there will be peace in the Middle East. I wonder what happened to that?

The idea behind this book is a good one, but the methodology is bungled. The result is just a mess of suppositions tied together by fancy word-number play. I could probably do the same thing, if I had the time, and make all the numbers fit Obama.

I give it one-half star because it has a neat cover, and looks good on a shelf. Otherwise, patent crap, and one of the worst books I have read in a long time.
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tuckerresearch | Jun 21, 2009 |

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