The Secret Chapel

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In mathematical research, a “p-value” of one in twenty usually indicates that something is “true”. In 1989, a senior cryptologic mathematician with the Department of Defense-working in the offices of the National Security Agency-made a startling discovery. He was awaiting word from his wife on the solution to a nineteen-day-long calculation running on his home computer. As a skeptic, he had set out to disprove the claim that a team of Israeli scientists had found a code in the Torah-a code that would prove to the world that the Bible was divinely inspired by God. When his wife called, he was astonished to hear that the “p-value” was one in sixty-two-thousand five hundred, meaning that there was a 99.998 percent certainty that the code was real. Mathematicians around the world have yet to disprove this finding.

Israel-The Negev Desert

May 15, 1948

On the last day of their lives, the British troops were breaking camp. For the past year, the soldiers had been living in an isolated region of the desert-one that appeared devoid of any visible life, making the men’s daily patrols seem pointless. Their only contact with the outside world had been the monthly visits from the army supply trucks and a few brief encounters with the Bedouin tribes who passed through the area.

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