B-Hebrew: The Biblical Hebrew Forum

I have a blog post on this topic: http://blog.shields-online.net/?p=53

Martin:

Though I had never heard of a code in Tanakh before, I’m not surprised because there’s evidence that such code making was common from ancient times through the middle ages. But I have a couple questions:

Is there strong evidence that such codes were used by other than Jeremiah in Tanakh?

There’s evidence that not only was Jeremiah educated, but that he knew Aramaic as well. Did he use these codes for any entity other than Babylon? If not, is there evidence that these codes were common to Babylon and that people, when they discussed Babylon, would also use these Babylonian codes?

Thank you.

Karl W. Randolph.

Hi Karl,

Great questions, sorry that my answers are probably a little disappointing .

1. I don't believe there's any good evidence that Atbash codes are used elsewhere in the Tanakh.

2. I'd point you to Noegel's articles referenced in my blog post. He is more inclined to find codes in Jeremiah than anyone else I've come across. As to whether or how these were used by people in everyday life, I don't think there's any evidence for or against this. Presumably Jeremiah expected to be understood, so perhaps there was some contemporary use of the code, but I'm not aware of any solid evidence.