Without going into great detail about Sir Francis Bacon and his bi-literal cipher, I will explore the possibility that a heretofore unknown Baconian cipher is present in the King James Bible. Also called the bi-literal cipher, the Baconian cipher allowed a coded message to be encrypted into any text that had sufficient length. The coding technique has a wide array of variations, but the one thing they all have in common is a change in the font style of a given text. By varying the style of a particular letter, or all of the letters in a document, a binary code could be used to hide a message that had no effect on the content of the cover text.

A quick explanation of the bi-literal cipher can be found here.

Some accounts of the translation process for the King James Bible credit Francis Bacon as being the final editor of the Bible. Taking as long as a year to compile the final version of the Bible, what exactly was he doing? While Bacon knew both Hebrew and Greek, he was in no way qualified to second guess the expertise of the primary translators. He was, however, highly qualified to check the functionality of an encoded message and/or even add the encoded message after the translation was completed.

Since the bi-literal cipher utilizes a change in the typeface of a document, the most obvious place to look for this type of message is the italicized words that are randomly placed throughout the Bible. The traditional explanation for the italicized words is that the translators wanted to identify the words they added to make the translation more readable. While this explanation may very well be true, there could be another reason for the change in typeface.

Once again, it is necessary to follow Jesus to break the code or even to identify the presence of a code in the first place. Jesus is the first and the last, so making use of this concept might provide a clue to the existence of a coded message using the italicized words. Figure 1 below shows the first italicized word in Genesis and the last italicized word at the end of Revelation.

Figure 1 – The first and last italicized words

Ignoring all of the punctuation in the text, but including the verse numbers, there are a total of 888 characters from the beginning of Genesis to the first italicized word and from the last italicized word in Revelation to the end of the Revelation. The 888 characters are shown below. The italicized words are highlighted red. The number 888 is the value of Jesus in the Greek language and provides the confirmation that there is a coded message hidden in the Bible using the italicized words.

1 In the beginning God created the Heauen and the Earth

2 And the earth was without forme and voyd and darkenesse was

……

are dogs and sorcerers and whoremongers and murderers and idolaters and whosoeuer loueth and maketh a lie

16 I Iesus haue sent mine Angel to testifie vnto you these things in the Churches I am the roote and the offspring of Dauid and the bright and morning starre

17 And the Spirit and the Bride say Come And let him that heareth say Come And let him that is a thirst come And whosoeuer will let him take the water of life freely

18 For I testifie vnto euery man that heareth the wordes of the prophesie of this booke If any man shal adde vnto these things God shall adde vnto him the plagues that are written in this booke

19 And if any man shall take away from the wordes of the booke of this prophesie God shal take away his part out of the booke of life and out of the holy citie and from the things which are written in this booke

20 Hee which testifieth these things saith Surely I come quickly Amen Euen so Come Lord Iesus

21 The grace of our Lord Iesus Christ be with you all Amen

In verses 18 and 19, note the two different spellings of the word “shall” or “shal”. Both words are underlined above. Also notice the reciprocal relationship between the two spellings in each verse. This is a potential clue to indicate that the letter count was intentionally manipulated to yield the number 888. So, how might the code function?

It would be safe to assume that the technique used here would be different than any of the other techniques Bacon has been known to use, simply because they would want the encoded message to not be so obvious, given that Bacon appears to have played a central role in creating the Bible. While the code is very likely to be a bi-literal cipher, the “switch” used to create the binary code will probably be something that has never been seen before.

In addition to the number 888, we also need to seek out the number 666. We already know that there are 888 total letters and numbers in the text above. There are also 219 total words if each verse number is counted as a single word. Subtracting,

888 – 219 = 669

669 – 666 = 3

669 is three greater than 666, so the clue here might be the number three. It is interesting to note that the first and last italicized words, “was” and “are”, respectively, each have three letters. They might be telling us that the code functions by counting the number of letters in each italicized word or group of words. If the letter count is how the code functions, then what is the switch? How can the letter count of randomly placed italicized words be used to form a binary code? We need a feature of the letter counts that can be either one thing or another. What about odd and even letter counts?

If the code functions using the odd and even letter counts, then there should be a way to confirm this without simply using trial and error. The 18th word from the end of Revelation is “Even” if the verse number is once again counted as a separate word.

Euen so, Come Lord Iesus.

21 The grace of our Lord Iesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

The number 18 is one of many ways of hiding the number 666 so this confirms the word “Even” as a possible clue.

18 = 6 + 6 + 6 = 666

We should also expect the word “Odd” to be found somewhere in a similar fashion. Since the code appears to involve the first and last, or the beginning and the end, it makes sense to look for “Odd” near the beginning of Genesis.

Unfortunately, the only occurrence of “Odd as a stand alone word in the Bible is Numbers 3:48,

And thou shalt give the money, wherewith the odd number of them is to be redeemed, unto Aaron and to his sons.

This occurrence is too far into the Bible to really be relevant, but there is a way to get “Odd” using two separate words in verse 4 of Genesis that can also be associated with the number 666. The first 66 words, including verse numbers, of Genesis are shown below,

1 In the beginning God created the Heauen and the Earth
2 And the earth was without forme and voyd and darkenesse was vpon the face of the deepe and the Spirit of God mooued vpon the face of the waters
3 And God said Let there be light and there was light
4 And God saw the light that it was good and God diuided

“Odd” can be formed using the last two letters of “God” and the first letter of “diuided”, which is the 66th word of Genesis. There are 6 letters after the first “d” of “diuided”. 66 and 6 combine to give 666, and a possible confirmation of the word “Odd”.

There is another confirmation of splitting the word “diuided” that gives the number 666. The first letter is separated from the remaining 6 letters. “D” has a standard gematria value of 4. Since it is one letter with a value of 4, the number 14 can be obtained. The remaining 6 letters, “iuided” have a standard gematria value of 52. Six letters with a value of 52 can be combined in a similar manner to get 652.  Adding, 14 + 652 = 666. This provides a strong confirmation of the splitting “divided” to use the first letter to find “Odd”.

1 Letter, “D” = 4 >> Combine 1 and 4 to get 14

6 Letters, “IUIDED” = 52 >> Combine 6 and 52 to get 652

Add, 14 + 652 = 666

So, there is reasonable evidence in the Bible that a code is present in the italicized words using the number of letters in each word to develop a bi-literal cipher based on the odd or even number of letters in each word. The next step is to determine how to read the binary code, which can then be converted to normal text, and hopefully a readable message will emerge.

Keeping things simple, there are four basic ways that the italicized words can be used to generate A/B sequence for a bi-literal cipher.

• In order from the beginning to the end of the Bible.
• In order from the end to the beginning of the Bible.
• Alternating the words from the beginning to the end.
• Alternating the words from the end to the beginning.

Sometimes more than one word can be found in a group of italicized words. It is possible that the words are counted individually, or as a group. This effectively doubles the four possibilities above, but for now, let’s assume that each word is counted separately. Another complicating factor is determining whether odd or even letter counts represent the A or B term in the bi-literal cipher. Finally, the A/B code sequences that are used for each letter can vary widely, but the most logical starting point is to use one of the standard A/B tables that Bacon traditionally used.

The next step is to attempt to decode the italicized words, beginning with the simplest approach that is supported by the clues. The first attempt at breaking the code is here, Breaking Bacon’s Code – Part 1