Michael Drosnin has written a frightening book. Nuclear holocausts, calamitous earthquakes, the Nazi death camps, terrorist bombings, assassinations of world leaders who may have held some hope for humanity—a 182-page catalogue of very real threats to our world. The Bible Code purports the existence of a hidden code in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. This code, according to Drosnin, conta...

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At first glance, these two passages may be taken as epitomising the difficulty of appealing to scripture in the contemporary debate about animal rights. The sheer contradictoriness of these statements presses itself upon us. Genesis 1 clearly depicts vegetarianism as divine command. Indeed "everything" that has the breath of life in it, is given "green plant for food". Genesis 9, however, rever...