A recent article on the Christian GOD TV website presented the often repeated theory that God’s name appears in DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) sequencing. The article cites author Steve Russell, who states in an Instagram video, “You know how an artist will sign their work so that in the future, it’s easy to see what the source of the work was,” Russell said. “So, in the human cells, in every human cell, there’s DNA. It’s a code that’s written in acid. ATCG is the name of the acid, and these acids are held together by these sulfuric bridges like a chain, and these bridges appear in a sequence, and it’s every ten, every five, every six, and again, every five.”
ATCG refers to the four nucleotides found in DNA: Adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine.
Russell explained that the “rate of connection” of DNA is 10, 5, 6, 5. He then notes that in gematria (Hebrew numerology), these numbers correspond to the letters yud, heh, vav, heh, which is the English transliteration of the ineffable name of God as it appears in the Torah.
Russell erroneously states that this name of God is pronounced Yahweh.
The theory of YHWH being expressed in the DNA sequence was first proposed by Dr. Yeshayahu Rubinstein, an Israeli scientist originally from Argentina, when he was a scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot in 1986. He appeared in a video in which he made these claims.
Skeptics have pointed out that it wasn’t possible to view DNA with a conventional microscope. DN was imaged with an electron microscope for the first time in 2012. Rubinstein claimed to see the DNA helix 26 years before the first DNA image was achieved through an electron microscope.
More significantly, there is no sulphur bridge between the DNA helixes, meaning there can be no sequence of 10, 5, 6, and 5.
In a Hebrew-language video, Rubinstein claims to have published his findings in Nature magazine in October 1986. No researcher has been able to confirm the existence of the article.
It should also be noted that there is no listing for Yeshayahu Rubinstein at the Weizmann Institute.
Dr. Ari Ben Yam, a molecular biologist specializing in genomics and noncoding RNA, received his Ph.D. from Hebrew University. Dr. Ben Yam was skeptical of the theory.
“There are generally no sulfur bridges connecting DNA strands,” Dr. Ben Yam told Israel365 News. “There are proteins used for DNA packing, mostly in sperm cells, that use sulfur bridges. There are also sulfur bridges used artificially in biotechnology to stabilize DNA in extreme conditions. But overall, the source of the information is not factual.”
Dr. Ben Yam added that as a religious Jew and molecular biologist, he doesn’t rely on such codes in science to inspire him to believe in God.
“For me, science is spiritually inspiring because it opens our eyes to a grandiose, intricate, and beautiful world,” Dr. Ben Yam said. “Studying the nature of creation and the world is one of the two ways of getting closer to God, as recognized by Maimonides and others. The other way of getting closer to God is through the study of scriptures and their own wealth of wisdom and insight. The two methods, science and scripture, are complementary.”
An alternative theory that is proposed on multiple sites on the internet is based on DNA being composed of hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon. This theory states that “based upon their matching values of atomic mass, hydrogen becomes the Hebrew letter Yud.”
It should be noted that DNA is actually composed of the five elements carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorous, and hydrogen, represented on the Periodic Table as C, N, O, H.
