In Hid­den Light, David Medved, who passed away this year, draws on many sci­en­tif­ic fields to illu­mi­nate var­i­ous Bib­li­cal issues and phe­nom­e­na. Some of his efforts seem quite fruit­ful; oth­ers require sig­nif­i­cant leaps of faith. 

Medved’s explo­ration of the chem­i­cal prop­er­ties of the Bib­li­cal blue col­or used in tal­lit called tekhelet is inge­nious. He explains that the absorp­tion spec­trum of light for the tekhelet pig­ment has a max­i­mum at 613 nm, the same mys­ti­cal val­ue as the num­ber of mitzvot. His gema­tria (math­e­mat­ics using numer­i­cal val­ues of Hebrew let­ters) to deter­mine, rather accu­rate­ly, the val­ue for pi from the Bible is delight­ful, as is his eval­u­a­tion of Psalm 19 (which speaks of ​“unheard sound”) in ref­er­ence to the the­o­ry of microwave radiation. 

Medved’s argu­ments to rec­on­cile cre­ation with cos­mo­log­i­cal the­o­ry clear­ly fall with­in the bounds of intel­li­gent design ide­ol­o­gy and his argu­ments read sim­i­lar­ly to anoth­er physi­cist, Ger­ald Schroed­er, author of Gen­e­sis and the Big Bang. In par­tic­u­lar, Medved’s acu­men is test­ed when applied to bio­log­i­cal concepts. 

Medved is a gift­ed writer and a thought­ful com­mu­ni­ca­tor. His book is pep­pered with charm­ing anec­dotes of friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers who inspired him. He describes both scrip­ture and sci­ence with ease. References.