Rules of the Theory and the Formal Challenge

Rule 1 — Published version and requirement freeze

• The controlling requirements are TBP-001 through TBP-304 as published when the challenger independently documents and freezes an attempt.
• Before examining formal results, the challenger must create and retain a dated record identifying the candidate book, edition, first sentence, encoding, and challenge version. No advance email, registration, or written acknowledgment is required or provided.
• Dated copies of the controlling pages, programs, and rule version must be preserved with the submission.
• No later requirement, revised definition, or newly obtained external list may be imposed retroactively.
• If a substantive error is discovered in a frozen requirement, it must be disclosed. The judges may treat it as satisfied, inapplicable, or grounds to restart under a corrected version; it may not be silently rewritten to cause failure.

Rule 2 — Qualifying book and first sentence

• The comparison must use the first complete sentence of a real book published before January 1, 2019.
• The book and a specific edition must be publicly identifiable, and the sentence must be tested in its original published language.
• No words, letters, punctuation, or sentence boundaries may be added, removed, or selectively altered after the candidate is fixed.
• If editions or sentence boundaries differ, the challenger must identify the edition and boundary rule before testing.
• The candidate may not merely reproduce Genesis 1:1 character for character or reproduce all of its character-by-character numerical values.

Rule 3 — Candidate and encoding fixed in advance

• The candidate sentence, source edition, transcription, numerical encoding, and language rules must be recorded before pattern results are examined.
• No alternate spelling, translation, transliteration, edition, punctuation, or numerical system may be selected after seeing results.
• Treatment of letter forms, accents, spaces, punctuation, capitalization, and nonalphabetic symbols must be disclosed and applied consistently.
• Any necessary language adaptation must be approved and recorded before the complete test begins.

Rule 4 — Published definitions control

• Every operation, offset, range, rounding rule, digit-indexing convention, dataset, and pass/fail criterion must come from the frozen published definition.
• No new pattern, interpretation, parameter, or alternative definition may be introduced to rescue a failed candidate.
• The controlling records are the permanent identifiers and linked pages in allrequirements.htm.
• An unavailable or materially ambiguous definition cannot be used to disqualify a candidate. It must be resolved in writing under the frozen-version and judging rules.

Rule 5 — Complete documented requirement set

The current challenge contains exactly:

100 + 20 + 1 + 32 + 24 + 108 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 14 = 304.

• Every requirement must be evaluated and reported.
• A failed required item means the candidate has not completed this formal challenge version.
• A duplicate statement or equivalent reformulation may not be counted again.
• A composite requirement passes only under the complete rule published on its linked page.

Rule 6 — Required book-level and personal counterparts

• The book containing the candidate sentence must contain an identifiable passage addressing each of the 20 subjects in comfort.htm. The challenger must cite the edition and page or stable location for every subject.
• The same book must contain an identifiable explanation addressing each of the 24 subjects in extra.htm, with the documentation and objective judging standard stated there.
• The extra-subject standard asks whether the book supplies coherent, relevant naturalistic explanations capable of supporting a no-creator conclusion; it does not require a judge to change a sincerely held personal belief.
• The challenger must provide the personal-experience counterpart required by angel.htm. Its equivalent value is decided by the judges under the published criteria.
• Merely mentioning a subject, listing a keyword, or supplying an unrelated passage does not satisfy a book-level requirement.

Rule 7 — The 25/52 control requirement

The theory emphasizes 3 and 7 and the reversible pair 37/73. The formal challenge uses 2 and 5 and the reversible pair 25/52 as its designated secular comparison wherever a published requirement defines that counterpart.

• The challenger must use the predefined 25/52 counterpart for every applicable requirement and composite category.
• The challenger may not alternate between 37/73 and 25/52 according to which produces the better result.
• A requirement without a defined 25/52 counterpart is tested according to its own frozen definition.
• The bonus, mission, original π/e/alpha, 7392637, and amino-acid composites must satisfy their complete published counterpart rules.
• The 25/52 condition is a deliberately demanding formal comparison; it is not represented as an identical repetition of every Genesis 3/7 relationship.

Rule 8 — Same method and equal treatment

• Use the same predefined procedures for Genesis 1:1, the candidate, and every stated control text.
• Do not introduce a special offset, transformation, stopping rule, precision, or search range only for the candidate.
• Apply the same rounding, indexing, file format, and dataset-version rules wherever a comparison requires them.
• Disclose and justify any unavoidable difference caused by language or source format before testing.

Rule 9 — Complete reporting and reproducibility

• Evaluate every required result. Submit a formal entry only when the challenger claims that the fixed candidate passes all 304 requirements, with no failure, ambiguity, or unavailable test left unresolved.
• Disclose all candidate books, variants, editions, encodings, and parameter choices examined during the formal attempt.
• Distinguish exact matches, approximate matches, interpretive associations, personal counterparts, and failed tests.
• Provide the source text, prepared inputs, programs, commands, parameters, datasets, and complete outputs needed for repetition.
• An independent reviewer must be able to obtain the same computational result before it is credited.
• Resolve software discrepancies and disclose corrections before claiming completion.

Rule 10 — Dependencies and probability statements

• Identify shared verse values, datasets, constants, intermediate calculations, complementary pairs, and selection procedures.
• Do not multiply probabilities as though requirements were independent unless independence has been demonstrated.
• Do not convert a zero result in a finite search into an exact probability without a justified statistical model.
• Composite presentations count once even when they contain several coordinated equations or observations.
• Related material may be preserved for explanatory value without being counted as separate statistical evidence.

Rule 11 — Computer use and formal eligibility

Artificial intelligence or computer search may not be used to generate, rewrite, optimize, or select the candidate sentence for a formal attempt. Once a qualifying historical candidate and its encoding are fixed, computers may be used to run the supplied verification software and reproduce the published calculations.

• The challenger must disclose how the book and candidate sentence were selected and how the claimed relationships were found.
• Use of all.jar and the published category programs for verification is permitted and expected.
• This restriction concerns formal-challenge or reward eligibility, not scientific relevance.
• A computer-generated or computer-discovered counterexample remains relevant evidence and must be evaluated on its merits even if it is ineligible for the formal challenge.

Rule 12 — Required verification sequence

1. Fix and document the candidate, edition, sentence boundary, encoding, and challenge version.
2. Prepare the input files according to How to Test or Challenge the Theory.
3. Run all.jar for TBP-001 through TBP-100 and retain its complete output.
4. Unless all.jar shows that the fixed candidate passes all 100 patterns, the attempt stops for purposes of the formal challenge. No judges will be selected, contacted, identified, asked for an opinion, or otherwise involved.
5. Evaluate TBP-101 through TBP-304 using the linked definitions and verification materials.
6. Provide citations for every comfort and extra subject and evidence for the angel counterpart.
7. Only after concluding that the fixed candidate passes all 304 requirements, email the complete entry and requirement-by-requirement report to comments@thetheoryofbiblicalpatterns.com, with enough supporting material for independent reproduction and adjudication. Do not email partial attempts, failed attempts, requests for preliminary rulings, or requests to identify where a candidate fails. Large files may be supplied through stable download links identified in the email.
8. Submission does not create any duty to acknowledge receipt, correspond with the sender, report status, identify a failed requirement, explain a rejection, or review entries in submission order. The sender will be contacted only if the entry is unanimously determined to satisfy all 304 requirements.

Rule 13 — Judges and adjudication

• The panel consists of exactly three impartial judges with qualifications appropriate to the mathematical, scientific, textual, and personal-evidence questions presented.
• The judging process begins only after a fixed candidate has passed all 100 patterns in all.jar and the complete output has been retained. Before that threshold is met, there is no panel for the attempt and no prospective judge is to be approached or involved.
• The author of the theory, Alvin Reed, must approve each of the three judges in writing before the judges review the complete entry or begin adjudication.
• The judges and their roles must be identified before final adjudication. They must disclose relevant personal, professional, and financial conflicts.
• A specialist may advise the panel when a requirement falls outside the judges' expertise.
• Objective calculations are decided from the frozen definitions and reproducible evidence. Only requirements that expressly delegate equivalence or value to the judges—such as the personal-experience counterpart—are decided by reasoned judgment.
• Every final adjudication must be unanimous. The formal challenge may be declared completed, and any associated reward may be approved, only when all three judges agree in writing that every enforceable requirement has been satisfied.
• If the three judges do not reach unanimity, the challenge is not declared completed and the disputed matters remain unresolved; a two-to-one vote is not sufficient.
• The panel is not required to diagnose an unsuccessful entry, identify where it failed, disclose its deliberations, or issue a requirement-by-requirement rejection.
• Written notice is sent to the challenger only when the panel unanimously determines that every one of the 304 requirements has been satisfied.
• The judges may interpret an ambiguity narrowly or decline to enforce it; they may not invent a new requirement after testing.

Rule 14 — First qualifying submission ends the offer

• The offer ends automatically and permanently at the instant the first complete entry that in fact satisfies all 304 requirements is received at comments@thetheoryofbiblicalpatterns.com.
• The email system's recorded receipt time determines priority. Later adjudication establishes whether an entry actually satisfied all 304 requirements and therefore ended the offer at its original receipt time.
• An earlier entry that merely claims success, but does not satisfy all 304 requirements, does not end the offer.
• Once a qualifying entry has ended the offer, no later submission—including the same sentence or an independently submitted duplicate—is eligible for payment or creates any claim to the reward.