(23-03-2019, 05:48 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There's an entire medieval manuscript that enciphers common medical recipes. People don't always need a complex reason to use cipher and our job is not to DECIDE what that reason is. Our job is to research and discover the reason.
JP, you are forever insinuating that my fringe theories are merely a figment of my imagination when in reality I became interested in that set of thirty-nine prophecies nearly forty years ago and I have been researching them ever since.
I am not claiming that the VMS is the original source of those prophecies (the prophecies self-date themselves to the 6th century) but only that the VMS transports them from the early 15th century to the late 16th century. Evidence that the VMS does in fact contain those prophecies comes from the VMS marginalia and I have written an entire essay on that theme:
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It might be a good idea for you to read this essay (recently updated) so that you can appreciate that I have an argument. And, of course, knowing the content of what is encrypted (e.g., predicting an assassination attack on the Pope) does, in this situation, make the need for encryption quite evident.
A short while ago I noticed that another thread had displaced my easy click, and in that thread Geoffrey made the following comment:
Quote:But if the Voynich MS ever were to be successfully deciphered, whether by me or someone else here or someone else anywhere or whomever, ... we would lose all of that. The mystery would be gone. There would be no more puzzle left to analyze and speculate about and research. It would be just another historical document.
I smiled at this. Geoffrey clearly has no idea what the underlying text of the VMS has to say or who wrote it. To the contrary of his opinion, I think a successful decoding the VMS will result in a global frenzy like the world has never seen before.
I don't think of your ideas as "fringe theories". I don't care about their status as theories.
What I SEE is sloppy, incomplete research filled with assumptions. Get rid of the assumptions, get more background, WAIT until you really know something about it and THEN formulate a theory and you won't have to keep "letting go" of previous topics as you have in this thread. If you had researched all those things before developing the theory, you probably would have saved a lot of time by not having to backtrack.
(24-03-2019, 10:21 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Get rid of the assumptions
Morten, If you are open to further criticism, I would also recommend dumping references to what others may or may not have identified in the past. If your identification is different, there is no need to bring in someone elses' likely erroneous take on the matter, it just clutters up your presentation, and can put the reader into a state of disagreement even before they get to the part where you outline your own theory. i.e. dont call it the recipes section if you dont think they are recipes, call it quire 20 instead of italicizing the word 'recipes'. If you dont think it says pox leber or has to do with goat liver, then dont include that part, you not thinking it is the case is already implied in your explanation of your own theory. Commenting on these items can rub the wrong way, and yet has nothing to do with your theory other than being in opposition, so is better off not discussed within the theory presentation itself.
(24-03-2019, 10:21 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I don't think of your ideas as "fringe theories". I don't care about their status as theories.
What I SEE is sloppy, incomplete research filled with assumptions. Get rid of the assumptions, get more background, WAIT until you really know something about it and THEN formulate a theory and you won't have to keep "letting go" of previous topics as you have in this thread. If you had researched all those things before developing the theory, you probably would have saved a lot of time by not having to backtrack.
JP, in view of my advanced age and ill health, I feel I have no choice than to put out new ideas and theories as soon as possible thereby soliciting input from others.
So far, it has turned out well for me. Back in the beginning you guys quickly pointed out that my amazonian animal was, literally, nothing more than a giant hole in the VMS parchment, and my Venezuela theory collapsed. (It is now moved to Mexico).
More recently, you informed me about your text analysis from where I concluded it is no longer viable to suggest that Currier A could be a native American language in any way other than, possibly, arbitrarily assigning meaning to specific tokens.
But through it all the key aspects of my theories have remained unchanged: a) links to the Cathars, b) links to the Americas, and c) links to the Nostradamus prophecies.
(24-03-2019, 03:34 PM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Morten, If you are open to further criticism, I would also recommend dumping references to what others may or may not have identified in the past. If your identification is different, there is no need to bring in someone elses' likely erroneous take on the matter, it just clutters up your presentation, and can put the reader into a state of disagreement even before they get to the part where you outline your own theory. i.e. dont call it the recipes section if you dont think they are recipes, call it quire 20 instead of italicizing the word 'recipes'. If you dont think it says pox leber or has to do with goat liver, then dont include that part, you not thinking it is the case is already implied in your explanation of your own theory. Commenting on these items can rub the wrong way, and yet has nothing to do with your theory other than being in opposition, so is better off not discussed within the theory presentation itself.
Linda, you are right: I should have put the word "recipes" into quotes rather than use
italics because in no way do I think, or want others to think, that the VMS contains cooking instructions. It was only a matter of communication given that the term
recipes is often found in the literature to refer to the text section. Then again, it could be confusing to call it the "text section" because most of the manuscript contains text.
I saw someone refer to it as the "stars section" (the paragraphs in that section being with bullets in the form of stars) and I tried that for a while. Then to my dismay I noticed that JP thought I was referring to the astronomy section, so I had to drop that idea too.
Your suggestion of "Quire 20", though technically correct, also has to be rejected because I'm quite sure that, outside of this forum, almost nobody knows what a quire is.
Right now, I like JP's idea of "deep text" the best. So that's what I'm going to do. As soon as I get the chance, I'm going to change the first "
recipes" to "Deep Text section (final 23 pages of the manuscript)" and thereafter refer to it as the "Deep Text". I will also try to improve the "pox leber" wording. Many thanks for your input on these matters.
(24-03-2019, 05:49 PM)Morten St. George Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (24-03-2019, 03:34 PM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Morten, If you are open to further criticism, I would also recommend dumping references to what others may or may not have identified in the past. If your identification is different, there is no need to bring in someone elses' likely erroneous take on the matter, it just clutters up your presentation, and can put the reader into a state of disagreement even before they get to the part where you outline your own theory. i.e. dont call it the recipes section if you dont think they are recipes, call it quire 20 instead of italicizing the word 'recipes'. If you dont think it says pox leber or has to do with goat liver, then dont include that part, you not thinking it is the case is already implied in your explanation of your own theory. Commenting on these items can rub the wrong way, and yet has nothing to do with your theory other than being in opposition, so is better off not discussed within the theory presentation itself.
Linda, you are right: I should have put the word "recipes" into quotes rather than use italics because in no way do I think, or want others to think, that the VMS contains cooking instructions. It was only a matter of communication given that the term recipes is often found in the literature to refer to the text section. Then again, it could be confusing to call it the "text section" because most of the manuscript contains text
I saw someone refer to it as the "stars section" (the paragraphs in that section being with bullets in the form of stars) and I tried that for a while. Then to my dismay I noticed that JP thought I was referring to the astronomy section, so I had to drop that idea too.
Your suggestion of "Quire 20", though technically correct, also has to be rejected because I'm quite sure that, outside of this forum, almost nobody knows what a quire is.
Right now, I like JP's idea of "deep text" the best. So that's what I'm going to do. As soon as I get the chance, I'm going to change the first "recipes" to "Deep Text section (final 23 pages of the manuscript)" and thereafter refer to it as the "Deep Text". I will also try to improve the "pox leber" wording. Many thanks for your input on these matters.
You currently have recipes in quotes once, italicized twice. Again, i would advise they all be replaced by the term quire 20 (i think anyone who knows the vms enough to be comparing theories will know what a quire is), or else use terminology like the last section, or pages You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. to f116z, and remove the references to cooking, etc.
As it is, it either does look like you are saying they are recipes, or it looks like you are being sarcastic about it, either way, it detracts from the presentation of your theory.
I agree that the text section and stars section are more ambiguous, that is why i like the term quire 20. A quick search on the internet would help anyone that didnt know what it meant. The reference to deep text could also be confusing, but would be preferable to the current wording.
(24-03-2019, 07:22 PM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[You currently have recipes in quotes once, italicized twice. Again, i would advise they all be replaced by the term quire 20 (i think anyone who knows the vms enough to be comparing theories will know what a quire is), or else use terminology like the last section, or pages You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. to f116z, and remove the references to cooking, etc.
As it is, it either does look like you are saying they are recipes, or it looks like you are being sarcastic about it, either way, it detracts from the presentation of your theory.
I agree that the text section and stars section are more ambiguous, that is why i like the term quire 20. A quick search on the internet would help anyone that didnt know what it meant. The reference to deep text could also be confusing, but would be preferable to the current wording.
It would be foolish of me to ignore good advice. I will change it to quire 20 shortly. Thanks again, Morten.
(01-03-2019, 01:08 AM)VViews Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Your task is to reciprocate JKP's efforts by actually reading the many posts on JKP's blog.
Yes reading them, not just scanning through one post to copy/paste a picture.
Yes, this may take some time, but I'm sure it will lead to a better quality discussion in the future.
Does that seem fair?
I've spent a little time over the past few days looking at diverse blogs (as I had promised to do). One of the more interesting things I found was this page from Koen's blog,
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where I read the following about Currier's insights:
Quote:Additionally, after analysis of the handwriting, he estimated that "six to eight scribes (copyists, encipherers, call them what you will)" penned the main text. For him, there was only one possible conclusion: "It must be a copying job."
What I fail to understand (and would like to know) is why you guys are rejecting Currier's copying job theory. Do you have technical evidence that would contradict his findings? If so, I would like to know what it is.
If you are not rejecting the copying job theory outright, then surely you must realize that, if it is a copying job, the origin of VMS text and drawings effectively becomes undated because one can copy a manuscript that is five hundred years old just as easily as one that is only one year old.
Another surprising thing I discovered (on that same blog page) is that Koen has found evidence that would support my theory that Voynichese was created in Toledo during the 13th century:
Quote:What we do know for sure is that it's got a stirrup, and crossbows with stirrups appear in manuscript art during the 13th century. Around Spain rather than Germany.
In general, I've been finding that various aspects of my theories acquire support from what other scholars have previously stated.
But one theory on which I appear to be completely original is my claim that parts of the VMS were already successfully decoded (and even published!) during the late 16th century.
I imagine you guys find it hard to believe that people in the 16th century could decode it while our magnificent contemporary cryptographers with powerful computers at their disposal are miserable failures. But consider this: they were closer in time to the original encoding and may have been in possession of critical information that was transmitted orally across generations, or they may have been in possession of helpful VMS pages that are now missing or other written information that is now lost.
My follow-up theory is that information cryptically incorporated into the VMS marginalia (written by one of the 16th-century decoders) provides the only realistic chance for undertaking another decoding of the VMS.
(28-03-2019, 04:02 AM)Morten St. George Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (01-03-2019, 01:08 AM)VViews Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Your task is to reciprocate JKP's efforts by actually reading the many posts on JKP's blog.
Yes reading them, not just scanning through one post to copy/paste a picture.
Yes, this may take some time, but I'm sure it will lead to a better quality discussion in the future.
Does that seem fair?
I've spent a little time over the past few days looking at diverse blogs (as I had promised to do). One of the more interesting things I found was this page from Koen's blog,
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
where I read the following about Currier's insights:
Quote:Additionally, after analysis of the handwriting, he estimated that "six to eight scribes (copyists, encipherers, call them what you will)" penned the main text. For him, there was only one possible conclusion: "It must be a copying job."
What I fail to understand (and would like to know) is why you guys are rejecting Currier's copying job theory. Do you have technical evidence that would contradict his findings? If so, I would like to know what it is.
Morten, you're doing it again. You are making things up.
We do not reject the idea that the VMS is a copy of something. The possibility is mentioned on a regular basis. I don't know anyone who has openly rejected the possibility.