The Voynich Ninja

Very good observation Koen! But I'm not sure that it's verse 14 that would be written there. My feeling has been, and is, that they evaded all direct hints.

It's an interesting concept, but why would it be a verse from Revelations, useless by itself? It's not as if the verse was commonly quoted out of context, as a saying or anything. If you could match other things on the page to the concept, it would increase the likelihood of finding the concept.
Just quickly...
Other Biblical verses that could match:
Isaiah 52:10 - God has rolled up his sleeves. All the nations can see his holy, muscled arm. Everyone, from one end of the earth to the other, sees him at work, doing his salvation work.

Peter 1:13 - So roll up your sleeves, put your mind in gear, be totally ready to receive the gift that’s coming when Jesus arrives.

John 5:8 - "Jesus said to him, “Get up, roll up your bed, and walk.”"

Isiaiah 40:22 - It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in;

Job 22:14, Vulgate : et circa cardines caeli perambulat   and He walks around the poles of heaven

If we go over to the Jewish tradition...
In the Wisdom of Sirach 7:18-19 it says:

For he hath given me certain knowledge of the things that are, namely, to know how the world was made, and the operation of the elements: the beginning, ending, and midst of the times: the alterations of the sun, and change of the seasons: the circuits of years, and positions of stars (Septuagint 1978, 61).

The Wisdom of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) 24:4-5 says, "I (wisdom) dwelt in high places, and my throne is in a cloudy pillar. I alone compassed the circuit of the heaven, and walked in the bottom of the deep" (Ibid, 94). The Greek word for "circuit" is guros which is the same word used in the LXX in Isaiah 40:22. In the Latin text it says, Gyrum caeli circuivi sola which means, "I alone compassed the circle of the sky."

It also says in the Wisdom of Sirach chapter 43:11-12, "Look upon the rainbow, and praise him that made it; very beautiful it is in the brightness thereof. It compasseth the heaven about with a glorious circle, and the hands of the most High have bended it" (Ibid, 112). The Greek word for "circle" here is kuklos which is used often in classical Greek literature to describe the heavens. In the Hebrew text from the Dead Sea Scrolls it reads, hdwbkb hpyqh qwj meaning "inscribe a decree in his glory" (Vattioni 1968, 233). The Latin text says, Gyravit caelum in circuitu glorious suae, which means, "It (the rainbow) encircles the sky in its glorious circle" (Ibid, 232). (Last via the Institute for Bible Studies You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).

Or if we go into Plato's The Republic, (Book X:615), which was translated by Ficino in the 15th century and quickly swept Europe, summarizes his view in these words:

And from the extremities the Spindle of Necessity, by means of which all the circles revolve. The shaft of the Spindle and the hook were of adamant, and the whorl (outermost sphere) partly of adamant and partly of other substances. The whorl was of this fashion. In shape it was like an ordinary whorl; but from Er's account we must imagine it as a large whorl with the inside completely scooped out, and within it a second smaller whorl, and a third and a fourth and four more, fitting into one another like a nest of bowls. For there were in all eight whorls, set one within another, with their rims showing above as circles and making up the continuous surface of a single whorl round the shaft, which pierces right through the centre of the eighth. The Spindle revolved as a whole with one motion; but, within the whole as it turned, the seven inner circle, revolving slowly in the opposite direction.
The Spindle turned on the knees of Necessity. Upon each of its circles stood a Siren, who was carried round with its movement, uttering single sound on one note, so that all the eight made up the concords of a single scale

David, your objections miss some key points.

1) A spiral is not a circle. For any kind of orbit, we expect a circle (or an oval, either way a closed loop) and people have always known this very well. A spiral orbit would end in disaster. Circular text is extremely common, but spiral text is rare in medieval manuscripts, and I don't know of a single other example of spiral text in the sky.

2) We are not just talking about any roll, we are talking about a roll in the sky.

[attachment=5741]

One could elaborate about how the rest of the image might fit with the rest of the Revelation paragraph, but I know from experience that this is the quickest way to kill a thread. Everybody will pile on their favorite theory and it will become a mess.

(11-08-2021, 04:36 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.EDIT: If I understand correctly, Wulfila's early Gothic translation of the Revelations has not survived.
This is the passage from Johann Mentelin's You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. According to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., it is based on a XIV Century German translation.

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Our fragment goes something like:

Vnd d' himel schied sich als eī eingewundens bůch

Hi, Marco:

I had a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that I thought could have been the manuscript that is the basis for the printed edition.  It is the Augsburg Bible from the late 14th century, and according to this facsimile company, the earliest German bible in existence.  I tried to look for parallels and ran into that issue of not being able to read German, let alone late 14th Century German (duh).  So I greatly appreciate your review of my work.

Revelations begins on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (page 249 in the reader), I believe. 

I think the rubricated Roman number "capitel"s are close to the Revelations chapters but not exactly -- as there are 21 total and the modern version has 22 -- so not sure what the difference is.

If the rubricated numbers to six are correct -- the sixth chapter starts You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (page 255 in the reader) and I think our section is in this clip from the second column in f127v:

[attachment=5743]

Second line down looks like (please don't laugh, I did my best!) -- wirt. un[d] d' himel grinch wid zu rame[?] als ei[n] buche zu gebunden. Un[d] ei[n] reati ch bertk un[d] ynrel fmt be weaet vo[n] n[c]n reten. 

If I had to guess, I would translate this as the full sentence of Rev 6:14 -- but I greatly appreciate your review of this possibility.  If it is the same text, it is rather depressingly different.

I added an attempt to straighten out the text to the opening post.

[attachment=5745]

I think Marco's attempt is good, though as he remarks it is sometimes really hard to see. Especially the beginning. It is not always clear to me when something is [r] or [s]. There is also one confusing a/o hybrid. And what on earth to make of the "o/o" in the beginning?

Here is Marco's version again for reference:

o/ochs oetchy osar,aram askeeody ochdor,al o,ekair,y ytodaro opalshy or,arodar yko,dar ykodar ykary opalxy
o/ochs oetchy osar,aram askeeody ochdor,al o,ekair,y ytodaro opalshy or,arodar yko,dar ykodar ykary opalxy

Hi, there, I do not believe the writing is a citation from the Bible, but I believe it is a deeply spiritual statement. To understand why Revelation would be associated with a spiral, one needs to understand how the Revelation was understood in the Middle Ages and what it meant to the mystical writers. The Revelation pertains to the highest degree of mystical experience  - to the so-called union with the divine. This comes after prolong spiritual introspection, going deeper and deeper into oneself until the mystic understood the purpose of biblical writing and the symbolic biblical writing.
The medieval Carthusians were well aware of the mystical religious experiences. Many books and guides were written on this subject.

(11-08-2021, 10:40 PM)MichelleL11 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Second line down looks like (please don't laugh, I did my best!) -- wirt. un[d] d' himel grinch wid zu rame[?] als ei[n] buche zu gebunden. Un[d] ei[n] reati ch bertk un[d] ynrel fmt be weaet vo[n] n[c]n reten. 

My suggested correction, as a German native speaker but certainly not an expert on medieval german:
un[d] d' himel ginch wid' zu same[n] als ei[n] buche zu gebunden. Un[d] ei[n] ieglich berck un[d] ynsel sint beweget vo[n] irn steten.

The things to look for in a block paradigm search are words that would be difficult to express, such as proper names, numbers, even 'the' and 'and' (because we still have no idea how any of these basic linguistic concepts are expressed in Voynichese.

My expectation is that Voynichese will turn out to comprise a number of separate kinds of tricks all at the same time, such as abbreviation and steganography. Yet features such as numbers must inevitably be in there, even if we can't see them directly.

As an aside, the presence of ororor-like strings has long been suspected to flag some kind of verbose number system (e.g. with or == Roman I), so it will probably pay to err on the side of flexibility when looking. :-)

Do I see it correctly that any "known-plaintext attack" cannot work because in the EVA transcription the assignment of the letters is "arbitrary" ?

(12-08-2021, 02:04 PM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Do I see it correctly that any "known-plaintext attack" cannot work because in the EVA transcription the assignment of the letters is "arbitrary" ?

This is precisely the kind of thing I would like to get a better feeling for during this exercise. I personally see two possible options:

1) No EVA - so also no computational attack: take the actual image of the Voynichese fragment and compare it to the plaintext. Try to work out how they could map to each other. The advantage is that that there is more room for creative solutions, unforeseen realizations, flexible readings. This is closer to how we read actual medieval manuscripts, but there we can use context and expected words to determine unclear readings and even correct scribal errors.

2) Use EVA and computing power, but build in some flexibility. Ideally, the system would be able to parse EVA differently of needed, for example read [ch] or [iin] or [aiin] as single glyphs. ANd take into account two possible readings for the problematic glyphs. Even better would be a system with some general fuzziness, that tries to look for a close match in the realization that a perfect match is always unlikely.

The option (3), look for a 1 to 1 match between raw EVA and a plaintext makes no sense to me.