The Voynich Ninja

In the "sky" part of the top-right rosette, there is a line of Voynichese text in a spiral. Some time ago, by coincidence, I noticed a similar "spiral in the sky" in depictions of Revelation 6:14: "The heavens receded like a scroll being rolled up". I didn't pursue this any further since depictions of the event are really rare and it I didn't think Revelation as a whole was relevant to the Rosettes page (I still don't think so, but that's beside the point).



But now I'm thinking: no matter what one's view is on the Rosettes page, we are looking at a medieval document and a quote from the Bible is always possible. So even if I wouldn't know what to do with this on the level of the analysis of the whole page, it may still be interesting to consider this line of Voynichese in isolation and compare it to the bible verse.

Since there are a lot of variables involved and I believe in the power of collaboration, I wonder if you guys are interested in trying this exercise here together. There are a number of advantages why this particular parallel is suitable:

• It is a theory-neutral proposition. I am just putting the possibility out there that a particular line of scripture is used, which can be applied to many contexts. It stands alone to be tested neutrally.
  
• For example, various people believe the foldout to depict cosmic events, and/or the top right some kind of disaster like flooding. This line from revelation about a rolled-up-scroll-sky may have come to mind to the maker even if the page has no religious meaning overall.
  
• The text spirals itself, imitating the movement of the heavens being rolled up and reinforcing the parallel with a scroll. Assuming this interpretation is correct, the line of text itself does what it is about. 
  
• This means that we can compare an isolated line of Voynichese: the one that rolls like a scroll...
  
• ... to a concrete, limited piece of plaintext.
  
• The fact that we have a whole line of text may provide a whole different dynamic than trying to match individual words separately. It means not only nouns but verbs! Grammar!
  
• Even if it is all for nothing, we may still learn something.
  

There are a number of difficulties as well:

• Various bible versions and languages
  
• This is a limited version of what Nick Pelling calls the Block Paradigm: you take a chunk of Voynichese and try to (force)match it to an expected plain text. How does one do this? How do you call (partial) success? How do you call defeat?
  
• We know which piece of scripture must certainly be included, but we don't know which surrounding verses may have been included as well, if any. Just for reference, here is a larger passage:
  

Quote:12 I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, 13 and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. 14 The heavens receded like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. 15 Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and everyone else, both slave and free, hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. 16 They called to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! 17 For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can withstand it?”

Anyway, I would love to undertake this as a forum project if some people are interested. I personally see it as a test of how to tackle a problem like this more than a surefire way to cracking the VM, but the process may still be interesting.

Edit: I will add A screenshot of the relevant VM text spiral as well as my attempt to "straighten it".

[attachment=5744]

More generally, I had been wondering for a long time about a specific apparent problem with the vms: cribs seem to be totally useless. One thing this could imply is that the vms may not be enciphered plaintext. 

Of course, maybe people are picking the wrong cribs, and maybe you're onto something fruitful with this idea of some text from Revelation.

The general idea is to pick a means of encipherment (and / or encoding) and see if that algorithm creates a match in VMS text from your crib. If so, then you can try to use it in reverse to see if it turns more vms text into meaningful plaintext to prove your crib match wasn't just a lucky coincidence.

Hm. Not a single daiin in it.

The heaven is rolled up in Revelation, as it describes the end of time, I think it is because destruction of the world is opposed to the event of creation, when the heaven is rolled out.

Am I correct in assuming that the Latin version of Revelation 6:14 is required for an attack ?

Quote:12 Et vidi, cum aperuisset sigillum sextum, et terraemotus factus est magnus, et sol factus est niger tamquam saccus cilicinus, et luna tota facta est sicut sanguis,
13 et stellae caeli ceciderunt in terram, sicut ficus mittit grossos suos, cum vento magno movetur,
14 et caelum recessit sicut liber involutus, et omnis mons et insula de locis suis motae sunt.
15 Et reges terrae et magnates et tribuni et divites et fortes et omnis servus et liber absconderunt se in speluncis et in petris montium;
16 et dicunt montibus et petris: “ Cadite super nos et abscondite nos a facie sedentis super thronum et ab ira Agni,
17 quoniam venit dies magnus irae ipsorum, et quis poterit stare? ”.

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I would try Latin and Greek for sure, and then any medieval vernacular we can find.

Here is a word by word translation of the text into Greek:

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(11-08-2021, 02:47 PM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.nova-vulgata

The Clementine Vulgate would be closer to the versions that were in use in the 15th century.

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(Link edited, thanks MarcoP)

Quote:13 et stellæ de cælo ceciderunt super terram, sicut ficus emittit grossos suos cum a vento magno movetur:
14 et cælum recessit sicut liber involutus: et omnis mons, et insulæ de locis suis motæ sunt

Hi Koen,
this is a Greek version of the text from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:

Quote:6:12 Καὶ εἶδον ὅτε ἤνοιξεν τὴν σφραγῖδα τὴν ἕκτην, καὶ σεισμὸς μέγας
ἐγένετο, καὶ ὁ ἥλιος ἐγένετο μέλας ὡς σάκκος τρίχινος, καὶ ἡ σελήνη ὅλη
ἐγένετο ὡς αἷμα,
6:13 καὶ οἱ ἀστέρες τοῦ οὐρανοῦ ἔπεσαν εἰς τὴν γῆν, ὡς συκῆ βάλλει τοὺς
ὀλύνθους αὐτῆς ὑπὸ ἀνέμου μεγάλου σειομένη,
6:14 καὶ ὁ οὐρανὸς ἀπεχωρίσθη ὡς βιβλίον ἑλισσόμενον,καὶ πᾶν ὄρος καὶ
νῆσος ἐκ τῶν τόπων αὐτῶν ἐκινήθησαν.
6:15 καὶ οἱ βασιλεῖς τῆς γῆς καὶ οἱ μεγιστᾶνες καὶ οἱ χιλίαρχοι καὶ οἱ πλούσιοι
καὶ οἱ ἰσχυροὶ καὶ πᾶς δοῦλος καὶ ἐλεύθερος ἔκρυψαν ἑαυτοὺς εἰς τὰ σπήλαια
καὶ εἰς τὰς πέτρας τῶν ὀρέων·
6:16 καὶ λέγουσιν τοῖς ὄρεσιν καὶ ταῖς πέτραις, Πέσετε ἐφ’ ἡμᾶς καὶ κρύψατε
ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ προσώπου τοῦ καθημένου ἐπὶ τοῦ θρόνου καὶ ἀπὸ τῆς ὀργῆς τοῦ
ἀρνίου,
6:17 ὅτι ἦλθεν ἡ ἡμέρα ἡ μεγάλη τῆς ὀργῆς αὐτῶν, καὶ τίς δύναται σταθῆναι;

This is my version of the VM spiral text based on the ZL transliteration (commas for uncertain spaces):

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

The passage is particularly hard to read, likely because the spiral shape made it hard to write.

The first thing I notice is the repetition "ykodar ykodar". The Vulgate contains a few exact repetitions (I found 11), but none in Chapter 6. The Greek text appears to contain the same repetitions as the Vulgate. The two also share two occurrences of triple repetition (each counted as two instances of repetition):

Latin: sanctus sanctus sanctus / vae vae vae
Greek: αγιος αγιος αγιος / οὐαὶ οὐαὶ οὐαὶ

Since full and partial reduplication are such a prominent feature of Voynichese and so rare elsewhere, bibles included (~3% vs ~0.1%), one of the first questions is how to handle this.

A few more data:

Length of the Voynichese passage:
EVA characters (spaces not counted):88; words:13/19 (depending on uncertain spaces)

Greek: characters:41 words:7
Latin: characters:35; words:6

Greek: καὶ ὁ οὐρανὸς ἀπεχωρίσθη ὡς βιβλίον ἑλισσόμενον
Latin: et caelum recessit sicut liber involutus

Both Greek amd Latin start with the most common word in the language (the conjunction). The word dropped in the Latin translation is the article in "the heaven" (ὁ οὐρανὸς / caelum).

The page linked by Nablator seems to have a problem: occurrences of "ae" are missing (et stell de clo ceciderunt super terram). Ths problem aside, the words above are identical (et clum recessit sicut liber involutus).

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.

Our fragment goes something like:

Vnd d' himel schied sich als eī eingewundens bůch

EDIT2: it's the first 'ykodar', not the first, that could be split by an uncertain space

"Caelum recessit" 
Q. E. D. The rolling up is the reverse process (recession) of the rolling out.
In fact, both can look the same. It is interesting whether the direction of the words can be a hint? If it is so, it is rolled up after all.