The Voynich Ninja

The problem is how those opinions are formed. Writing the post about Heavenly Jerusalem took me and Cary several months of research: reading papers, looking up existing illustrative traditions, looking into primary sources, analyzing relevant biblical passages... I would love to see any or all of my points rejected, but not just because someone has a different opinion. Which argument of mine do you disagree with and why? In which ways is your argument to be preferred? How is your evidence better?

This is the way we might move forward - not by comparing interpretative narratives, but by comparing evidence.

(19-03-2024, 02:48 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The problem is how those opinions are formed. Writing the post about Heavenly Jerusalem took me and Cary several months of research: reading papers, looking up existing illustrative traditions, looking into primary sources, analyzing relevant biblical passages... I would love to see any or all of my points rejected, but not just because someone has a different opinion. Which argument of mine do you disagree with and why? In which ways is your argument to be preferred? How is your evidence better?

This is the way we might move forward - not by comparing interpretative narratives, but by comparing evidence.

I've read your ideas. I want to hear other people's ideas. Am I allowed to create Polls in this Thread?

If you want to make a poll, I suspect you will need to make a new thread. Deciding things by popular vote kind of goes against everything I've been trying to explain here though.

(19-03-2024, 05:35 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If you want to make a poll, I suspect you will need to make a new thread. Deciding things by popular vote kind of goes against everything I've been trying to explain here though.

It's not about deciding things. I am curious to know what others here think. Some people are shy. They read and will click a button but don't post.

You can see who reads, and then, who writes. Not everyone is interested in this [or any other] discussion.

The illustrations in the balneological section present multiple examples of women bathing and lend themselves to other interpretations. Are there nine Muses in their own special tub? Bathing images start with the nymphs of the Zodiac.

"Ensoulment" is somewhat of a novel interpretation, certainly a possibility, but I am not "familiar with the literature" as they say. Opinions are great, but where is the evidence, what are the historical sources? Does the VMs represent some sort of formulaic process, or are the pictures just the artist's idiosyncratic opinions? Given that the process is imaginary in the first place.

What Koen did with the "sleeve' investigation was to show that the medieval artistic depiction of the fashion trend, that combined a loose, baggy sleeve and a tight cuff, was quite limited in the artistic representations of the early 1400's.

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Another investigation is the "hat" which also is similarly limited in time and place and relevant to C-14 data.

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Other investigations with interesting historical connections include the VMs cosmos and the mermaid among others. They are part of a growing set of interpretations that represent things that were relevant to the first part of the 1400's, or they were historical tradition from the artist's perspective, like the merlons.

The opinion that counts is what we can reconstruct of the VMs artist's opinion and intent. And given that it *is* the VMs, opinion is potentially flawed and erroneous, while intent includes deception and disguise. This is where the fun starts.

(19-03-2024, 08:04 PM)R. Sale Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view."Ensoulment" is somewhat of a novel interpretation, certainly a possibility, but I am not "familiar with the literature" as they say. Opinions are great, but where is the evidence, what are the historical sources? Does the VMs represent some sort of formulaic process, or are the pictures just the artist's idiosyncratic opinions? Given that the process is imaginary in the first place.

Ensoulment? Never heard of it?

My personal history is that I have been fighting the abortion rights issue for a long time. That's where this comes from for me. Maybe it's because I'm a female. I care about this issue. Christians want to take away women's rights because of this "When does life begin?" question (the Ensoulment question). It's all about what the Church says. That's why I researched what the Church says now and what the Church said in the past.

(13-03-2024, 12:32 PM)pjburkshire Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Here is a deep question. When was the decision made on which particular soul was to be sent to Earth to be the child of a particular set of parents? Was everything planned out from the Dawn of Creation? Or was the decision made at the start of the new pregnancy?

No one wants to talk about the hard questions. Non-believers don't want to offend believers. Believers are hesitant to question the beliefs they have been taught.

If you believe that humans have souls then you have to have some idea of when that soul gets into the human body. Many Christians today claim that the soul enters the body the moment the sperm and egg unite – at the moment of fertilization. That was not always the case. Even the Catholic Church has on their website that was not always the case.

People keep saying that we need to think like the people thought at the time the Voynich Manuscript was created. I agree. The people of that time did not separate religion and science. At that time, religion was everything.

I realize that talking about human reproduction makes a lot of people uncomfortable. I realize that some people are still chasing the idea that the star-like images in the Voynich Manuscript are representations of the stars up in the night sky. As long as you keep looking in the wrong places for the answers, you are going to keep going around in circles.

Talking about stars up in the night sky is so much nicer and cleaner and more polite than having to talk about souls entering the body of a pregnant woman. If you really think that the star-like images in the manuscript are representations of stars up in the night sky, please explain to me why you think that. What story are they telling in this manuscript? Why do you think the people who made this manuscript were obsessed with stars in the night sky and not obsessed with human souls? Was the Church in the early 15th century really heavily into the old Pagan ideas of people being controlled by the stars in the night sky? Where did that fit with the teachings of Jesus? What verses in the New Testament say the stars in the night sky control people?