geoffreycaveney's Judaeo-Greek theory

[geoffreycaveney]

To give other researchers some sense of what Judaeo-Greek, or Greek written in the Hebrew script, may have looked like, I attach here an example of a couple Bible verses from the beginning of the Book of Jonah taken from a translation into Greek written in the Hebrew script.

aleph is not a vowel in Hebrew, but a consonant. The vowels are the series of dots that are written mostly below it.
See for example here:
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Yes, but in order to use the vowel diacritic dots at all, Hebrew must often write aleph or another letter as a "placeholder" to puts the dots below. One cannot write the dots in the absence of a letter. Historically aleph was a consonant, a glottal stop, but in fact in practice it has been mostly silent and unpronounced for millennia. 

On top of that, it is quite common for Hebrew writers and writing to omit the vowel diacritic dots. In this case, the only indication of where the vowel is, may be the "placeholder" letter such as aleph. 

So in such cases, in practice, the aleph is the only thing the reader sees in the place where Greek, for example, has a vowel.

In the sample of Judaeo-Greek text that I have quoted and cited here, clearly the alephs are not representing glottal stops or any consonants at all! They are placeholders that are written in the places where Greek has vowels.

Yes, this text has vowel diacritic dots as well. But much Hebrew writing omits them. Cursive handwriting in letters, for example.

I believe the Voynich ms text may be a representation of such a Judaeo-Greek text, written without indicating the vowel diacritic dots. 

Voynich [e] functions much like Hebrew "yod" in Judaeo-Greek. The diacritic dots that would have distinguished /i/ from /e/ are not written -- which again is common in Hebrew writing.

Voynich [d] functions much like Hebrew "vav" in Judaeo-Greek. It can represent the vowel /u/ or the consonant /v/. (And due to Greek "betacism", I argue that in the Voynich ms it can represent /b/ as well, and by extension /p/ since the script does not appear to distinguish voiced and voiceless pairs.)

Voynich [a] and [o] function much like Hebrew "aleph" in Judaeo-Greek. The Hebrew script has a second such letter, "ayin". Historically, it was a pharyngeal stop consonant. But again, in practice, it too has been silent and unpronounced for millennia, and it simply serves as a "placeholder" letter virtually identical in function with aleph. The difference is purely historical and etymological.

Thus, Voynich [a] and [o] function much like Hebrew "aleph" and "ayin" in Judaeo-Greek. The diacritic dots that would have distinguished /a/ from /o/ from /e/ are not written. 
Again, it was perfectly normal and common to omit the diacritic dots in Hebrew script writing. 

So yes, in many texts written in the Hebrew script, we are left with a very ambiguous representation of the vowels, where yes, either "aleph" or "ayin" could be the only indication of a vowel, which could be /a/ or /o/ or /e/, because the diacritic dots were not written.

This is what Hebrew philologists and paleographers do -- they must read and study these texts very carefully, in order to determine what the vowels and words were intended to be.

And this is what I believe we must do with the Voynich ms. I believe it is primarily a philological and paleographic challenge, not primarily a cryptographic challenge. The methods of modern cryptography and computer science will not decipher the Voynich ms -- it will require the methods of medieval philology and paleography. And with Semitic abjad scripts, medieval philology and paleography is really, really hard! This, I believe, is the primary challenge that confronts us with the Voynich ms.