geoffreycaveney's Judaeo-Greek theory

[geoffreycaveney]

David, while reading up on Yevanic I had much the same questions as the ones you put forward. Yevanic is essentially Greek, and they wrote in Hebrew script precisely because they needed their writings to be in this script.

Now in defense of the principle behind Geoffrey's theory, one could say that Yevanic shows how certain communities were accustomed to writing non-Semitic languages in Semitic script. As you say, there are other examples of this as well.

This might provide some cultural touchstone for Voynichese being a hypothetical language x written in abjad form.

Now I'll be honest, I find it difficult to assess how much freedom your system allows you in interpretation and whether or not it's too much. We've seen systems before which allowed the user to turn any string of Voynichese into virtually any translation.

Your system also allows for a lot of freedom, but I'm not sure if it's in the "still possible" zone. That's why I'd like to see how it handles labels. My reasoning is that the reader of the VM must have been able to understand the labels relatively unambiguously, otherwise there is no point in labelling things.

Koen, thank you for this very clear explanation of your evaluation of my theory at this stage. I appreciate your clarity very much.

I also now have a better understanding of your interest in the labels, such as the ones on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , etc. I do see the logic of your reasoning for this.

However, we have to keep in mind that in order for there to be a point in labeling things, the only necessity is that *a late medieval Judaeo-Greek physician*, or some similar person or people, must have been able to understand the labels relatively unambiguously. But we do not know how much distinctive knowledge and cultural context such a person or people would have had at that time, in that place, and with that cultural background. In other words, maybe such people in that time and place were able to understand the labels, but that does not mean that anyone today has the knowledge and background to understand the labels.

Of course, one could argue the same thing about the entire Voynich MS. But I still believe there is a better chance of figuring out the meaning of lines and paragraphs of text with grammar, such as some of the lines that I have posted in this thread, than there is of figuring out the meanings of individual one-word or two-word labels with no grammatical context to assist us.

As a comparison, there still remain undeciphered labels and other items in Linear B. Ventris & Chadwick deciphered the script, and identified the language as Mycenaean Greek. But certain items and words and labels did not have enough context clues for anyone to identify them, even knowing which language it was and even having deciphered the script. For example, the Linear B syllabary script literal reading of "rope" is ko-no. Believe it or not, this represents Greek skhoinos!! I have not proposed any such extreme divergence between representation and actual word in my Voynich theory, as the divergence that we see in this example. In this case, it must have been a picture of a rope that allowed them to make the identification anyway. But in other cases, the context is not so clear, and when the phonetic connection is as obscure as "ko-no" = "skhoinos", you can imagine that it may not be possible to decipher the meaning of the labels without sufficient context.

I fear that may be the case with some of the plant, herb, and root labels in the Voynich MS. However, as I wrote before, we are very lucky that the language is Greek at all, because we have Galen and Dioscorides and Theophrastus as well as many Byzantine and other medieval Greek herbals, etc., to assist us and to guide us. So perhaps an expert in the subject matter could learn the system in the letter correspondence table, and use their knowledge of medieval Greek herbals to figure out what many of the labels were intended to mean. I am not an expert in medieval Greek herbals, etc., so I may not be able to successfully accomplish this task myself.

I have already proposed potential identifications for a number of labels in one particularly significant set of labels, the 12 red labels on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 2. The red label words are admittedly hard to read and hard to interpret. But I have made potential identifications of about 7 out of the 12 of them as Greek body part names, roughly corresponding to the body parts in the familiar medieval "Zodiac Man", in the proper order. The information is all there in the thread "Greek body parts, head to toe in order, in red labels on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 2".

I also identify one famous label, the word next to the group of seven stars on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 3, as [doaro] = Πουλ[ι]α, a modern Greek name for the Pleiades, keeping in mind that in terms of the history of the Greek language, "modern" often means "after 1100 CE", or "during or after Late Antiquity", or "any time after 5th century (BCE) Athens". I think that's a fairly clear label identification, given the limitations of the script. The iota is missing, but in this script that would require the horizontally extended character [ch], since the sequence [-re-] is very rare but [-rch-] is less rare. Perhaps the author felt that writing out [doarcho] would not be aesthetically ideal in this location on this page, and thus omitted one letter and simply wrote [doaro]. Who knows how many such decisions the author made in abbreviating words and labels? I doubt the missing iota would have caused a problem for a Judaeo-Greek reader in understanding what this label is supposed to mean.

Koen, I will definitely keep in mind your points and your interest in the capability of this theory and system to identify and read the labels in the Voynich MS. Thank you for your very valuable feedback. I appreciate it very much.

Geoffrey