Anyone seen this proposed solution yet? More Hebrew...

[geoffreycaveney]

I would like to comment briefly here, because at one point in my prior research, I strongly considered the hypothesis that the language of the Voynich ms could be Hebrew. I did rather a lot of work pursuing and investigating this hypothesis. However, after much study and consultation with Hebrew scholars I had to reject the hypothesis for the following reason: To make sense of the text as Hebrew, I had to propose certain alternations of similar letters, which can sometimes occur in Hebrew; however, unfortunately, I was proposing them for words and forms which had well-known classical spellings established for millennia. Here is a brief excerpt of a question I posed to one Hebrew scholar, and his convincing answer (the exchange was conducted in Spanish):

"Igualmente, ¿sería probable el intercambio de alef o ayin por la letra he? Por ejemplo, מהל en lugar de מעל, o השר en lugar de אשר."

"Las letras guturales pueden intercambiarse pero no de esa manera que usted sugiere y mucho menos en esas palabras tan específicas. Sus casos estarían reflejando un hebreo hablado por un analfabeto lo cual en ese lugar y momento es imposible. Mucho menos si los intercambios son estables y permanentes."

The scholar's reply is worth translating: "The guttural letters can alternate with each other but not in this manner that you suggest, and much less so in these specific words. Such cases would have reflected a form of Hebrew spoken by an illiterate person, which in this place and time is impossible. Much less if the alternations are stable and permanent."

I considered this argument to be effectively the refutation of my Hebrew hypothesis. The main point is that anybody who would have known Hebrew at all in this period, would have known it in its classical literary form. In the late medieval period there weren't illiterate or semi-literate people who spoke Hebrew but didn't read or write it. So anyone who could have written such a manuscript in Hebrew, would have known the precise classical literary language with its established spellings. Of course they could have written it in a new script, or left-to-right, or what have you. But they wouldn't have been likely to change the spelling of which letters go where in which words, as I was proposing. If alef, ayin, and he were represented in the text in a certain way, they would have been represented consistently with their use in the established classical Hebrew spelling of words. I found that this argument posed an obstacle that was fatal for my Hebrew hypothesis of the Voynich ms.

Based on what I have read about Hannig's Hebrew theory of the Voynich ms, I would be very surprised if it can overcome the substantial obstacle that this basic but effective argument poses to any Hebrew hypothesis of this ms.

Geoffrey