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• RE: interesting Greek reading of 1st line of f67r 1

  geoffreycaveney > 16-03-2019, 10:58 PM

  To JKP and others who may be interested, I now have a tentative (Judaeo-)Greek reading of the 2nd line of the same passage, at the top of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 1. I present it here together with my latest version of the 1st line. I want to thank in particular Marco, Koen, and Rene, because their critical comments on my original interpretation highlighted several weaknesses that allowed me to amend and improve my interpretation. As Benjamin Franklin said, "My critics are really my friends, because they point out my weaknesses."
  
  Note: in my rendition of the "Judaeo-Greek" text below, I am going to use the transcription "A" to stand for a letter that could have been represented in a Judaeo-Greek text by the Hebrew letter "aleph". As I noted in my post about the historical text earlier, when Greek was written in the Hebrew script, the Hebrew letter aleph could represent a rather wide variety of vowels, often Greek alpha, but also omicron or epsilon or upsilon. I do not use this symbol anywhere near that freely in my interpretation below, but I do use it in some places.
  
  first two lines of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 1 in the Voynich ms text:
  
  [t]eeodaiin  shey  epairody  osaiin  yteeoey  shey  epaiin  oaiin
  [font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]daiir  okeody  qoekeeg  sar  oeteody  oteey  keey  key  keeodal[/font]
  
  my Judaeo-Greek interpretation of this text:
  
  []ei[A]pan  tis  ipeirous  otan  skiiAis  tis  ,  epan  oAn
  par'  Atous  &Atees  tAr(a)  oikous  o(u)k-eis(i)  tees  ,  tes  []ei[A]pan
  
  Now "normalizing" this Judaeo-Greek text into a more standard Greek form:
  
  eipan  tis  ipeirous  otan  skiais  tis  ,  eipan  oun
  para  autous  &  autes  tora  oikous  ouk  eisi  tes  ,  tes  eipan
  
  Very literal word-for-word English translation in the same word order as the Greek:
  
  "they said the continents when in the shadows , they said then"
  "beside them (masc. & fem.) now [astrol.] houses not are they , they said"
  
  Idiomatic English translation:
  
  "They said when the continents are in the shadows, then they said
  now the (astrological) houses are not beside them, they said"
  
  =====
  
  Comments: As I pointed out in my post about historical Judaeo-Greek, some ambiguity in the representation of Greek vowels is inevitable in such a script. Neither Hebrew nor Voynichese can possibly render all the Greek vowels as precisely as the Greek script itself does.
  
  The abbreviated form <par'> for the Greek preposition para (the source of our prefix in paranormal, paramilitary, etc.) is not just something I made up. It is a standard Modern Greek abbreviation of the word that appears in dictionaries.
  Now "para" has a wide variety of meanings in Greek, sometimes seemingly contradictory. I think the meaning I choose here, "beside", is the most basic: "beside, by, near". But it can also mean "contrary to" or "despite", and it can also mean "from" or "because of". 
  
  I cannot be certain yet about the interpretation of the third word [qoekeeg]. We need more data to be more certain about the meaning of the "qo-" prefix, which I am simply guessing is like an ampersand. And the [g] at the end of the word is a rare letter, so I cannot be certain which letter it represents. I am guessing it is an alternate form of "s".
  In this case, the phrase [okeody qoekeeg] is simply the masculine and feminine words for "them" in Greek, "autous" and "autes".
  
  [sar] is a difficult word to interpret in this script. I have to treat it like a Greek word in the Hebrew script, in which the vowel letter in the middle can be ambiguous, and a final vowel at the end may not be written with a letter at all (also normal in the Hebrew script). With these suppositions, we may interpret this word as the common Greek word "tora", meaning "now".
  
  I mentioned in a previous comment that I have come to believe that the sequence [eo] is a single unit. So in [oeteody] I think it just represents Greek "o", and thus the word is "oikous", meaning "houses". Standard Greek dictionaries include the definition "one of the 12 divisions of an astrological chart" for this word.
  
  The word [oteey] I read as "okeis", and again with a very normal allowance for the way the Hebrew script represents Greek vowels, this gives us "ouk-eisi". This is the standard Greek phrase "ouk eisi" meaning "(they) are not". 
  
  The Greek word "tes" which follows is simply "they". This would be considered a "pleonastic" use of the pronoun, that is, a repetition for emphasis. I do understand that the gender of the pronoun may be a complicated question here, but perhaps the reason for the feminine pronoun here will become more clear when more of the text is interpreted.
  
  Thus the first seven words of the second line form a Greek phrase that completes the clause begun with "then they said" at the end of the first line:
  
  "para autos & autes tora oikous ouk eisi tes"
  "beside them (m&f) now houses not are they"
  "now the houses are not beside them"
  
  Again, due to the ambiguity of the Greek preposition "para", in this phrase "beside them" might instead be "against them" or "near them" or even perhaps "beyond them" or "above them". This is the ambiguity of the Greek language, not the ambiguity of my method of reading the Voynich ms.
  
  Finally, the last two words of the second line I interpret as "tes eipan", which is "they said" again. Once again I cannot yet explain the feminine gender of "they" in the Greek here; perhaps the next two lines will explain that, or perhaps the reader needs to have some knowledge and understanding of the context that is not explicitly expressed or explained in the text in order to understand it. (Feminine "they" could refer to some beings along the lines of the Furies or the Muses or some other such beings, which may or may not be explicitly indicated in the text.)
  
  In the last word, I have to interpret it in much the same way as the very first word of the first line, disregarding the first gallows character and the [o] in the middle. Of course I will need to develop a more complete explanation for such extraneous characters when I have more of the text interpreted, since in this case I cannot treat the initial gallows character as a pilcrow.
  
  So there you have it. Love it or hate it, accept it or reject it, find it interesting or laugh at it. The reaction is up to you.
  
  Once again, I very much look forward to any and all critical comments about my method, the grammatical or ungrammatical Greek reading of the text, etc. I have made an effort to be very clear in my above comments about exactly where any uncertainty or ambiguity in my method may lie. The critical comments about the first line by Koen, Rene, and Marco were very helpful to me in fixing and sharpening some weak points in my original interpretation, and I appreciate them very much. I welcome more such critical comments about the second line.

• RE: interesting Greek reading of 1st line of f67r 1

  Linda > 16-03-2019, 11:33 PM

  (16-03-2019, 05:58 PM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

  (16-03-2019, 05:53 PM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Geoffrey, Have you an idea in mind of the topic? I do from what you have translated so far but I dont want to say in case it affects your future translations. From what you just added about the second line it seems to have a theme.

  
  Linda, the first thing I think of when I read "when the continents are in the shadows" is a solar eclipse. But of course the phrase could also mean many other things. The astrological "houses" would clearly be relevant to this section of the ms with all of its astrological tables.

  
  Yes okay i saw the eclipse interpretation too, and yes i definitely agree there are other possibilities as well. 
  
  With regard to the second line, given you are already thinking eclipse, perhaps the houses of the zodiac are not in alignment with an expected occurrence of an eclipse or other occultation, due to precession, or some mistake made in the tables, just as Michael of Rhodes' moon and sun chart is miscopied, and therefore would not have worked correctly in its usage. 
  
  I get the feeling sometimes that the vms info is there to outline all the things that are wrong or misunderstood in texts the author has come across, and to address them in such a way as to broaden our understanding of not only what the vms portrays, but everything that it references.
  
  Oddly this idea regarding the second line can also fit with another interpretation for the first line. I am interested to see more of your translations to see if the meanings continue to correlate. I am afraid i do not know much about Greek, much less Judeo-Greek, so cannot help in that regard, but i appreciate how you are explaining your reasoning, and i wish you luck going forward.

• RE: interesting Greek reading of 1st line of f67r 1

  -JKP- > 16-03-2019, 11:39 PM

  I know very little about Judeo-Greek. I'm familiar with its existence, I understand the concepts, I understand the compromises that occur when going from Greek to Hebrew, but it's still a steep learning curve to find a place where I could comment constructively.

• RE: interesting Greek reading of 1st line of f67r 1

  geoffreycaveney > 17-03-2019, 12:17 AM

  (16-03-2019, 11:33 PM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

  (16-03-2019, 05:58 PM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

  (16-03-2019, 05:53 PM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Geoffrey, Have you an idea in mind of the topic? I do from what you have translated so far but I dont want to say in case it affects your future translations. From what you just added about the second line it seems to have a theme.

  
  Linda, the first thing I think of when I read "when the continents are in the shadows" is a solar eclipse. But of course the phrase could also mean many other things. The astrological "houses" would clearly be relevant to this section of the ms with all of its astrological tables.

  
  Yes okay i saw the eclipse interpretation too, and yes i definitely agree there are other possibilities as well. 
  
  With regard to the second line, given you are already thinking eclipse, perhaps the houses of the zodiac are not in alignment with an expected occurrence of an eclipse or other occultation, due to precession, or some mistake made in the tables, just as Michael of Rhodes' moon and sun chart is miscopied, and therefore would not have worked correctly in its usage. 
  
  I get the feeling sometimes that the vms info is there to outline all the things that are wrong or misunderstood in texts the author has come across, and to address them in such a way as to broaden our understanding of not only what the vms portrays, but everything that it references.
  
  Oddly this idea regarding the second line can also fit with another interpretation for the first line. I am interested to see more of your translations to see if the meanings continue to correlate. I am afraid i do not know much about Greek, much less Judeo-Greek, so cannot help in that regard, but i appreciate how you are explaining your reasoning, and i wish you luck going forward.

  
  Thank you Linda. I am going to take a wild guess that you may also be thinking about the idea of a volcanic eruption, which would put "the continents in the shadows" if the eruption were massive enough to affect the atmosphere over large areas of the world for significant amounts of time, as has happened in the past in the event of certain very major volcanic eruptions. In this case, "houses" could just refer to actual houses that were destroyed. Of course this is all speculative until we understand much, much more about the ms and the text and its interpretation.

• RE: interesting Greek reading of 1st line of f67r 1

  Linda > 17-03-2019, 04:57 AM

  (17-03-2019, 12:17 AM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Thank you Linda. I am going to take a wild guess that you may also be thinking about the idea of a volcanic eruption, which would put "the continents in the shadows" if the eruption were massive enough to affect the atmosphere over large areas of the world for significant amounts of time, as has happened in the past in the event of certain very major volcanic eruptions. In this case, "houses" could just refer to actual houses that were destroyed. Of course this is all speculative until we understand much, much more about the ms and the text and its interpretation.

  
  Interesting, i hadn't actually thought of that. My other idea was something else completely. I will let you know if i see signs of it in any of your subsequent translations.

• RE: interesting Greek reading of 1st line of f67r 1

  ReneZ > 17-03-2019, 08:44 AM

  (16-03-2019, 08:22 PM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.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:
  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

• RE: interesting Greek reading of 1st line of f67r 1

  -JKP- > 17-03-2019, 10:10 AM

  It's a while since I've read about this, I learned the Hebrew alphabet about 12 years ago, but I think some of them are considered semi-vowels because they are sometimes used in positions where we use vowels, but technically, aleph is a glottal stop, which I think linguists consider a consonant? (I haven't studied linguistics, so a linguist is welcome to correct me.)

• RE: interesting Greek reading of 1st line of f67r 1

  geoffreycaveney > 17-03-2019, 02:16 PM

  (17-03-2019, 08:44 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

  (16-03-2019, 08:22 PM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.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:
  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

  
  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.

• RE: interesting Greek reading of 1st line of f67r 1

  Ruby Novacna > 17-03-2019, 02:28 PM

  Geoffreycaveney
  In my opinion the biggest problem would be to define the alphabet. Because, personally, I read the first word teeodaiin as buotaun for bioton - the world. 
  So we still have many possibilities (hopefully) for translation. 
  I wish you a lot of courage!

• RE: interesting Greek reading of 1st line of f67r 1

  geoffreycaveney > 17-03-2019, 02:35 PM

  (17-03-2019, 02:28 PM)Ruby Novacna Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Geoffreycaveney
  In my opinion the biggest problem would be to define the alphabet. Because, personally, I read the first word teeodaiin as buotaun for bioton - the world. 
  So we still have many possibilities (hopefully) for translation. 
  I wish you a lot of courage!

  
  Ok Ruby, thank you. Right now it looks like I am about two lines ahead of you, on this page at least. Show us your reading of the whole first two lines, and readers here can compare it with mine.
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