Mysterious Manuscript'S Code Has Been Cracked... "Prophet Of God" Claims

[Matthew J. Tandy]

Mysterious Manuscript's Code Has Been Cracked... "Prophet of God" Claims

I felt this would probably be of interest to people on all sides of the fence. The applicability I think is fairly obvious. Researching this "prophet", it is apparent he is very interested in capitalizing on publicity, but the book itself is always interesting to begin with.

A bit from the article for those not wanting to go further:

Written in "alien" characters, illustrated with sketches, and dating back hundreds of years, the Voynich Manuscript has puzzled cryptographers, historians and bibliophiles for centuries.

And now the mystery has finally come to an end, according to a businessman from Finland named Viekko Latvala, a self described "prophet of god," who says he has decoded the book and unlocked the secrets of the world's most mysterious manuscript.

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

Sounds great.

"Who does your taxes?"

[selek1]

Sounds great.

"Who does your taxes?"

"What did you do, Ray!?!?"

[oMtonic]

"What did you do, Ray!?!?"

The creep down the hall phoned the manager. So you know what I did? I climbed out on the ledge and tried to disconnect the cable.

So how could Latvala decode a manuscript that still dumbfounds the world's top cryptographers? It's simple. You just have to have a direct line to God.

"Mr. Latvala said that no one 'normal human' can decode it, because there is no code or method to read this text, it's a channel language of prophecy," Ketola told FoxNews.com. "This type of persons are most rare to exist, yet they have always been on face of the Earth through millenniums up to today ... and Mr Veikko Latvala has had this gift of mercy last 20 years."

Interesting... I wonder what else he can tell us.

Edited December 3, 2011 by oMtonic

[Robert F. Smith]

Mysterious Manuscript's Code Has Been Cracked... "Prophet of God" Claims

I felt this would probably be of interest to people on all sides of the fence. The applicability I think is fairly obvious. Researching this "prophet", it is apparent he is very interested in capitalizing on publicity, but the book itself is always interesting to begin with.

A bit from the article for those not wanting to go further:

Of far greater interest to us ought to be the actual decipherment of real codes by Professor Kevin Knight (USC) and his colleagues: See him on YouTube at

.

[Matthew J. Tandy]

Of far greater interest to us ought to be the actual decipherment of real codes by Professor Kevin Knight (USC) and his colleagues: See him on YouTube at

While interesting, and I was very excited about that news when I heard about it a couple of weeks ago (perhaps something useful can be applied to our understanding of KEP and such?), I don't think it's quite as relevant as a man claiming to be a prophet of God "translating" a book supposedly by the power that the learned men of this generation cannot.

It begs an interesting question: How do you prove his translation is not right when no one else has a translation at all? In this instance, we have the actual book and have had it for a long time. Taking this deeper into the Book of Mormon, we know that the learned men of the time could not translate the characters. While much has advanced in the past 150+ years, it is possible that presented with the plates they still could not (there are a few languages we are still trying to figure out from the America's and other parts of the world). So assuming the brass, gold, and other plates were real (which I do) and still in Joseph's possession, how do you disprove a prophetic claim of translation when no one has a better answer?

Just an interesting thought.

[Robert F. Smith]

While interesting, and I was very excited about that news when I heard about it a couple of weeks ago (perhaps something useful can be applied to our understanding of KEP and such?), I don't think it's quite as relevant as a man claiming to be a prophet of God "translating" a book supposedly by the power that the learned men of this generation cannot.

It begs an interesting question: How do you prove his translation is not right when no one else has a translation at all? In this instance, we have the actual book and have had it for a long time. Taking this deeper into the Book of Mormon, we know that the learned men of the time could not translate the characters. While much has advanced in the past 150+ years, it is possible that presented with the plates they still could not (there are a few languages we are still trying to figure out from the America's and other parts of the world). So assuming the brass, gold, and other plates were real (which I do) and still in Joseph's possession, how do you disprove a prophetic claim of translation when no one has a better answer?

Just an interesting thought.

For one thing, the actual techniques applied to the decipherment of unknown languages by Prof. Knight could be applied to the so-called "Anthon Transcript," just as they could to the Voynich Cipher. Why should we limit the applications?

For another, we can test the claims made by this or that decipherer by closely examining his claims in collateral matters. This is done all the time by crime scene investigators and by archeologists, who gather materials at the scene and then take them back to their lab for analysis. Instead of whining or complaining about evidence which is missing (or unobtainable by court order), the scientists and technicians back at the lab proceed to do their work and file their reports. The detectives, historians, and reporters take it from there, attempting to make sense of the facts through clever interpretations -- and by following up on hunches.

Despite rumors of its death, the verification principle of logical positivism is alive and well in your local crime lab, as well as in your university archeological lab.

Edited December 3, 2011 by Robert F. Smith

[Matthew J. Tandy]

For one thing, the actual techniques applied to the decipherment of unknown languages by Prof. Knight could be applied to the so-called "Anthon Transcript," just as they could to the Voynich Cipher. Why should we limit the applications?

Actually, Prof. Knight is applying it to the Voynich manuscript from what I recall a few weeks ago. However, he said he's running into several problems and according to him he is not sure he can decipher it (partly because no one is even sure if it's anything more than a hoax or doodle book of a mad man from hundreds of years ago).

While I think the interpretation is of course false, I believe one thing he guessed at is a valid possibility of it's origins:

"The language of this book is quite twisted," Ketola said. "The sound syllables are a mixture of Spanish and Italian, also mixed with the language this man used to speak himself. His own language was a rare Babylonian dialect that was spoken in a small area in Asia."

The author of the Voynich Manuscript did not know how to write in any extant language, Ketola said, so he had to create his own alphabet and vocabulary. "This man could not write any language so he had to invent a writing he can read / pronounce himself," he said.

Ketola suggested that the language may have also been some sort of shorthand writing the author used to jot down notes for himself.

If that is the case, then it would have evolved over the period of the book, so typical decoding methods would not work. It wasn't unheard of for people to create their own symbols and such from what they knew, despite being uneducated. If you could read what you wrote, that's all that mattered.

Honestly though, I lean heavily towards it being a book of silliness, possibly even intentionally.

As to applying it to the Anthon Transcript, I believe that would be nearly impossible. A valid theory, and I believe probable, is that it includes symbols and words from multiple parts of the plates and is not one contiguous passage. You can't crack a language with a single sentence and no clues.

[Brade]

...how do you disprove a prophetic claim of translation when no one has a better answer?

Just an interesting thought.

Well, of course, you can't disprove it in any strict sense. I hope you're not suggesting that that is good grounds for belief that the claim is true.

Edited December 3, 2011 by Brade

[Matthew J. Tandy]

Well, of course, you can't disprove it in any strict sense. I hope you're not suggesting that that is good grounds for belief that the claim is true.

Not in the slightest. It's grounds to maintain healthy skepticism, and also good for humor to some extent. For comparative studies, it's also useful.

If the plates were in our possession and no one could translate them but they were authenticated as ancient, it would not in any meaningful way imply that what the Book of Mormon is a literal translation of said plates. Until however the language is cracked, it could not be invalidated. Even then, there are the catalyst theories (which I find much less applicable to the Book of Mormon than Abraham). It's just an interesting conundrum of mysterious languages.

[wenglund]

Several months back I looked through the Voynich Manuscript to see how well its characters matched the characters in the Joseph Smith Egyptian Papers (JSEP). At a cursory glance it appeared to me that there wasn't much of a match at all--not that i expected that there would be.

However, what I did find interesting in the linked article above, is that the language of the manuscript appears to have been made up by it's author---borrowing sounds from various languages, and that it may have been a kind of shorthand (conveying whole concepts in single letters or words), and that while it may not have been intended as such, it is viewed as cryptographic or a cipher. The seemingly condensed nature of the language may be why it has been so resistant for centuries to be "broken" by some of the most sophisticated code cracking techniques and elite cryptographers.

This all comports well with what I have come to understand about the JSEP, particularly the Egyptian Alphabet and the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[cinepro]

Here's a look at the Voynich manuscript on a blog devoted to "Cipher Mysteries"

Voynich Manuscript

And the same blog's take on the Anthon Transcript.

[William Schryver]

Several months back I looked through the Voynich Manuscript to see how well its characters matched the characters in the Joseph Smith Egyptian Papers (JSEP). At a cursory glance it appeared to me that there wasn't much of a match at all--not that i expected that there would be.

However, what I did find interesting in the linked article above, is that the language of the manuscript appears to have been made up by it's author---borrowing sounds from various languages, and that it may have been a kind of shorthand (conveying whole concepts in single letters or words), and that while it may not have been intended as such, it is viewed as cryptographic or a cipher. The seemingly condensed nature of the language may be why it has been so resistant for centuries to be "broken" by some of the most sophisticated code cracking techniques and elite cryptographers.

This all comports well with what I have come to understand about the JSEP, particularly the Egyptian Alphabet and the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Another extremely complicating factor vis-a-vis William Phelps's Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language (as I mentioned a few weeks back) is that he actually attempts to describe its methodology, but then the GAEL itself doesn't adhere to that methodology (to the extent one can even make sense of the methodology that Phelps describes!)

Anyone interested is welcome to read my transcriptions of the methodology pages from the GAEL:

GAEL Methodology - 1st Degree

GAEL Methodology - 2nd Degree

GAEL Methodology - 5th Degree

As I have noted many times, the EA/GAEL is an essentially incoherent document. Rather than presenting the aspect of a refined idea, it appears to be a speculative notion that was commenced and then abandoned after just a few weeks of experimentation. As such it is little more than an elaborate doodle.

Nevertheless, I think it would be very interesting to have a professional cryptographer examine the EA/GAEL--just to get his impressions.

I'm confident that if you handed a cryptographer the two pages of the Egyptian Counting manuscript, he would tell you it appears to be a substitution cipher key.

[The Nehor]

Sorry, this has already been solved. He is too late:

[Robert F. Smith]

As to applying it to the Anthon Transcript, I believe that would be nearly impossible. A valid theory, and I believe probable, is that it includes symbols and words from multiple parts of the plates and is not one contiguous passage. You can't crack a language with a single sentence and no clues.

A "single sentence and no clues"? CFR

Actually there is certainly much more than a single sentence, and there are plenty of clues. Indeed, a key to decipherment of the AT was discovered simultaneously a few years ago by two men, one on the East Coast (RLDS) and one on the West Coast (LDS) -- completely oblivious to the work of the other. Neither can read ancient languages, but both performed an internal structural analysis which proves that the Transcript is anything but a hodgepodge of characters from scattered places on the plates. They each showed as well that the lines of small characters were not created by chance and were certainly to be taken separately from the lines of larger characters. I was frankly astonished to see what they had managed to do.

GIven this development, I have contemplated approaching Professor Knight the next time I am in L.A. to see whether he (and his associates at MIT) can throw some light on the AT.

[Matthew J. Tandy]

A "single sentence and no clues"? CFR

Robert,

I will have to get back to you on that. I am basing my statement off of several analysis I saw a few years back. Tracking them down will take some time.

I have seen work from a few people who claimed to have cracked some or all of it. I however was not impressed with their methodology. This is not to say an actual decoding group could not shed at least some light on it, but if it is in fact not a single full passage, such effort becomes much more complicated, and probably impossible. Even allowing the entirety to be a single passage, it is unlikely we could decipher such a language with only that as the reference. We have many languages with more than a paragraph for which we know not the interpretation.

[Robert F. Smith]

Robert,

I will have to get back to you on that. I am basing my statement off of several analysis I saw a few years back. Tracking them down will take some time.

I have seen work from a few people who claimed to have cracked some or all of it. I however was not impressed with their methodology. This is not to say an actual decoding group could not shed at least some light on it, but if it is in fact not a single full passage, such effort becomes much more complicated, and probably impossible. Even allowing the entirety to be a single passage, it is unlikely we could decipher such a language with only that as the reference. We have many languages with more than a paragraph for which we know not the interpretation.

I agree that those who have claimed to decipher the AT have largely failed, although the late Egyptologist W. C. Hayes (Metropolitan Museum of Art) actually used his knowledge of Egyptian hieratic to begin deciphering the first line of the AT for the benefit of then Columbia Univ. grad student Stanley B. Kimball, and he allowed Kimball to keep the notes with hieroglyphic transcription and translation (I have a copy). In addition, the late Egyptologist Richard Parker told Richard Bushman that the AT was indeed some sort of Egyptian writing, but in an unknown language -- perhaps Meroitic.

However, what the RLDS guy on the East Coast (Blair Bryant), and the retired CES LDS guy on the West Coast (Wade Brown) were able to show in 2001, was that the structure of the AT is coherent and can be broken into discrete phrasing -- which is an important step in decipherment of such a short cipher.

[wenglund]

I agree that those who have claimed to decipher the AT have largely failed, although the late Egyptologist W. C. Hayes (Metropolitan Museum of Art) actually used his knowledge of Egyptian hieratic to begin deciphering the first line of the AT for the benefit of then Columbia Univ. grad student Stanley B. Kimball, and he allowed Kimball to keep the notes with hieroglyphic transcription and translation (I have a copy). In addition, the late Egyptologist Richard Parker told Richard Bushman that the AT was indeed some sort of Egyptian writing, but in an unknown language -- perhaps Meroitic.

However, what the RLDS guy on the East Coast (Blair Bryant), and the retired CES LDS guy on the West Coast (Wade Brown) were able to show in 2001, was that the structure of the AT is coherent and can be broken into discrete phrasing -- which is an important step in decipherment of such a short cipher.

Is any of this research (Hayes, Bryant, Brown) available online?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[cinepro]

Actually there is certainly much more than a single sentence, and there are plenty of clues.

It's too bad Joseph Smith didn't just take an English section of the Book of Mormon and then place the reformed egyptian "caractors" alongside in the margins to show us how the translation worked.

At least that way it would be clear what it was, and there would be no confusion over what each caractor was supposed to mean.

Edited December 7, 2011 by cinepro

[William Schryver]

It's too bad Joseph Smith didn't just take an English section of the Book of Mormon and then place the reformed egyptian "caractors" alongside in the margins to show us how the translation worked.

At least that way it would be clear what it was, and there would be no confusion over what each caractor was supposed to mean.

It is virtually certain that, even had he desired to do that, he could not have. The historical and manuscript evidence is overwhelming on this point: Joseph Smith did not know how to translate the characters on the plates. He was merely the medium through which the translation was delivered.

[Robert F. Smith]

Is any of this research (Hayes, Bryant, Brown) available online?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

The Hayes notes are only held privately. C. Wade Brown privately published a book, First Page of the Golden Plates (Orem, Utah: Granite Publ., 2001), and you might look for a copy online. Blair B. Bryant has a website at http://web.archive.org/web/20041130215431/http://www.geocities.com/bbbinil/ , which is an archive of his old website (don't know whether he has a current one).

[Robert F. Smith]

It is virtually certain that, even had he desired to do that, he could not have. The historical and manuscript evidence is overwhelming on this point: Joseph Smith did not know how to translate the characters on the plates. He was merely the medium through which the translation was delivered.

It is possible that Joseph copied off some characters and translated them via the spectacles accompanying the plates, and that he gave both copies to Martin Harris to take to the learned. However, if so, they have not yet turned up. Might have made a nice "Rosetta Stone" as it were.