The Cipher Theory

[Cobalt-70]

Is it really possible that Graham doesn't understand that, to the extent the Egyptian Counting system is used in the GAEL, it confirms my thesis of its function as a translation key?

Unfortunately for the strength of my thesis, the additional examples Graham's provides are not very persuasive ones. If they had been, I would have cited them myself!

Again, this only confirms your thesis if you presume your thesis in the first place. You claim that the Egyptian Counting document is a cipher key because it was used as a cipher key in the GAEL. But presuming that the GAEL was a cipher key doesn't get you anywhere. Moreover, in a previous post, you admitted that the GAEL itself is an impractical and impossible cipher key. But the EC document could only have been used for enciphering if the GAEL was also intended for enciphering secret English texts.

Actually, even if you presume your thesis, the correspondence between the EC and GAEL still disproves that the EC and GAEL were intended as cipher keys, given that only the sounds for the EC are used in the GAEL, not the symbols. If the EC had actually been used to encipher parts of the GAEL, you would see EC symbols in the left-hand column of the GAEL, in combination with other symbols to the encode number-containing text from the right-hand column of the GAEL. We don't see that. Rather, the only influence of the sounds of the EC is on the sounds of the GAEL. That tells you, right there, that the EC was not intended as a cipher key. What cipher key encodes things by one algorithm for written communication, and by a separate algorithm for verbal communication of the same message?

Edited December 9, 2011 by Cobalt-70

[Cobalt-70]

That is a non sequitur too. But they were not "creating" a new Egyptian language. They were translating what they understood to be Egyptian language spoken by the ancient Egyptians. You and Will are going off the reservation by digging into 19th century Encyclopedias to find out how many kinds of Egyptian were written about, and then leaping to the conclusion that Phelps and Smith were knowledgable on such things. This is a floundering theory based on nothing solid. It is one a mass of speculative theories that feed off each other but none of which can be substantiates with any degree of certainty. In the meantime, there is still the plethora of evidence weighing against Will's cipher theory, which he refuses to address.

...

Why even speculate about this when there is absolutely no evidence that he had more than one kind of "Egyptian" in mind? Is this really how WIlliam plans to dodge this bullet found in the Facsimile explanations? By saying he must have had a few dozen kinds of Egyptian in mind, simply because some Brittanica article spoke about them in the 1800's, therefore he could be talking about something else? Please tell me this is his argument.

William still owes the Board some evidence that the Britannica article he cited was available in the U.S. before that encyclopedia's first U.S. publication in 1875, or a response to the fact that the dominant American encyclopedia during that time claimed that the Egyptians used right-to-left Arabic numerals. (Plus an explanation for why Smith called items 11 in Facsimile 2 "numbers.") Otherwise, I think the claim that Smith and Phelps actually knew how represent numbers using real Egyptian script is pretty much put to rest.

Edited December 9, 2011 by Cobalt-70

[Cobalt-70]

To show that you are the one talking nonsense, I will post this encrypted message using EC/EA/GAEL phonemes. I suspect that Will and George Miller can understand it if no one else can (hopefully they remember to read from right to left):

es eh beth eh zip zi veh iota

Here is another ciphered message:

Floeese toan oan au-gue psa-tah-veh iota

(Note: For Kevin's benefit, please realize that I used the EC/EA/GAEL to encipher the coded message above)

As an example of the absurdity of this exercise as it relates to the GAEL, I'll do you one better: Here is my cipher key:

Symbol | sound | meaning

A ........| "ay" .......| {insert the entire contents of the Encyclopedia Britannica here}

And here is my coded message to you: "A."

Does it matter that my cipher key can only be used to encode the Encyclopedia Britannica? Does it matter that the code doesn't really help me because it would have been much easier, and equally secure, from a cryptological perspective, for me to have just sent you a copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica? That's a pretty useless cipher. But it is not that much more useless than the GAEL, if the GAEL were used as a cipher key. If you are going to go through the trouble to send them the GAEL to begin with, what use is it to subsequently send them an encoded version of the esoteric information in the left column of that same document?

Edited December 9, 2011 by Cobalt-70

[Cobalt-70]

To show that you are the one talking nonsense, I will post this encrypted message using EC/EA/GAEL phonemes. I suspect that Will and George Miller can understand it if no one else can (hopefully they remember to read from right to left):

es eh beth eh zip zi veh iota

Here is another ciphered message:

Floeese toan oan au-gue psa-tah-veh iota

So what is there to distinguish what you did, from the possibility that you are just speaking Egyptian (as Smith and Phelps imagined it) and we are given the task of translating your speech into English?

[Cobalt-70]

The syllogism I compassionately reconstructed makes a reasonable case that the EA/GAEL was meant to encipher/decipher new material and not old texts, or if you prefer, it was meant to be a "translation key" for future texts and not ancient material like the papyri. Do you now understand?

But I thought you agreed with William's hypothesis that the EA/GAEL was based on a "pre-existing" text of the Book of Abraham and the D&C. If the Book of Abraham and D&C were already in existence, and the EA/GAEL was based on them, then what "future text" are you talking about?

Edited December 9, 2011 by Cobalt-70

[Cobalt-70]

Just for fun, and to reinforce my earlier point, I have used the EA/GAEL to encipher a new coded message from English into "Egyptian," but this time I will use characters instead of sounds. See if you can figure out the message (I bet Chris Smith can):

(Remember to read from right to left)

Again, why are we not just translating Egyptian here (as Smith and Phelps understood it)?

[Cobalt-70]

It would be one thing to claim a misunderstanding if this were still August 2010; if it were still in the days and weeks following my original presentation. But it's almost 2012, and I have clarified my arguments so many times in the past year and a half that there is, in my judgment, no longer any reason for misunderstanding to persist—except to prop up the strawman that Graham and others erected back in August 2010.

The problem is that, possibly due to the nature of live presentations, your FAIR presentation was heavy on bold claims, but light on specific evidence to back it up, and absent any description of anything other than an intuitive methodology. You have clarified your arguments, but not your evidence or your methodology. Yet your bold claims demand peer review. I understand that you are writing a book, and that presumably this book will contain a more academic treatment of the subject matter. But in the meantime, there is an evidence vacuum.

[wenglund]

if you had typed a phrase in russian or german or chinese, i would be in the same boat, provided that i didn't use translation software. the fact that i don't know for sure what you intend to say is not due to the fact that you have used a cipher as opposed to a foreign language.

Essentially, a cipher is a foreign language--i.e. people speaking back and forth in a way that keeps secret from those who don't know the language.

However, I don't want to get too hung up on cryptography. The primary issue I was addressing was the ability to use the EA/GAEL to produce new text--i.e. the EA/GEAL can, in fact, and contrary to what Kevin and Cobalt-71 suggest, be used to encipher English into "Egyptian", including large amounts of English text using a few "Egyptian" characters.

My next step is to demonstrate how much easier it was for me to use the EA/GAEL to encipher new text than it will be for Kevin and Cobalt-71 and other opponents to decipher old papyri text using the same.

There is a key point imbedded in these object lessons.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[wenglund]

so "zip zi veh iota" is not different from "zip zi iota veh"?

The meaning of "veh" isn't different. However, by changing the placement in the sentence may change what "veh" is in reference to.

...or if so, does that mean that "veh" or "five" is interacting with the words around it in different ways?

Possibly. It depends.

i ask because the latter is directly from the GAEL, and is translated as "i see five women". does yours mean something different?

Close. Mine means: "See five virgin daughters..."

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited December 9, 2011 by wenglund

[Xander]

OH, MY!

• Almost two full years spent intensely analyzing the EC/EA/GAEL manuscripts, often rising at 5:00 am on weekdays and working all day Saturdays transcribing, organizing, and preparing extensive tables, expending hours in Photoshop preparing and organizing images, etc.: HARD WORK!
  `
  
• Going to the awful trouble of occasionally going on MDDB in an often futile attempt to disabuse the public mind of the huge body of disinformation and misinformation and outright deceptions practiced by Mormon critics vis-a-vis the Kirtland Egyptian Papers: EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING!
  `
  
• Watching Kevin Graham make three of his trademark bloated posts wherein he obliviously makes a valiant (albeit, unfortunately, largely ineffective ) effort to argue IN FAVOR of my thesis: PRICELESS!
  

I'll elaborate tomorrow ...

As I suspected, yet another bluff.

I'm still waiting William. We're all still waiting for you to explain your complete shift in argument since your presentation and how it isn't just a semantic game you're playing. You now want to say you've argued "translation key" all along, but you don't want to address the fact that this is NOT what you argued in your presentation. The text version of your presentation which I downloaded months ago contains "cipher" or its variants 105 times. "Encipher" three times and "decipher" twelve times. S for wade to say we're the ones "hung up" on the word is pretty darn hilarious. Are we witnesses yet another Schryver theory being abandoned by ... Schryver? The same way you abandoned so many other theories which you had previously presented in dogmatic form and described as "conclusive, compelling, evidence abundant," etc? This is your only consistent behavior; everything you theorize is proven in your mind... until you abandon it.

Back too the point. The concept of "translation key" appears only once in your paper, and it is when you say this is only what they probably would have called it, even though what they were really DOING was ENCIPHERING.

You need to come to grips with the fact that this is what you said, and that I am addressing what you argued in your presentation.

[Minos]

<sigh>

I am appreciative of the fact that, when it comes right down to it, very few people are in a position to judge whether or not there is any merit to the huge rhetorical mass of which "Xander's" posts are constituted. I mean, at first glance, it kind of looks like he knows what he's talking about … right?

Address the issues instead of the poster. Don't be the first to throw the gauntlet in a thread where everyone else is making an effort to put past encounters behind.

[wenglund]

As an example of the absurdity of this exercise as it relates to the GAEL, I'll do you one better: Here is my cipher key:

Symbol | sound | meaning

A ........| "ay" .......| {insert the entire contents of the Encyclopedia Britannica here}

And here is my coded message to you: "A."

Does it matter that my cipher key can only be used to encode the Encyclopedia Britannica? Does it matter that the code doesn't really help me because it would have been much easier, and equally secure, from a cryptological perspective, for me to have just sent you a copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica? That's a pretty useless cipher. But it is not that much more useless than the GAEL, if the GAEL were used as a cipher key. If you are going to go through the trouble to send them the GAEL to begin with, what use is it to subsequently send them an encoded version of the esoteric information in the left column of that same document?

I really don't know how you could have missed the point of the object lessons any more than you evidently have, unless you were trying really really hard to do so. Is that what is happening here? Are you not interested in having a meaningful exchange? Do you simply wish to be contrary? I mean I practically spelled out the underlining principle multiple times in my previous posts. What will it take for you to get it--besides actually attempting the exercise, and if you fail, explain why?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[wenglund]

So what is there to distinguish what you did, from the possibility that you are just speaking Egyptian (as Smith and Phelps imagined it) and we are given the task of translating your speech into English?

That will become apparent in the follow-up exercise. But, I will wait until you finish this exercise. Please let me know when you have.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[wenglund]

But I thought you agreed with William's hypothesis that the EA/GAEL was based on a "pre-existing" text of the Book of Abraham and the D&C. If the Book of Abraham and D&C were already in existence, and the EA/GAEL was based on them, then what "future text" are you talking about?

I will take that as a tacit, no, you do not yet understand. Oh well...

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[wenglund]

Again, why are we not just translating Egyptian here (as Smith and Phelps understood it)?

Again, just do the exercise and eventually you will learn the answer to your question.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[Peppermint Patty]

On another note, I was alerted to the latest ritualistic round of Schryver-bashing going on in The Great and Spacious Trailer Park©.

At any rate, they are, as is their wont, consumed in an orgy of mockery, ridicule, and blood-thristy anticipation on account of my having mentioned that I planned to post a partial extract from my forthcoming book on the Kirtland Egyptian Alphabet, Grammar, and Counting manuscripts. Therefore, I have decided that I will deprive them of their desires—at least for the time being.

Will,

I hope you reconsider. Many people here would love to read your chapter. FWIW, I don't think you should let The Great and Spacious Trailer Park determine your actions on this board.

Thanks, and God bless.

[wenglund]

I'm still waiting William. We're all still waiting for you to explain your complete shift in argument since your presentation and how it isn't just a semantic game you're playing. You now want to say you've argued "translation key" all along, but you don't want to address the fact that this is NOT what you argued in your presentation.

Stop waiting and start reading the syllogism I posted earlier in the thread and have repeatedly requested your response. Once you do so, and once you identify if there are any points with which you may disagree, then I will walk you step by step through the relevant portion of Wills presentation (you have already publicly agreed with the first two points) in hopes that you finally see that there hasn't been any backing away, just you failing to correctly understand what was said. I look forward to your response.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[floatingboy]

The meaning of "veh" isn't different. However, by changing the placement in the sentence may change what "veh" is in reference to.

Close. Mine means: "See five virgin daughters..."

then i think it should be "zip zi iota veh", according to the other example in the GAEL. but i'm not trying to quibble over that discrepancy. but please do tell me how this is different from my example in spanish. is it just the fact that this was a language only known to the few people that were involved in the project (and according to JS, known to the egyptians themselves, once upon a time)? i promise you i'm not being obtuse. i really, really can't see the difference. please bear with me.

Edited December 9, 2011 by floatingboy

[wenglund]

then i think it should be "zip zi iota veh", according to the other example in the GAEL. but i'm not trying to quibble over that discrepancy. but please do tell me how this is different from my example in spanish. is it just the fact that this was a language only known to the few people that were involved in the project (and according to JS, known to the egyptians themselves, once upon a time)? i promise you i'm not being obtuse. i really, really can't see the difference. please bear with me.

Yes, that is the difference (again, don't get too hung up on the cryptography)...well, that and I was using the EA/GAEL rather than Spanish dictionary, and it was the EA/GAEL that Kevin and Cobalt-71 said couldn't be used to encipher new text. You and I just demonstrated, in part, that it can be used in that way. I appreciate it.

Does this make sense now?

By the way, the full text of the first line reads: "See five virgin daughters in residence in Egypt."

The second encipher text reads: "See 57 persons on earth, beneath the moon."

Have you figured out the meaning of the three characters?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited December 9, 2011 by wenglund

[floatingboy]

you say tomato, i say tomahto. you say encipher, i say... say it in another language. that's fine, i suppose. maybe we could learn elvish and encipher some english into that. i listen to this band from iceland that created their own language to sing their songs in. er, sorry, they enciphered the text of the songs.

i'm just joshin' with you. no, i haven't figured out the meaning of the three characters. i don't have access to the actual GAEL yet. i just ordered marquardt's book, though.

[wenglund]

i'm just joshin' with you.

no, i haven't figured out the meaning of the three characters. i don't have access to the actual GAEL yet. i just ordered marquardt's book, though.

I hope you didn't order it just to figure out the three characters. That would make me feel bad. Anyway, I will make it easy on you. When you get Marquardt's book, turn to page 154.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[Xander]

I thought you also mentioned that that is probably why the abandoned it and because it did not work.

Except they didn't abandon it. Not finishing something isn't the same thing as abandoning it. Eight years later Joseph Smith recorded in his journal that he wanted to return to the project. These are important little details which he doesn't share with his audience.

I'm amazed that he chooses to continue with the obfuscation over what he argued and is arguing, constantly trying to blame everyone else for the fact that he is moving back and forth. When asked specific questions by folks like me and Cobalt, he snips our questions and answers some other question that was never asked. He then cites a portion of his presentation, suggesting it is something I have ignored, when in fact I provided that exact same citation in my opening argument.

There is no straw man here on my part. I quote him word for word in his presentation and the fact is the cipher claim was a dominant theme throughout his entire presentation and he stated explicitly that it was the "meaning and purpose" of the Counting document, as well as the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language. Now he says he doesn't want to use the cipher description at all, as if "translation key" works just the same.

Well, it doesn't. Translation keys can go two ways, but enciphering goes only one way. It is important to know the difference between enciphering and deciphering, and he explicitly argued that they were not deciphering (translating) anything. All of the evidence for translation, he believes goes in one direction only. From text to symbol (enciphering) not from symbol to text (deciphering). Yet, he is unable to establish trajectory of what he now chooses to call "translation keys." Since he still maintains that it went only one way for enciphering, he is still arguing for a cipher. It is really that simple. But just last week he told us that he didn't believe they were trying to create a cipher at all and now he says he wants to move away from using the word altogether.

Well, why move away from calling it a cipher when that is precisely what he argued was the "meaning and purpose" of the thing?

He said he was going to refute all our arguments by presenting evidence from his upcoming book, but then decided against it after reading something on another forum. Well, I have no idea what he is talking about, since no recent threads on that forum have been started to discuss anything he has said or done. It appears to me like a bad excuse for an obvious bluff. But to be perfectly honest, I don't think any critic thought for a second that Will was going to live up to his promise. He has been flashing us promises of upcoming publications for years. Two years ago he said he was slated to be published within a few months and that it was approved by the "First Presidency." Then he said Maxwell was going to publish him, but that was before they dropped him. And now we're told that a "respectable academic press" will be publishing his stuff next year.

Well, call me skeptical, but academic presses aren't generally in the habit of publishing unpublished amateurs on matters of religious apologetics. Though I suppose the Church granting him permission to publish these documents for the first time ever, is probably a persuasive incentive for whatever press he intends to use.

I'm going to let things cool down for a day or two as he appears to be coming closer to a meltdown. I'm beginning to wonder if that is by design, to force the hand of the moderation team, but either way I don't want him disappearing again. I plan to post my response to the second part of his presentation in due time, along with responses to a number of his claims I feel are without support.

Oh, and people have asked me for evidence that Will has changed his views after presenting them as established facts. While there are a number of examples I will just point to this thread because it is most recent. This was a refutation to his presentation he gave last year on behalf of John Gee. He presented it as though it were on solid ground, but on the other forum he retracted his support for it. I was just shocked that someone with his high level familiarity with these documents - as he often reminds us - would not have realized from the beginning that Gee's argument was completely untenable.

Then there was this example, in which I called him out for completely misrepresenting the translation manuscripts within the KEP. He has yet to respond or explain why someone with his exposure to high resolution scans of these documents still managed to completely misrepresent them in such a way. But this is just one of many examples I have provided, and I have yet to provide.

[Xander]

Quickly, and then I have to go buy an Xbox for the kids...

It doesn't appear that you are thinking this through very well. The EA/GAEL is the system for both enciphering and deciphering large amounts to text. It isn't one or the other.

Wade, you're completely misrepresenting what Will argued in his FAIR presentation. You now say that the "system" was doing both enciphering and deciphering, but that is contrary to what William argued. This is one of the reasons I haven't been responding to so many of your posts. You simply do not grasp the argument you're trying to defend. Will is the one who came up with this stuff so that is why I am trying to hold his feet to the fire here. Here are the excerpts from his presentation rejecting everything you just said:

You’ll recall that Champollion used the Greek text on the Rosetta Stone as a primer to decipher the corresponding hieroglyphic Egyptian text. I surmised that William Phelps, Joseph Smith, and Oliver Cowdery set out to do something similar with the previously received Book of Abraham text. However, as my studies of the Alphabet and Grammar materials progressed, I discovered evidence that effectively disproved such a notion.

I came to see that my initial hypothesis could not be true. To the extent this lexicon was built partially on texts that have no relationship to the Egyptian papyri; texts that were written not in Egyptian at all, but in English, then the Alphabet and Grammar simply could not have been intended as a tool to decipher the papyri. Indeed, the more I considered the evidence in this new light, the more I came to believe that these men were not focused on translating the Egyptian papyri at all!

As I pondered the ramifications of these facts, the conclusion became obvious to me: what we have here is a tool not intended to decipher Egyptian, but rather one intended to encipher the descriptive English text of the cardinal numbers!

The point is that deciphering Egyptian scrolls was not their purpose. The kind of translation they were attempting ran in the other direction.

Nowhere in Will's presentation does he agree with what you just said. He never once said they were "deciphering" anything. It seems like I'm the only person here who is actually responding to and dealing with William's original argument.

As such, the question before us isn't so much whether the EA/GAEL is meant to encipher or decipher large amounts of text (since it is a system to do both), but rather whether it was meant to encipher/decipher old or new material, past or future texts.

Well, then you couldn't possibly contradict Will's argument anymore than you just did.

The syllogism I compassionately reconstructed makes a reasonable case that the EA/GAEL was meant to encipher/decipher new material and not old texts, or if you prefer, it was meant to be a "translation key" for future texts and not ancient material like the papyri. Do you now understand?

I understand that you threw a few "Egyptian" sounding words derived from the GAEL to construct your own sentence. So what? Why don't you tell us just what kind of coherent sentence that you think you've successfully "enciphered"? How in the world does this establish your premise that all of this stuff was intended to encipher Joseph Smith's revelations? You avoided my example where an entire paragraph of text was derived from three syllables. It is simply ridiculous to think that these men thougt that they could "encipher" that amount of text into three syllables. But it makes perfect sense to think they believed they could "extract" that amount of text from three Egyptian syllables. We already know Joseph Smith thought this way, but you and Will keep avoiding this evidence.

Also, if you say all this work related only to Joseph Smith's known revelations, then please explain to me where I might find Joseph Smith's revelation concerning the "Princess Katmumin."

[William Schryver]

Wade, you're completely misrepresenting what Will argued in his FAIR presentation.

Oh, the irony!

You have insisted, from the very moment I finished my original articulation of my theses, to attempt to redefine what I said into something it was not. You have continued to do so for almost a year and a half now. Your apostate cohorts have adopted your misrepresentations, and now you've been permitted to export them to this board, where, fortunately, they have not been nearly as well received.

It doesn't seem to matter how many times and in how many ways I attempt to disabuse you and your friends of your false notions. You, like a great number of your apostate cohorts, are--above all other things--a skilled propagandist. That is what you do.

At any rate, I have satisfactorily defined on this thread my actual arguments. Those who are sincerely interested in this topic will be able to assess the merits of those arguments. I don't feel any need to add further to what I have already said on this thread. If you and your friends want to keep on debating against a strawman, be my guest.

Edited December 9, 2011 by William Schryver

[wenglund]

Wade, you're completely misrepresenting what Will argued in his FAIR presentation. You now say that the "system" was doing both enciphering and deciphering, but that is contrary to what William argued.

Please, Kevin, this is getting embarrassing for you and you don't even realize it. Do yourself a favor and go through compassionately reconstructed syllogism and let me know if or where you disagree. If need be, I will then walk you step-by-step through each point and show you where it aligns perfectly with what Will said in his FAIR presentation, just as I have done with the first two points you agreed with. If you keep resisting then I will have no choice but to conclude that you actually know you are wrong but you are incapable of facing up to it.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-