Thursday, December 11, 2014

The Three Tablets

Page 14 shows three tablets with writing on them, and two figures standing among them.


Delia Huegel takes this to be Moses, Aaron, and the tables of the law, but she notes the odd fact that there are three tables instead of two.

The text on the second and third tablets begins with the formulae I I CQ IGV and I I I CQ IGV, which I expect probably means something like "the second X" and "the third X". Since the first tablet has Q1C in the place of the number "one", I expect Q1C probably represents a word that is semantically equivalent to "first", but etymologically unrelated to the number "one" (e.g. English first, Latin primus, etc.)

Since the tables are numbered one, two and three, I don't think they represent the tables of the law, but rather a set of three things or ideas. The obvious candidate is the holy trinity.

The usual order of the three persons (or hypostases) of the trinity are established in Matthew 28:19 as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, in which case the third tablet would represent the Holy Spirit.

The text of the third tablet contains the glyph RT, which I have previously read as "saint". In a number of languages, the word for "saint" is just a nominal form of the adjective "holy", as it is in Latin: Spiritus Sanctus. This suggests that the word either before or after RT on the third tablet might be "spirit", forming the phrase "holy spirit".

The glyphs of the first and third tablets could be nearly the same, though in a different order, up until the final phrase:

First: Q1C CQ IGV [?] K1A1A I I RAA O X2 O C I RAA C F O R CO [?]
Third: I I I CQ IGV O IGDA O O X2 O K1A1A I I RAA C I RAA RT CUNSAR I IX O O

The word C.F.O.R.CO is interesting because one of my earlier algorithms (about which I did not write) identified it as a likely alphabetic word. Is it possible to read C.F.O.R.CO as "father", and RT CUNSAR.I.IX.O.O as "holy spirit"? If so, how do I test that reading?

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Heresy? Apocryphy?

I've been running a bunch of simulations to see how the Rohonc data match against alphabetic data from Old Hungarian, Old Albanian, Latin and Old Church Slavonic (in Glagolitic and Cyrillic). My plan was to take predictions based on this data and test them against the names of the evangelists, to see which prediction best explained those names.

There are a number of scenarios where D could be read as t, so my reading of XDC.D as Matthew could work (e.g. as ma-t, mat-t or something similar). However, nothing in my simulations seems to let me read CO.IH.D as Luke.

I agonized over this for a while, then went back to the page where I tried to relate scriptural references to images. I realized that the only strong evidence for reading CO.IH.D as Luke was the triple scriptural reference, and that reading was based on the assumption that the references were to canonical gospels. But if that assumption was wrong, then there was really very little reason to read CO.IH.D as Luke.

Indeed, an image accompanying a reference to CO.IH.D chapter 6 is problematic, since it features an angel (or perhaps a winged Christ) appearing to a man lying on the ground, and I could not match that to anything in the sixth chapter of Luke.

So what would it mean if CO.IH.D is not Luke?

Looking at the images corresponding to CO.IH.D, each one involves a figure with a striped turban and a beard, twice with wings, usually with one other person, though sometimes alone outside a city. Chronologically (according to chapter) the images can be arranged as follows:

Chapter 1

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 11

Chapter 17

Elsewhere (e.g. in the image of Jesus entering Jerusalem) the figure with the striped turban and pointed beard is Christ, so whatever CO.IH.D is, it would seem to contain a gospel-like narrative of the life or ministry of Christ.

There are any number of candidates among known apocrypha, but I suppose I should start with anything that mentions angels in the first and sixth chapters, or else mentions Christ appearing in the form of an angel.