09-01-2008, 01:14 AM
Shlama (peace) to you Mesnick, and welcome to the forum. I sincerely hope you enjoy dialoguing with us and offering your opinion in return.
I have looked very carefully at many of these pages, and I am more sure about what it is not than what it is, but I will give you my opinion on both scores.
First, sorry to disappoint you, but this is not related in any way that I can see to any known Aramaic, or for that matter Semitic, alphabet or script style. The text appears to be a re-telling of the Gospels but the letters do not correspond to any Greek or Latin styles that I am aware of. Granted though my specialty is not with Greek. Others here may be more qualified than I on that score. But Aramaic? I highly doubt it. There are passing similarities it seems to a few Turkish tendencies, and other parts remind me of Cyrilic (Russian). Given the location it was found, it is not hard to figure out where this "inspiration" comes from.
Okay, so that's what it is NOT. So what is it? As I see it, there are two possibilities.
Scenario #1: It's just a joke or hoax, done by someone who wanted to mish-mosh ancient and modern alphabetic styles and have nice folks like yourself wondering what the heck is going on.
Scenario #2: It is a cipher or letter for letter replacement schema of a more common language like Greek or some Slavic dialect. Again, not my specialty there. But what I can say is that it most reminds me of a Civil War replacement code used by the Confederacy. I saw it in a book when I was growing up and just liked writing in it, but really cracking it was beyond easy if you knew how. When I say it most reminds me of this I do not mean stylistically or that the letters resemble the code. I mean instead that the writing approach as far as I can determine--and I could be wrong--reminds me of that technique.
Of course it is possible BOTH scenarios could be true. The mish-mosh is the code and vice versa. If any of the other Aramaicists here disagree with me particularly about it not being Semitic based I am open to hearing that out and why, especially from Paul Younan. If you want to know what it MOST resembles on the Semitic side, even though to my mind it is not suffficient to posit a link, I would say Serto. But I am willing to bet this writer never saw a Serto letter in his life.
As I said, sorry if this disappoints you, but a very interesting question!
Shlama w'burkate (peace and blessings)
Andrew Gabriel Roth
I have looked very carefully at many of these pages, and I am more sure about what it is not than what it is, but I will give you my opinion on both scores.
First, sorry to disappoint you, but this is not related in any way that I can see to any known Aramaic, or for that matter Semitic, alphabet or script style. The text appears to be a re-telling of the Gospels but the letters do not correspond to any Greek or Latin styles that I am aware of. Granted though my specialty is not with Greek. Others here may be more qualified than I on that score. But Aramaic? I highly doubt it. There are passing similarities it seems to a few Turkish tendencies, and other parts remind me of Cyrilic (Russian). Given the location it was found, it is not hard to figure out where this "inspiration" comes from.
Okay, so that's what it is NOT. So what is it? As I see it, there are two possibilities.
Scenario #1: It's just a joke or hoax, done by someone who wanted to mish-mosh ancient and modern alphabetic styles and have nice folks like yourself wondering what the heck is going on.
Scenario #2: It is a cipher or letter for letter replacement schema of a more common language like Greek or some Slavic dialect. Again, not my specialty there. But what I can say is that it most reminds me of a Civil War replacement code used by the Confederacy. I saw it in a book when I was growing up and just liked writing in it, but really cracking it was beyond easy if you knew how. When I say it most reminds me of this I do not mean stylistically or that the letters resemble the code. I mean instead that the writing approach as far as I can determine--and I could be wrong--reminds me of that technique.
Of course it is possible BOTH scenarios could be true. The mish-mosh is the code and vice versa. If any of the other Aramaicists here disagree with me particularly about it not being Semitic based I am open to hearing that out and why, especially from Paul Younan. If you want to know what it MOST resembles on the Semitic side, even though to my mind it is not suffficient to posit a link, I would say Serto. But I am willing to bet this writer never saw a Serto letter in his life.
As I said, sorry if this disappoints you, but a very interesting question!
Shlama w'burkate (peace and blessings)
Andrew Gabriel Roth