Re: Latest on Hamptonese

[Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Dennis,

Hamptonese is indeed a fascinating puzzle!

I am a bit skeptical about the "African writing" connection. From the
material you have gathered, my impression is that Hampton would hardly
have had a chance to know about those writing systems; and, even if he
did, I doubt whether he would associate those "pagan" scripts with his
Christian beliefs.

    > Hampton repeated the syllables "nuh" and "tuh" a lot, but even
    > if you pull those out as nulls, it's still mumbo-jumbo ...

I can't see Hampton using devious tricks like nulls in his writing. In
my mind, he must have been more concerned with aesthetical or mystical
qualities of the script (including historical or logical consistency,
as he perceived them) than with secrecy per se.

He may also have invented the script to get around his apparent
difficulty with English spelling, and/or as a kind of shorthand. 

    > Here are corresponding positions on two tables of
    > the 10 Commandments:

These commandments seem awfully short. Could it be a syllabic script,
or a logographic system?

Anyway, the correspondence between the two lists argues strongly
against the "glossolalia" theory.  These symbols must have been
perfectly meaningful to James!

I tried pairing the two lists (in your original transcription
alphabet) according to the their similarity:

[ warning - longish lines, fixed-width font required ]


  page p10               page p9            Dennis's 
  ---------------------  -----------------  tentative
  J-num  line  text      line  text         "translation"
  -----  ----  --------  ----  -----------  --------------
    ---  top   viD       top   viD(?)     

      I  2     kUlh      2L    kUvh       
     II  3     wphDv     3L    wphxv      
    III  4     Thrjv     ---   ------     
     IV  5     Tfvyv     4L    fvyv       
      V  6     Thpvdo    5L    khpv{?}do  
     VI  7     Tkwddv    6L    cdddv{?}     I   no other gods      
    VII  8     Twwkvp    7L    wwkpv        II  no graven image    
   VIII  9     Tnrrrvp   8L    cnrrrvp      III no name of God in vain
     IX  10    chpkp     9L    whpkp        IV  remember the Sabbath 
    ---  ---   -----     10L   fvyv         V   honor father & mother

      X  11    wsodnp    2R    ksodny{?}p 
     XI  12    kjgvhs    3R    udvhs      
    XII  13    uJhos     4R    khos       
   XIII  14    Tjvso     5R    jvso       
    XIV  15    Tmolv     6R    molv         VI   no murder      
     XV  16    Tyygosv   7R    yyd{?}osv    VII  no adultery    
    XVI  17    Tnvgv     8R    Dvgv         VIII don't steal    
   XVII  18    Tgyonv    9R    KgcoYv       IX   no false witness
  XVIII  19    kgyol     10R   Ugccol       X    don't covet  
    XIX  20    khDvp     bot   UhDvp      

    ---- 21    viD       ---   ---          

I don't quite know what to make of the omission of commandment J-III
on p9, and the duplication of J-IV at the bottom of the left column.
Perhaps James made a mistake while writng p9, or he was still
searching for the "right" ordering and layout of the commandments.
Page p10 would then be a clean(er) copy of p9. Or perhaps J-III is the
"last commandment" that is mentioned elsewhere in his biography, and
it hadn't been revealed yet when he wrote p9?

I presume that your tentative matching of the Old Testament
commandments with James's list was based on the roman numerals in p9.
To me, those numerals seem merely decorative, and do not seem to match
the Hamptonese lines. However, your pairing has a curious feature: all
of the "negative" commandments, except one, start with a "T" in the p10
list (which is absent in p9).

Even if the pairing is not quite right, it may be that "T" stands
for "not", "don't", "thou shall not", etc.  That would fit with 
p9 being a working draft:

   p9               p10
   murder           don't murder
   other gods       no other gods
   stealing         don't steal
   
There are many possible variations on this idea, of course.
Another possibility is that Hamptonese evolved somewhat
between p9 and p10 (hm, where did I read that before? 8-)
   
Also, line <p10:9> (OT Commandment III) contains an "rrr" combination,
and your comments seem to say that "rrr" is rare elsewhere; and line
<p10:7> (OT Commandment I) has "ddd". Could it be that "rrr" = God,
"ddd" = gods?

The English on page 9 says "The Old and the New Covenant Recorded by
St. James". Considering the roman numerals on p10, it looks as if
James's "Commandments" list was some personal revelation, with 19
entries, presumably combining the Old Testament ten with nine new ones.

>From the New Testament he may have got "Love thy neighbor..." and "Do
unto others...". What could be the other seven? 

(From my Sunday School days I vaguely recall that the Catholic Church
has an extra seven Commandments, which I confess I don't remember any
more. But James came from a Baptist family; does the Baptist Church
have its seven Commandments, too? Or are his signing as "St. James"
and his references to the Virgin Mary hints of Catholic influence in
his beliefs?)

All the best, and all the good luck,

--stolfi