Talk:Book of Veles

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Contents 1 Autenticity 2 Image 3 The Book of Veles is too obvious a forgery 4 Comment from inside article 5 Buch/birch

[edit] Autenticity

How come "blue river" has any connection with "Ra"?

The river is, according to [[1]] Volga. Will correct it. --Belgrader 11:37, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

I will delete following from the text:

One of the reasons the authenticity of this book is doubted is the rather implausible content
of the book, telling, among other things, about a far-fetched East Slavic participation in the
Trojan war.

This would, in fact, support its authenticity: when you make a forgery you make it to be as plausible as possible.

Moreover, the "authentic" text of the book (not just its interpretation) keeps changing from
edition to edition.

This is unfortunate, but it doesn't have anything to do with authenticity of the original text.

IIRC, this refers to the fact that some fragments of the text appear completely in Mirolyubov's papers, but they are labelled as 'illegible' in the first printed version ( which is supposed to be based on his papers ). If the story of the book's discovery is true, since Mirolyubov had no access to the planks for over 10 years between 1941 and 1953, a unique version of text should exist, and no modifications are possible after 1941. This begs the question, what is really going on?

It uses a peculiar combination of Greek, German and even Devanagari symbols. No other
documents written using this or similar alphabet have ever been found.

This is completely untrue, as could be seen even from the image on this page. All letters except Б are virtually the same as in old Cyrillic texts. Nikola 09:51, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Many letters look the same in Greek, old Cyrillic and in the book of Veles. Some letters from Greek alphabet are quite similar Scandinavian/Germanic runes ( e.g. В, И, Л, Р, Х ). Letter O is probably the upside down Odal rune from Elder Futharc; С is also Germanic. Letters А, Б, Ю, Я have no clear origin, although A may have been influenced by the Swedish-Norwegian runic script. ( See http://www.kurgan.kiev.ua/alphab.htm ) Combining letters into a big ligature through use of a connecting line is common in Devanagari ( although having an influence of Devanagari on the alphabet of book of Veles would be anachronistic ). --Itinerant1 23:23, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Whatever you say, still the phrasing is wrong. You speak about similarities of alphabets. The phrase is built to imply that the Veles alphabet was a deliberate or unusual combination of various alphabets, while in fact it is just Cyrillic. This phase is an expamle of smoke and fog used by neopagans. Just as well, my keyboard right now emanates a combination of Greek, Cyrillic, Germanic and Coptic symbols, while I am typing in plain English (I hope :-). mikka (t) 20:28, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

That's all true. But the symbols generated by your keyboard can be also called "just English." Veles alphabet isn't "just" Cyrillic, it is not a 100% match to what we now call pre-11th century Cyrillic. It's as if your keyboard mixed 80% of English letters with Germanic and Greek symbols that are not present in Latin alphabet, and, in addition, tried to pretend that your text has Swedish roots by randomly using diacritical marks. --Itinerant1 04:53, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

As I said, a single different letter is Б. Given that old Cyrillic itself often had variations of letters (though curiously not this one), I think it could be called just Cyrillic. Nikola 06:06, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

There's more than one different letter, as I said before, for example - А, Б, О. --Itinerant1 10:27, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

А and О (or rather Uk) were written that way in old Cyrillic texts. For example of А, you can see http://members.tripod.com/cafehome/povkotromanica/tvrtko.htm (in signature at the bottom). Nikola 02:09, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

I have an idea where this "Devanagari" fantasy came from. It seems to be kind of game of telephone thing of miscommunication: the text on planks is written "below" the drawn lines, and it was commented in articles that this atyle resembles that of Devanagari writing. mikka (t) 20:48, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

I recall reading a rebutall of the book which went along these lines. Didn't found it a serious argument. Nikola 06:06, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Argument of what? I am speaking of devanagari traits. What devanagari characters do you see in veles-book? mikka (t) 21:19, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, it went along the lines of "...the alphabet looks like Cyrillic, is carved like runes, written below the lines as Devanagari..." Nikola 10:05, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Image

Caption correction: The image is not a photo of a plank. In Russian language it is referred to as "proris", i.e., a trace of contours of what was drawn on the plank (what is the English word?). I don't know how exactly it was done: directly from the plank (in the way you may have seen in the movie, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where he copies an image from the cover of a tomb onto a sheet of paper) or from a photo of the plank. Anyone who knows, please clarify. mikka (t) 20:28, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The Book of Veles is too obvious a forgery

The Russian Wikipedia article on the Book of Veles includes a long discussion on the authenticity of the book: no reputable linguist would doubt for a second the artificiality of the amateurish language constructed for it. Pseudo-proto-Slavic is the only appropriate name for this language. The theories advanced in the Book of Veles as to the urheimat of the Slavic peoples again contradict everything archaeologists and historians know about our history, yet correspond well with the "Eurasianist" theories popular in the 19th century (i.e. placing the homeland of the Slavs somewhere in India). The book is a forgery. Claiming otherwise - that is, claiming there's a single reputable historian, archaeologist, or linguist out there who argues for the authenticity of the Book of Veles - would be a blatant lie.

Lying about this to casual readers for the sole purpose of not offending a fringe group of neopagans would be a huge disservice to the entire wikipedia community. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 4.244.54.159 (talk • contribs) .

Yeah and Germans HATE the Book of Veles, thats for sure... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.179.43.202 (talk) 05:08, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Comment from inside article

Kurenkov's associations in the 1940s point out his propensity for academic forgery as well as highlight some key influences that appear in the Book of Veles. The Book of Veles claims* that the Russian people are not Slavs but are the true descendants of the lost tribes of Israel and that present-day Jews are really Turks. The Book goes on to claim that Christianity is an evil ideology created by the Jews to take over the world. These claims appear to be less out of place claims when examining the Book of Veles as a forgery by Kurenkov. The claims about the origins of the Russian people are extremely similar to claims made by British Israelism, as filtered through the later ideology of Christian Identity.

*The abovementioned claims are not attributed to the Book of Veles. I have read it, and there is no mention of Jews in it, and it does not state that the ancient Russians were not Slavs, nor does it portray them as descendants of Israel anywhere. This is most likely a mistake attributing an unrelated statement to the Book of Veles, and it must be corrected! Furthermore, the Book does not claim Christianity as a Jewish creation. It does, however, portray Christian Greeks (Byzantines) as evil. –A.G.--207.10.54.33 19:12, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Buch/birch

I see no point in including the hypothetical etymology of the word "book" here. At best, it belongs to the "book" article. `'Mїkka 22:34, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

As I said, I think that it is relevant because some texts about the book I read have pointed it out. It should be in book too of course, in greater detail.

If you can quote the discussion of the relevance, you are welcome. In the current form it looks quite outlandish to the article. I may conjecture that someone published some speculations kind of "the first books were made from wood hence the etimology of the word 'book/buch/bok', and since the book of veles is of wood it must be a real old one". But such musings are encyclopedic and may be quoted only if they are written by a reputable historian, not by some zealous neo-pagan. `'Mїkka 00:08, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

What is your opinion on "History of the book's discovery according to Mirolyubov" section? The user who added it subsequently removed it without explanation, it sounds plausible but there are no references... Nikola 23:29, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

The russian version of the article is quite well referenced, and the english text in question does not seem to contradict it. `'Mїkka 00:08, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

In any case, a cursory glance suggests the redundancy: there is the "authenticity" section. So I suspect some cleanup is due, but I am not in the mood to deal with this artricle now. `'Mїkka 00:16, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

From my talk page:

I removed the section because its base largely on an informal lecture by a researcher at my college. I was emailed afterwards by him asking me to remove the section because the research is as yet unpublished. I didn't realize that when I posted the section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kablamo2007 (talk • contribs) 23:00, 2 November 2007 (UTC)