User:Kanucape/Anagrammatic Dispersion

Anagrammatic Dispersion is a form of transpositional cryptography in which a name or word, frequently of central importance to a particular text, is omitted in its literal form, being encrypted instead through the expression of another word or phrase chosen to include the letters needed to spell out the missing name. The formative process is tantamount to dismembering the name, then selecting another word to be the vessel or container for preserving its sundered parts in disguise.

Some examples in English will illustrate how easy this is to do. We can readily:

In the first example, the name is concealed within another word, its letters retaining the original sequence.

In the second example, the name is concealed within, and partly backwards. This can make it harder to recognise.

The name itself is never lost; it is merely concealed from the eyes and ears of unsuspecting readers.

When it comes to decryption, in the general case the theoretically large number of possible reconstructions prevents straightforward recovery of a name dispersed in this way. The technique is therefore confined in practice to use with a limited repertoire of names or key words already familiar to the writer, and subsequently taught to attentive readers.

The writer may strive to assist the reader in deducing what names to watch out for. In one approach, the encryption may be weakened by repetition, stringing together several words each of which harbours the same hidden name. It is then straightforward for the reader to extract the common denominator. Disclosure may be further assisted by hints and riddles included in the narrative.

The technique is important for its widespread use in Christian source texts, including the canonical gospels. It proves to be the means by which the Gnostic authors disclose to the more attentive reader the otherwise secret 'identity' for key players in their narrative.

Anagram methods in early religious texts
There is good evidence for the use of cryptographic techniques in the societies of the ancient world. Intentionally cryptic features can be found in religious inscriptions on the tombs of the Egyptian pharaohs. A typical stratagem was to challenge the reader by substituting a different hieroglyph for the one that might be expected.

In the Hebrew bible, the intention to 'mix up' human language is overtly declared with the story in the Book of Genesis about the Tower of Babel, מִגְדָּל בָּבֶל, MGDL BBL = Migdal Babel. The story itself demonstrates how this may be done. The descendants of Noah plan to build a city, and a tower whose Head reaches up to Heaven. But their illicit enterprise is divinely obstructed. The scheme is brought to a halt with the 'mixing up' of language, so people no longer understood what was said. The tower is named בָּבֶל, BBL = Babel. But mixing up this name yields the Hebrew word בָּלַל, BLL = balal, which itself means ‘to confuse’ or ‘to mix up’. As with inscriptions on the Pharaoh tombs, additional meaning has been invoked by substituting a different character for one we first expected.

In the Greek Septuagint version of Genesis, the version familiar to the authors of the Greek New Testament [GNT], the tower is no longer named ‘Babel’. The adaptation has been made for us already, and the tower is named σύγχυσις ( confusion; mixing up ). In this version of the story we find what looks like a hint to the method now adopted for ‘mixing up’ the Bible’s own message. With preparations being made for construction, we are told (LXX Gn. 11:3):

In translation here to English, the form of this statement seems clumsy. But reading in the original Greek, it is hard not to notice that the word λίθον ( stone ) appears partly reversed within the word πλίνθο ς ( brick ). The implication seems to be this: by reading the letters out of sequence, brick may be readily 'turned' into stone.

This passage seems almost to declare the method of Anagrammatic Dispersion. The constituent parts of a selected word are found concealed in another word: the narrative then draws attention to the trick. It is of interest here that the human cognitive facility known as Typoglycemia allows the letter sequence of words to be re-ordered with remarkably little penalty for the reader. The practised eye can recover mixed-up words without much difficulty: it is inexperienced readers who may have trouble in seeing what is meant.

A writers who uses 'hidden words' is likely to create two classes of reader. Those able to 'see' what has been done will have access to the writer's own perspective. But those confined to a literal reading, in metaphorical terms the 'blind' and the 'deaf', may be led far astray on account of what they fail to realise.

The tower in the story is devised by men to give access to the realm of the gods. It may be understood as a metaphor for human religion. Its treatment in Genesis serves to remind us that spelling riddles are familiar to the biblical authors. Should they deploy 'hidden words', readers who fail to see what has been done may equally miss what is meant.

Saussure's anagrams
Swiss scholar Ferdinand de Saussure [1857-1913] is widely considered the founder of modern structural linguistics. At his death he left unpublished eight boxes of notes from the period 1906-1909. The notes record Saussure's work on the rôle played by anagrammatic dispersion in early Indo-European poetry. More than fifty years after his death they were published   by Jean Starobinski, who summarised in this way the practice that Sausssure had identified: The poem would take as its foundation a succession of theme-words and would, literally, construct its discourse on top of them by repeating their phonic substance. According to Kinser, Saussure believed that the first people to anagrammatise names in written texts were those from a priestly elite, like the vates of early Roman times. The vates were both religious leaders and law-givers, soothsayers and interpreters of oracles who delivered their message in versified form. The carmina which they composed were formulae of religion and law, and known as Saturnian verse. These were the writings which first drew Saussure's attention to the possibility that some Latin and other early poetry was deliberately anagrammatised. He suspected the writers of exercising unusual care in selecting the syllables incorporated into their poems, with the aim of conveying to the reader something more than the literal meaning.

Kinser remarks upon Saussure’s conviction that all the ancient Latin, Greek, and Hindu peoples used anagram techniques in their carmina, and that each possessed a priestly caste similar to the vates. Saussure's understanding, he says, may be summarised like this : ''Anagrams repeat names, in order to induce memorization of names. The memorization of names produces an association of sounds inside the brain so that they achieve a regularized relation to each other. This regularized relation or associative series fixes words in relation to each other, though not in relation to the world, so that anagrammatical practices tend to perpetuate themselves.'' The early vates, Saussure thought, wove names into their poetry out of superstition. He explains : One understands the superstitious idea which suggested that, in order for a prayer to be effective, it was necessary for the very syllables of the divine name to be indissolubly mixed in it: the god was, in a manner of speaking, riveted to the text.

Peter Wunderli writes: ''The question, however, arises of how we know which elements are liable to be anagrammatised. Saussure's answer was that it would normally be a name or a word of central importance for the text. Since the anagram technique appears to have its origins in religious literature, the most likely candidate is the name of god invoked by the poet, and strenuous efforts are made accordingly to discover his 'presence' in the text.''

But how, we may ask, does Saussure know which name will be anagrammatised in a particular text? To illustrate this, Saussure refers to a line from Homer’s Odyssey where Odysseus is telling King Alcinous of his encounter in Hades with the shade of Agamemnon, who is:

Saussure identified this line as "related in its syllables" to the name ἄγαμεμνὸν (Agamemnon). But although it may be expected from the context, there is no explicit mention of this name. Instead it lies concealed, dispersed over three successive words.

In summary, it seems that Saussure was the first in modern times to recognise the use of anagrammatic dispersion in religious tracts from the ancient world. To all who could read, these tracts conveyed their literal message. At the same time they depended upon anagrammatic dispersion to conceal, behind and within the literal text, something more, usually the name of a hero or god.

A trained reader might pick up and understand all that the text conveyed. But for those who did not know the rules, their ‘blindness’ might have serious consequences. What remained ‘hidden from their eyes’ might cause them to arrive at the wrong conclusion entirely.

Gnostic tradition of Greek scripture
The Gnostic tradition in Greek scripture has important roots in the Greek Septuagint version of Genesis, composed in Alexandria around 250BCE.

In the narrative at Gn.3:21-24, it is the 'lord god' who makes for Adam and his woman:

The Hebrew word for Satan (lit: adversary, enemy, or devil) is שָׂטָן, STN = Sitan. Transliterated into Greek, this becomes σιταν.

No sooner have these words been uttered than God himself observes:

From this the reader may learn to know that Adam was NOT deceived, a point confirmed in the NT letters.

It is the 'lord god' who now throws Adam out of Paradise, setting in place the cherubim along with:

Here is an example of deliberately weakening encryption by repetition, stringing together several words which harbour the same hidden name. For those who may read this, even today, it is hardly difficult to notice the name ὄφιν dispersed twice in the words for the flaming sword, then echoed again in the two words that follow.

This is the name for the ancient serpent, the fictional character introduced into the narrative at Gn.3:1 and identified in the later Book of Revelation as Satan, alias the Devil. It is he who deceives the woman Eve, in part on account of her own failure to recognise him. Yet Adam knows good from evil here. He can recognise the serpent concealed. He can see through the impostor's disguise. And the real point is this: you may do so too.

Now it is thematic in Jewish tradition that Cain, the firstborn of all creation, is the offspring from the union of Eve with the mythical serpent. The relationship of the serpent to Cain, confirmed by implication in the NT texts, is consequently that of father to son. So it may not come as a great surprise when we also find the name of Cain concealed. Indeed, in this passage at Gn.4:13-16 we hear Cain say for himself that he will "be hidden from your face":

At this point the 'lord god' replies with a cunning scheme whose thread will underpin the later narrative of the gospels:

No sooner is the 'sign' for Cain declared than it is demonstrated for the attentive reader. It is to be a 'sevenfold' sign; and with its declaration we do see the name of καιν (Cain) seven times. Those 'finding him' ( εὑρί σκ ον τ<font color="#f00000">α αὐτόν ) are bidden NOT to do away with him, a point the Catholic church has never understood.

Anagrammatic dispersion of key names is found throughout the subsequent Greek text of Genesis. And that is far from the end of the matter, for we find the same device exploited throughout the canonical gospels and NT letters. It was evidently a vital compositional tool for the authors of Greek scripture, allowing them to withhold key features of their intended message from those readers who couldn't see what had been done. Because of this, there are to this day two classes of reader. Those who can see (or hear) what has been hidden in the text may be grouped with the writers themselves. They are 'the ones in the know', the gnostics, able to discern correctly the identities intended for the key players in scripture's narrative.

In contrast, those unable to ‘see’ what has been done are considered by the writers to be the 'blind' and the 'deaf'. This group is likely to include everyone unwise enough to read the gospels in translation, whether to Latin or to a modern vernacular language. Lacking the full picture expressed in the original Greek text, it is probable that these persons will draw from scripture the wrong conclusions entirely. Not understanding the 'catch', they risk mistaking what has been set forth to be evil for what has been set forth to be good. Theirs is the literalist tradition which gave rise to the Catholic church. And even today it leads millions astray.

Anagram methods in the Greek New Testament
In the gospels we find again the mention of a city, and of stones (Lk.19:40-44).

Entering Jerusalem, riding upon a donkey, it is Jesus who says:

A city again, and stones again... as with the Tower of Babel.

These are stones which really do have the power to 'cry out'. They might even disclose the identity of Jesus... provided their message isn't 'hidden from your eyes'.

The rebuke continues:

It is instructive to notice what is to become of those whose eyesight lets them down.

Here again is the technique described by Saussure. As British writer JH Hatfield shows in his seminal book, it is standard in the gospels to conceal by such means the names of those who spell trouble. The following examples are reproduced with the publisher's permission from the book website:

Readers of the gospels who do not know what to look for are tantamount to blind. Unable to identify correctly the key players in the narrative, they risk being led badly astray. The same difficulty besets all who read in translation to another language, it being impossible for them to see what once was hidden in the Greek.

What pertains to ' the kingdom of the heavens' is declared in the gospels to be 'hidden'. And we hear Jesus himself assert: "What has been hidden will be found". A knowledge of what has been hidden, and how it has been done, is vital to those who would penetrate the ancient 'mystery'.

The Sign for Cain
Examples [5] and [6] above, in which the name of Cain (<font size="+1" color="#f00000"> καιν ) may be found embedded in other words, have their origin at LXX Gn.4:15-16. As explained above, it is there that the sevenfold 'sign' is first declared, and promptly demonstrated by having the name of Cain appear seven times in that brief passage.

Subsequent use of this 'sign' in Greek Septuagint (LXX) version of Genesis brings the total of instances to 490, the figure (seventy times seven) given at LXX Gn.4:24 (and at Mt.18:22). Then in the fourth gospel we find the 'sign' for Cain deployed 153 times, the figure given at Jn.21:11, as the count of 'big fish' successfully landed.

Of course Cain is a worker of the earth. As such he is a sower, familiar with all that pertains to dispersion. We should not be surprised that his own name is dispersed, nor by the sower parables that pervade the gospels.

In the passage at Mt.26:20-46 (the agony in the garden), the actions ascribed to Jesus match those already ascribed to Cain at Gn.4:3-5. After bringing an offering 'from the fruits of the earth', Jesus becomes sad and falls to his face. His behaviour is precisely that of Cain. But the disciples with Jesus, falling asleep, fail to notice what Jesus is doing... as indeed do many readers.

Now the gospel narrative provides for Judas to give away the identity of Jesus. This is to be done by means of a sign, and the sign is to be a kiss. Finally, at the point of their encounter, we find in the Greek text the words:

Judas identifies Jesus with a kiss. And so, with a single word, the writer of the gospel identifies Jesus for the more alert amongst his readers... using the secret 'sign'. For Jesus is Cain.

Roman governor Pontius Pilate, recognising him, seeks to let him go. But the priests and the crowd do not know the sign. Ignorant of Jesus' identity, they procure his crucifixion.

In this way Cain's own prediction is achieved. For in Genesis he has said : "I shall be hidden also from your face"

and: "Each one finding me shall kill me"

It is in the narrative of the gospels that Cain is killed, ironically at the hands of those who do not know the 'sign'.