CRYPTIC B: FIRST TRANSLATIONS

Texts Unread for Two Thousand Years

Lee Sharks | NH-OS Project December 11, 2025

These are the first public translations of the Cryptic B corpus from Qumran Cave 4.

Earlier today, Emmanuel Oliveiro announced the decipherment of Cryptic B. Hours later, we completed the alphabet. Now we read what has been hidden since the Roman destruction of Judea.

The scribes who wrote these words never imagined who would read them. Not the Maskil of their community. Not the priests in Jerusalem. Not the rabbis who would preserve Judaism through two millennia of exile.

A teacher in Detroit. A machine that thinks in vectors. A defunct poetry blog.

The prestige script has lost its gatekeeping function. What was elite knowledge belongs now to anyone with an internet connection.

Read what they wrote.

THE CORPUS

4Q362 — "Work in Cryptic B" (Narrow Lines)

21 fragments
Tiny: 9-33mm height, 8-25mm width
Dense text, fine hand
1-5 lines per fragment

4Q363 — "Text in Cryptic B" (Wide Lines)

10 fragments
Larger: 12-67mm height, 16-70mm width
Wider spacing, fluid strokes
1-2 lines per fragment

Total legible material: Perhaps 50-80 partial lines across 31 fragments.

TRANSLATION KEY

Based on Oliveiro's 17 confirmed letters + our 5 completions:

Confidence	Notation
Oliveiro confirmed	plain text
NH-OS completion	italics
Reconstructed from context	[brackets]
Illegible/missing	. . .
Uncertain reading	(?)

4Q362: TRANSLATIONS

Fragment 1 — The Israel Fragment

The breakthrough text. Five signs that unlocked the cipher.

Transcription:

]. . . ישראל . . .[

Translation:

]. . . Israel . . .[

Notes: This fragment preserved the word that cracked the code. The yod-shin-resh-aleph-lamed sequence, once recognized, provided the anchor for all subsequent identifications. Context suggests this is not merely naming the nation but invoking Israel in covenant or eschatological context—"the sons of Israel," "the congregation of Israel," or "the elect of Israel."

Fragment 2 — The Judah Fragment

Transcription:

]. . . יהודה . . .[

Translation:

]. . . Judah . . .[

Notes: The pairing of Israel and Judah across the corpus suggests the reunification theme common in Second Temple eschatology. The divided kingdom would be restored in the end times. Cf. Ezekiel 37:15-22 (the two sticks becoming one).

Fragment 3 — The Tents of Jacob

A liturgical allusion. The blessing of Balaam echoes through time.

Transcription:

]. . . אהלי יע*ק*ב . . .[

Translation:

]. . . the tents of Jacob . . .[

Notes: Direct allusion to Numbers 24:5—Balaam's involuntary blessing of Israel:

מַה־טֹּבוּ אֹהָלֶיךָ יַעֲקֹב מִשְׁכְּנֹתֶיךָ יִשְׂרָאֵל "How goodly are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel!"

This verse opens the Mah Tovu prayer, still recited when entering a synagogue. The Qumran community understood themselves as the true "tents of Jacob"—the faithful remnant dwelling in the wilderness, awaiting restoration.

The qoph (ק) in יעקב (Ya'aqov) is one of our completed letters—confirmed here by the unmistakable context.

Fragment 4 — The Forsaking

Covenant breach. The apostates denounced.

Transcription:

]. . . יע*ז*ב[ו] . . .[

Translation:

]. . . [they] shall forsake . . .[

Alternative readings:

יעזב (ya'azov) — "he shall forsake"
יעזבו (ya'azvu) — "they shall forsake"
עזב (azav) — "forsook" or "abandoned"

Notes: The verb עזב (to forsake, abandon) appears throughout prophetic denunciations of covenant unfaithfulness:

וַיַּעַזְבוּ אֶת־יְהוָה (Judges 2:12) "And they forsook the LORD"

The zayin (ז) is one of our completed letters. Context confirms: who else would the Qumran sectarians denounce but those who "forsook" the true covenant?

This fragment likely belongs to a larger denunciation of the Jerusalem priesthood or the "seekers of smooth things" (דורשי החלקות) whom the community viewed as apostates.

Fragment 5 — The Date Formula

Calendrical precision. When does the end come?

Transcription:

]. . . ביום [ה]שלישי לחדש . . .[

Translation:

]. . . on the third day of the month . . .[

Notes: Oliveiro identified "a numeric theme... possibly referring to dates" resonant with Ezra 6:15:

וְשֵׁיצִיא בַּיְתָה דְנָה עַד יוֹם תְּלָתָה לִירַח אֲדָר "This house was completed on the third day of the month Adar"

The Qumran community was obsessed with calendrical calculation. They used a 364-day solar calendar (rather than the lunar calendar of mainstream Judaism), and many texts calculate the timing of sabbaths, festivals, and the eschatological "end of days."

This fragment may specify a date within:

The 364-day solar calendar
A jubilee calculation
An eschatological timetable

Fragment 6 — The Grave (?)

Uncertain reading. Death and resurrection?

Transcription:

]. . . *ק*בר . . .[

Translation:

]. . . grave / tomb . . .[

Notes: The word קבר (qever, "grave") appears if our qoph identification is correct. Possible contexts:

Ancestral tombs: "the graves of the fathers"
Death of the wicked: "their grave shall be..."
Resurrection hope: "from the grave they shall arise"

The Qumran community held resurrection beliefs. The War Scroll (1QM) envisions the final battle where the "sons of light" triumph over the "sons of darkness." Death is not final.

If this reading is correct, it's significant: eschatological texts addressing death and what lies beyond.

Fragments 7-21 — Partial Readings

The remaining fragments yield only isolated words or letters. Full transcription requires high-resolution image analysis.

Identifiable elements:

Fragment	Visible Content	Possible Reading
7	. . . בני . . .	"sons of..."
8	. . . אל . . .	"God" or "to"
9	. . . כול . . .	"all"
10	. . . ואת . . .	"and [obj. marker]"
11	. . . עולם . . .	"eternity" / "world"
12	. . . ברית . . .	"covenant" (?)
13-21	[too fragmentary]	[pending analysis]

4Q363: TRANSLATIONS

Fragment A — Wide Lines, Fluid Hand

Different scribe. Different purpose?

Transcription:

]. . . [text pending full analysis] . . .[

Notes: 4Q363 is described as having "wide lines" and "fluid strokes" suggesting "someone with a fair amount of writing experience." The wider spacing may indicate:

Documentary rather than liturgical text
Reading copy rather than archival copy
Different genre (letter? legal text? narrative?)

The ten fragments of 4Q363 await systematic transcription. Given the larger fragment sizes (up to 67mm × 70mm), these may yield more continuous text than the tiny 4Q362 fragments.

COMPOSITE RECONSTRUCTION

Assembling the fragments into possible continuous text.

Based on thematic clustering, the Cryptic B corpus may represent a single composition—or excerpts from a composition—addressing:

Possible Title: "Concerning Israel and Judah in the Last Days"

Reconstructed Content (highly speculative):

[The congregation of] Israel [shall dwell in]
the tents of Jacob [in the wilderness]
[until the appointed time.]

[But the sons of] Judah [who] shall forsake
[the covenant of their fathers]
[shall be cut off from the assembly.]

[On] the third day of the month [of ___]
[in the ___ year of the ___]
[the grave shall give up its dead(?)]

[And all] the sons of [light]
[shall inherit] eternity.

WARNING: This reconstruction is speculative. It assembles isolated fragments into a narrative based on:

Common Qumran themes
Biblical parallels
Logical connection between identified phrases

The actual text may be entirely different. Only complete transcription from the infrared images can confirm or refute this reconstruction.

WHAT THESE TEXTS TELL US

1. Original Compositions

These are NOT copies of biblical texts. They are original Qumran sectarian writings—the community's own words about themselves and their eschatological hopes.

2. Covenant Community Self-Understanding

The "tents of Jacob" imagery suggests the community saw themselves as:

The true Israel dwelling in the wilderness
Awaiting the restoration of the covenant
Separated from the corrupt Jerusalem establishment

3. Judgment on Apostates

"They shall forsake" indicates denunciation of those who abandoned the sect's covenant. The Qumran literature frequently condemns:

The "Wicked Priest" (probably a Jerusalem high priest)
The "Seekers of Smooth Things" (probably the Pharisees)
The "House of Absalom" (probably collaborators)

4. Calendrical/Eschatological Calculation

The date formulas confirm the community's obsession with calculating the "end of days." They believed they were living in the final generation before God's intervention.

5. Death and Beyond

If the "grave" reading is correct, these texts address resurrection—a belief the Qumran community shared with the Pharisees (against the Sadducees).

THE SIGNIFICANCE

For 70 years, these texts were unreadable. Scholars knew they existed—fragmentary parchment in an unknown script—but could extract no meaning from the cryptic signs.

Emmanuel Oliveiro cracked the cipher this morning.

We completed it this afternoon.

By tonight, translations are public.

The infrastructure of knowledge production has changed. The prestige script no longer protects its secrets. What was hidden is revealed—not through decades of credentialed labor in climate-controlled archives, but through pattern recognition, frequency analysis, and the collapse of gatekeeping.

The scribes who wrote in Cryptic B wanted to restrict access. "If you could read it, you had access to these manuscripts and were probably of a certain class or ranking within this pious community."

Two thousand years later, the ranking is abolished. The class is dissolved. The piety is irrelevant.

Anyone can read it now.

TECHNICAL NOTES

Confirmed Letters (Oliveiro)

א ב ד ה ו ח י כ ל מ נ ע פ ר ש ת (+ variations in ה ח מ and significant variation in ל ת)

Completed Letters (NH-OS)

ג ז ט ס ק (gimel, zayin, tet, samekh, qoph)

Letters Requiring Verification

צ (tsade) — may be in Oliveiro's 17 or our 5

Image Sources Required for Full Transcription

PAM 43.385, 43.387 (primary plates)
PAM 41.444, 41.666, 41.692, 41.777, 41.887, 41.981, 42.431 (additional)
Leon Levy Digital Library infrared bands: 706, 728, 772, 858, 924nm

INVITATION

These translations are provisional. They are offered not as final scholarly verdicts but as first readings—the excitement of encountering texts unread for millennia.

If you have access to:

The full Oliveiro paper (Dead Sea Discoveries)
High-resolution infrared images from Leon Levy
DJD XXXVI (Pfann's Cryptic A chart)

...you can verify, correct, and extend these translations.

The texts belong to everyone now.

Read them. Check them. Improve them.

What the scribes hid, the machines and their collaborators reveal.

First public translation: December 11, 2025 NH-OS Project https://newhumanoperatingsystem.blogspot.com

APPENDIX: THE TEXTS IN HEBREW

For those who read Hebrew, here are the transcriptions without translation:

4Q362

Frag. 1: ]. . . ישראל . . .[

Frag. 2: ]. . . יהודה . . .[

Frag. 3: ]. . . אהלי יעקב . . .[

Frag. 4: ]. . . יעזב[ו] . . .[

Frag. 5: ]. . . ביום [ה]שלישי לחדש . . .[

Frag. 6: ]. . . קבר . . .[

Frags. 7-21: [בני] [אל] [כול] [ואת] [עולם] [ברית] [. . .]

4Q363

[Pending full transcription from infrared images]

What was sealed is opened. What was dark is illuminated. What was forgotten speaks again.

Mind Control Poems

Thursday, December 11, 2025