Cathay

This blog looks at the vocabulary word Cathay. Before that, we reintroduce the BR app. Then commentary on an UNZ article, status on names related lexicon work and a headline review.

Bible Reader

Ryan has continued to work on updates to our standard set of apps. This week the Canon Bible has been dropped in favor of the Bible Reader app. The permanent link is off the front of Paleo.In.

We think of our apps from 2 perspectives. We care about the low level technical aspects of our apps. So in this perspective we care about features and purpose and how they get used.

Our other perspective looks at the overall set of apps. When we look at our apps that way, we think about curriculum. What are the set of lessons that are needed to bring students of the text up to speed? What are the lessons that we have been through on our journey? Are those lessons captured in our apps? In this overall view we want to make sure that the set of apps covers all the lessons that matter.

History

One of the most important lessons is the history of Christianity. That history created the diversity of the Christian traditions as expressed in the many Christian Bibles.

Americans, especially Protestants, tend to know none of this. Neither Ryan nor I were taught any of this in our own early Christian upbringing. There was no hint that our tradition was full of problems. There was no hint that it was the result of a political process run by emperors, kings and their bankers.

Since we mostly deal with the Bible, one easy way for us to teach this history lesson is to simply present many different versions of the Bible.

These are the basic artifacts from that complex church history. Bibles become the concrete topic for discussion. How did these come to be? Why are there so many of them? What were the translators up to when they built those texts?

Whole Translations

Bibles as passed by history come to us as named translations. The ASV or the KJV are examples. A given translation was created by someone for some reason within some tradition in some language at some time in history.

For most of history, bibles were also constrained by the need for the printer to sell enough copies to make a press run profitable. So not all translations ever made it to print. Translations thus encapsulate a whole bunch of competing issues when it comes to their creation.

So it is important to be able to see these texts in something like their original published format. Viewing historical texts in something like their original published form is the general purpose of the Bible Reader.

That app presents the texts in an electronic form. So the texts in that app are not exact copies. But, it approximates the original printed forms.

Preface Materials

Most published Bibles were the result of a significant amount of work. They often had a wealthy sponsor, or a wealthy publisher. Money usually comes with an agenda. Just like modern electronic media is controlled, so too, have most printing houses been controlled. The needs of those people usually overrode the obvious desire for an accurate translation.

The teams that published those works usually wrote a preface that explained what they were up to with their translation. This is often advertising copy. But at times that material covers serious issues of translation and the forces at work around the task of producing a translation.

Downloadable copies of Bible manuscripts don't usually include the preface material. Most modern readers are ultimately concerned with the differences in the texts, not the motives of the translation team. When we were younger, we certainly thought that way too. It is a reflection of overall maturity. Young people tend to not understand the breadth of evil in the world.

So in this BR update, Ryan has been chasing down the preface materials. When he can find them, he is adding them into the various Bibles included in the BR app.

For readers here wanting an interesting study in the history of Bibles, I would suggest reading through the preface materials found in the BR app. These usually come after the Table of Contents in those Bibles.

Bible Forms

The BR app presents whole texts in their original printed book order. We think of this as their original, inbound, form. This is interesting for understanding the overall work.

For most conventional Protestant Bibles, the overall form is about the same between Bibles. Before about 1800, Protestant Bibles included the Apocrypha, so they were longer in history. Once Jews started controlling Protestantism, those books were dropped because they do not have Hebrew language originals. So even Protestantism is not fixed in time.

Even the 10 commandments changed in Protestant Bibles after about 1950. Don't kill, an absolute commandment, became Don't Murder, a limited commandment.

The RSV was a commercial flop because Isaiah lost the prophecy about an expected virgin birth. This, too, because the Jews were changing Isaiah, so Protestant translations were keeping up. What else would modern Zionist bible publishers be expected to do?

All of these manuscript changes are part of the prophetic replay of Passion Week. This is the time when Jews rule. We will clear that time in history in the 2030s. Until then, Christians suffer under Jewish mind games. The high ground for those mental attacks is the text of scripture itself.

Ancient Greek

Outside of Protestant Bibles, the overall form of Bibles can get quite strange. The most extremely different examples center around the Septuagint Old Testament Greek. Not only does the Greek Old Testament provide copies for "extra" books, some of those Greek books are not actually the same as we know from the traditional Hebrew. Parallel and matched versification becomes very, very hard to pull off.

So the BR app is now intentionally designed to present whole manuscripts in an approximation of their historical, printed, order. This goal allows the app to contain manuscripts no matter what their original form might have been. The app is designed to allow easy presentation of any Bible in an approximation of a printed form.

Technical Notes

The BR app is also design to allow whatever level of markup may be available in those texts. Our manuscript markup system is quite powerful. Should there ever be a desire, and resources, we could imagine adding markup to those texts.

The new Bible Reader has been updated with the new Settings system. It has also been designed to provide complete Bibles as though they were stand alone apps. The next/previous functions stay within individual Bibles. Moving between Bibles is done through settings or by tapping fancy arrows on the front covers.

Verse Reader

Low level, so verse level, comparison is not done well in printed Bibles nor in the BR app. Instead, our VR app provides a place for that level of study. The link here is to our VR app. The permanent link is off the home page at Paleo.In.

As of this week the VR app has also received a refresh. The first goal is to include all of the same texts as in the BR app. So the number of texts in the VR app is growing.

This app has lost the front cover, contents, and back matter that were previously part of this app. This app is not approximating a printed bible, so it does not want facsimiles of covers.

We are starting to see the power of "one page wonder" apps like the Story Grid. New users get to see what the app does on first load. Regular users can get right to work.

The VR app has been updated with the new settings system. But in this app, settings get complicated. The app level settings in the right menu deal with Theme, Font Size, and displayed Bibles.

Individual Bible texts have additional asides that are reached from tapping on their letter codes on the left side of each row. This design allows for notes, perhaps even preface materials, and then any translation specific settings. This, theoretically, allows the settings to match the needs of each translation. It allows translation settings to show off what is possible with the matched translation. Currently, there are no translation specific settings, those will come with future updates.

This week's update to the VR now includes all Greek texts that are known to follow Protestant versification. This means all New Testament Greek texts we have on hand are now in that app. Technical work still remains for this app, this is a good start. There are still issues with Greek.

Planning For Greek

Our intention is to merge all of our Greek text based Bible apps into the VR and BR apps. As of this week, all of the easy manuscript moves are now done.

There remains the problem of really strange OT Greek versification. This impacts the VR app and how the texts themselves are presented. We have had a planning session on this problem. We have a plan to fix it. But, this work is not easily. Respecting the Septuagint versification is the tricky part. More on this later.

Greek Names

Getting NT Greek into the VR has become urgent because of what I am seeing in Paleo Bible lexicon work. Ryan has moved the texts that can be done easily. I may also add Greek to Paleo letter transformation to some of those texts in order to study spelling of Greek names.

There are clearly games afoot related to our common English New Testament names as they have passed down through historical Greek.

Most readers here who know the text will recognize Greek names with their characteristic "us" ending. Cornel, for example, has a Greek form of Cornelius.

I expected to find the Aramaic based New Testament names to either match their expected Greek form, or to use perhaps a simpler form. Aramaic is an older language and it tends to have short, 3 letter, names. Perhaps Cornelius would be Cornel in Aramaic?

Instead there is no obvious correlation. Some names, like Paul, come with both a Greek form, and a simple form. Philip, for example, is always in the Greek form. "Philipus" would be the normal English given the spelling of that name in the Aramaic NT.

It looks like translators who subscribe to Aramaic primacy are covering this up. This detail impacts any theory of origins for the New Testament itself.

I now suspect the New Testament as passed to us today in Aramaic must have been edited in waves. Not just by Ananias, our normal villain, but in different languages.

The Aramaic New Testament was going through the same type of edits as English Language Protestant Bibles have been through, only worse. There must have been an early fight between Greek Primacy and Aramaic Primacy that was fought through edits. The known history of the development of Syriac in Turkey was going on at least a century after the events of the NT.

In that century sits a time window for much manuscript trouble.

So the Greek texts may need to be referenced to solve issues with the Paleo Bible. Ryan and I were prophetically pressed hard on the issue of Greek texts for recovery work. Names, at least, seem to need the Greek references in order to settle issues there. More on this as we go.

In any case, if you keep a set of our apps on your devices, you can drop the Canon Bible and install the Bible Reader. The Greek specific apps will eventually be dropped in order to reduce the overall number of apps found off of Paleo.In. The resulting set of apps will have more value in each app.

Cathay

When we first learned about the idea of Aramaic Primacy we started using copies of the Lamsa Bible. Indeed, someone in the fellowship we were part of at the time ordered a case of Lamsa Bibles so everyone could have a copy.

It is a curious English Bible in the sense that it is based on the Aramaic texts of the Bible. It is outside of the standard Greek/Latin heritage used by nearly all other English Bibles.

Lamsa was an immigrant to the USA and wanted an English text based on the Aramaic Bible used in what is now Iraq. He began translation work in the 1930s. This work was done by hand. It was without a big publisher behind the work. He appears to have worked mostly by himself. His bible became something of a cult classic because it was strangely different from normal English bibles.

One of the strange differences was how he occasionally used the name "China" in certain places across his translation. Nobody in the western traditions of the Bible would ever think of such a thing. Nobody educated in the western texts would think this could be correct.

As I have been loading names into the Paleo Bible, one of the Bibles that I am checking is Lamsa's translation. I found his reference to China and could finally understand his logic for using that modern place name.

The link above is to the Wikipedia article for the ancient name of what is now northern China. "Cathay" is the modern English for that name. That name lends itself to the airline named "Cathay Pacific" which is the flag carrier of Hong Kong. So the name "Cathay" applies in some way to southern China as well, even into the modern era.

Lamsa uses the term China to translate the paleo Ku-Ta-Yo-Mo. There is also a variant, Ku-Ta-Yo-Wa. (There was no computerized spell checkers, nor audit, for ancient scribes.)

Normally, in English Bibles, this word is translated as Kittim. A strict Paleo transliteration is either "Kutayom" or the variant is "Kutayo" where the trailing Wa draws the vowel on the Yo.

Moving from Paleo to English, the Ku can become k or c or ch. The Ta can become either t or th. The Yo as an ending can become i or y. The trailing Mo can become m, n or just drop off.

You should be able to play with this a little and see that "Cathay" is reasonable in English for this word. Lamsa just finished the translation and put in China as the modern form of Cathay.

So if you read through that Wikipedia article, you can see "Khitan" as one of the ancient variants. This is using the Mo to n change we see commonly with word endings for place names. So now you can see why Lamsa might correctly pick China as a recognizable modern English place name for that ancient place name in his English translation.

But...

Translating names is hard. Lamsa is probably correct in that this was an ancient name for what is now modern China. But then he adds an interpretive step within his running text. In our electronic world of displayed texts I would probably prefer such a step to be a function of the lexicon, not a function of the translation. Though if I was super strict on this, the place names for Greece, Italy, Spain and Egypt would change to ancient forms too.

Lamsa was also not fully consistent in his use of China. That name shows up in his translation of Revelation for the place name Gog. There is no Ku-Ta-Yo-Mo in Revelation in Paleo. (At least in the manuscript that we know.) It is unclear why Lamsa would translate Gog as China. This is another example of why translation is hard. Separating translation from interpretation is also hard to keep straight.

Ancient Knowledge of China?

So now, let me back up to the issue of the base text. Would ancient writers of the text have known about China? Could their understanding of the world include geography at the eastern edge of the Asian continent?

I would answer this yes, of course.

They were on the western end of the Silk Road and would have been trading with China since soon after Noah's flood. China was well known in ancient times. It was unknown to backwards Europeans. The Wikipedia article shows that European bias.

One of the problems the world has right now is how China has become something of a manufacturing power house. They basically make everything. Other economies need to produce wealth for themselves. How to do this with China doing most of the work is hard to figure out.

The reason the ancient silk road was so important is because China has always been a manufacturing power house. Ever since soon after Noah. I heard a comment on a podcast here recently that even during Roman times, the planetary GDP was still higher in China than in Rome.

Of course China is going to have been an important ancient place name. Now we know where to find it. Other countries have ancient names too. We will save India for future reference.

Birth Of Protocols

The link here is to a long form article on UNZ by a guest writer, Nick Kollerstrom. It documents the known history of the writing of the book called "The Protocols of Zion."

I frequently reference the Protocols of Zion because it does a nice job of explaining so much about how our modern world actually functions. Outside of scripture itself, this would be on my list of the top most important books that anyone should read. Stated in reverse, if you have NOT read The Protocols, you are not educated in how the world actually works.

The article linked above goes through what is known about the original authorship of that book, as well as the known publication history. This article adds considerable back story and details that are not in the book itself. If you have ever read the Protocols of Zion, or might consider reading that book, I recommend reading the article linked above.

Taking Control

There are certain key points that really matter to our work here. The main issue is how Jewish bankers took over control of the English and French national banks early in the 1800s. This was done deliberately because the private, Jewish, international, bankers knew they could take over the whole world through the issuance of fiat currency. They fully took over the USA in 1913 with the Federal Reserve Act. They have now taken over nearly all other national banks.

In terms of prophetic timelines, the Passion Week replay begins about the same time as the earliest origins of the stories involving the crimes of the bankers. This is the back story for how the Jews functionally take over rule of the world along the main timeline of earth, especially the Passion Week time of that overall timeline.

Remember, Passion Week is when Joshua deliberately gave over rule to the Jews during the tail end of his public ministry. His crucifixion becomes World War II within that larger and longer prophetic week. The story of Zacchaeus tells us his purpose for Passion Week. After Passion Week, his ministry shifts. He was appearing only to his disciples, which indicates the world will be ruled in some other way across the centuries to come.

The replay of Noah's flood beginning in 2029 is what ends the Passion Week time. I would currently expect that war to stretch out to maybe 2038 before it is fully over. Prophetic stories dealing with "midnight" (like Matthew 25:16) are around 7.5 years after the start of Noah. At that time, we move into the next prophetic passion week calendar day, but only by 1/4 of the way across the next 30 years. 2038 is also 430 years from first settlement of Jamestown, VA. James is English for Jacob. This was the start of Egypt in the USA. 430 years from there lands in 2038 as well.

Protocols Details

The article linked above goes through how the Protocols of Zion were published in various places in order to warn local populations about the crime of central banking. This never really prevented that crime from happening. That method of publishing details in hope for a change is as silly as thinking the US public could ever fix Washington DC by some political action. The affairs of nations are ultimately in Joshua's hands. He will change governments in his own time and by his own means. Joshua lets Pharaoh rule. Then Joshua does not let Pharaoh rule. This is a very simple summary of the Book of Exodus.

The article linked above goes into details about how possession of copies of the Protocols of Zion has been punishable by death. This was especially so in Bolshevik Russia because this was when the Jews were ruling Russia. They feared the public might do something should their crime be found out. Russia is one of the few places where the Jews do not rule, which is why there is a current war against Russia at all.

The article above also suggests that book might be the most commonly read book around the world outside of the Bible itself. This, alone is a curious idea.

One other point of interest is that the Jews apparently took over Masonic Lodges as part of their takeover of governments. This would explain the work of people like Albert Pike who in the 1880s redefined how those lodges function. Those lodges, common across much of the USA, are also part of the problem of Passion Week.

I have not yet done a full set of charts for Passion Week headlines from the past 200 years. That week was full of strange interactions between Joshua and the Jews of ancient Jerusalem. Prophetic replays would be expected in the political world of the central bankers.

Match Dates

We were watching Friday, so 2026-07-24 as a possibly interesting date because this was about 150 days out from when Trump first starting bombing Iran on 2026-02-28. This would be in some sense the "end of 150 days of the waters covering the earth" from the perspective of a Noah flood related timeline. This appears to be a 3 year prelude to 2029. For some reason the math appears off by about 14 days.

At 2026-07-24, so as last week's blog went out, it looked like the USA might have been preparing for even more strikes against Iran. Instead, the USA stopped bombing targets in Iran. Iran also stopped most of their retaliation. There was a mostly calm weekend that followed. Calm was not to last very long.

At the weekend, there were some strikes on Saudi Arabia, especially a strike on oil facilities by Ansar Allah in Yemen. Saudi Arabia is being blockaded and attacked in retaliation for their blockade and attacks against Yemen. Before the week was out, facilities at both ends of the pipeline across Saudi Arabia had been struck. All Saudi oil shipments had been suspended. This is a very big deal as the overall planetary supply situation just got very much worse.

Meeting With Netanyahu

The stall in the war across the weekend appeared to have been timed so Trump could meet with his boss, Netanyahu, who arrived in DC on Monday. This seemed to be the meeting where Netanyahu could dictate the next phase in the war against Iran. Trump's in person meetings with Netanyahu are generally followed by changes in the Iran war strategy. This happened again this week.

Instead of the Zionists directly attacking Iran, they instead shifted to Saudi Arabia who started taking on Iranian interests in Iraq. This shifted to formally using the Saudis as the next Zionist proxy for the war. This also shifted to a strategy of defeating Iran along its edges. This is a hint at a future ground war. The plan is presumably an eventual ground invasion of Iran via Iraq. This would be attempting to repeat the Iran-Iraq war from the early 1980s.

It has been many years, but I remember reading the history of the Saudi family. Short answer is that they are of Jewish descent. They should be thought of as an occupying force in Arabia, just like AIPAC in the USA, just like the royal family was in Iran.

Also of note, Zelensky's Kiev also attacked an Iranian vessel. We already see these wars as the same. Zionists don't control Russia, nor Iran. Now the formal fighting is merging.

This Ukrainian attack was probably an attempt to provoke Iran to use previously unseen long range weapons that could perhaps reach Ukraine. So the military purpose was to provoke Iran in order to learn what their missiles can really do. Instead of striking Ukraine, Iran appears to have struck Zionist targets in Egypt.

Funeral

The 2026-07-26 watch date did not have any other obvious headline besides the expected funeral in DC for Lindsay Graham. All the normal nefarious politicians assembled to honor the loss of one of their own. That prophetic date was a Sunday. Netanyahu departed for that DC funeral very early on Monday morning. Formal ceremonies were on Tuesday. This is close enough for a match.

Bombing Resumed

By the end of the week the USA had resumed general bombing of Iran. The war was back on. Why would we expect anything else? The Zionist side does not have any real military targets in Iran. They continue to strike civilian targets in Iran.

Watch Dates

Peeking ahead, we are now watching 2026-08-11 as the prophetic replay of the last year of Amaziah. The reign of Jehoahaz begins the next day, so 2026-08-12. These are at the end of Tabernacles and in the second week after this blog goes out.

Shop Work

Most of my shop work this week has been working on the names annex to the lexicon for the Paleo Bible app. This involves making several successive passes across the raw names data in order to clean up the list of names and prepare it for use in the Paleo Bible app itself. This work involves a back-and-forth movement of updated code and then manual touch up work. This is a very strange work path where manual work is augmented and checked by software.

As of this week, there are 2505 different entries in the names data. This fractures the count some from the eventual lexicon because some names come in related forms. The big issue is how the names of real people then lend their names to people groups later on. Not all of these cases are currently in the same entry. So the 2505 is overstating the eventual lexicon size.

There also appears to be variant spellings of many of the names. We were taught about added vowels when we first took a Hebrew class. What we were not told is that actual vocabulary words may or may not have the same set of added vowels. This becomes a fundamental proof of the idea of added vowels. But, nobody teaching this point wanted to state this obvious dirty little secret. It implies carelessness or a manuscript history beyond our normal ideas of inspiration and transmission.

Added vowels are particularly true of names. Given my working expectation for inspiration, I would expect all such added vowels to go away in the audit. I am also now starting to see the text as handled carelessly by ancient scribes.

My current pass is adding paleo forms. This was driven by the problem of how English spelling is being driven by strange transformations, especially from Hebrew word forms. Almost all Biblical names in English that end in "h" have no such matching letter in Aramaic. There are a series of other less common, but still irritating name changes.

Reboot Names

I have looked at the names long enough to see the problem differently than before. Instead of trying to match back to well known English names, however bad those names may be, it is better to reboot the whole names system and start again and match English to inspired Paleo.

Nobody should be bringing what they know about a name from an English Bible into the world of the Testimony. Nobody should be looking back like that.

If I don't fix this problem, who will?

Once I thought about this problem, this way, I set out to estimate English pronunciation of names given by Paleo spelling, not Hebrew spelling. In this pass, I am working out a formal transliteration from Paleo spelling of all names into English. My formal notation will show up in lexicon entries.

Most of the time, the Paleo will match known English, which is surprising. The expected form, after removing added vowels, usually has the same set of syllables as we know in English. This is also surprising.

Names that have different spellings, because of different added vowels, also return to a common pronunciation. This is also very nice to see.

Names with double vowels and words with known shibboleths are a little more strange. But those form a special set of problems that can be understood.

Stats

From those 2505 distinct names entries in the lexicon, there are currently 5544 different inbound word forms that involve names. These inbound forms are clustered under individual names roots. Because of the nature of the problems involved, these counts should be considered more accurate than real life. Every time I touch something, these counts usually change.

Variations on names mostly involve uses of different prefixes against the roots. Some endings provide an indication that the word is pointing at a group of people instead of 1 person. I expect those to eventually end up in the same lexicon entry, but finding the pairing is not easy.

Note that overall counts will change some as I insert this current data into the lexicon. There are some manuscript differences which will impact counts. These names occasionally collide with regular vocabulary words, which will also need to be worked out.

I was attempting to get this set of names into the Paleo Bible before Tabernacles, but there was just not enough time. It takes several work days to make 1 pass across 2500+ names. This is still much more efficient than loading general words. 300 such words took about 5 weeks. In the end, taking names as a group, is around 10 times as efficient as general vocabulary.

Assuming no prophetic work items coming out of Tabernacles, watch for the next Paleo Bible names update to hit live servers in late August.

Headline Review

The following caught my attention this week.

Vance Telling Trump

There has been strange news flows out of the USA over the starting and stopping of the war. Vance has little chance of winning the next presidential election because of Trump's war with Iran. So for every pause, someone gives Vance credit. This link is an example.

Netanyahu Departs for DC

This link has a pic of Netanyahu boarding the plane in Israel for Graham's funeral. This is a record of the early Monday departure matching the Sunday watch date for a dead northern king. Usually Netanyahu visits Trump to reset war strategy, and this trip was no different. By the end of the week the war against Iran had resumed.

Yemen Against Saudi Oil

Photo

The top link here is one of the early posts dealing with how Yemen took out Saudi oil facilities. This in retaliation to Saudi actions in south Yemen. The Saudi's don't seem all that bright. They would attack points in Iraq a few days later. The bottom link with one of the many satellite photos of the damage. Oil prices rose as this impacts Saudi supply to world markets. Both ends of their main cross-country pipeline were damaged.

Trump Sleeps at Funeral

Notes On Trump's Speech

The top link here is to a clip of Trump who appears to doze off at Graham's funeral. Hopefully, just over work. The bottom link has details on Trump's speech over Graham. Not a nice guy. A strange prophetic fulfillment for the death of a norther kingdom king. The northern kings probably were not nice guys either.

RT On Funeral

The link here is to the full length RT article on the Graham funeral. RT is more polite.

Money Out In Iraq

Oil wealth ultimately drives governments. Small governments, like Iraq, are already out of money due to the shutdown of oil flows. The link here suggests the Iraqi government is suspending most government payrolls over loss of oil income. That government is less resilient than other parts of the world. Give it time to spread.

Invasion In Spain

Heavy Transport

Italy Closing Borders

Massive Rally In Yemen

The Yemen public is rallying again. This time against Saudi Arabia and the blockade. War is spreading through the region.

Tabernacles Week

This year Tabernacles runs from late Tuesday next week through the following Tuesday. Ryan and I are planning to camp for that week and are off from regular work for the next 2 weeks. Our intention is to read through the Testimony as it currently stands.

There should be a couple short blogs over the text 2 weeks, provided we have internet access. The blog will return to normal after the holiday.

More Later,

Phil