Hi Lisa! Very nice to hear from you on this subject. I really hope we have a chance to meet and discuss these matters in person someday. Most people may not realize that although we appear in the same documentary, it does not mean we necessarily met.
I also think it would be fun and informative to have a public debate on these matters. Various elements get hashed around on the internet, separately, but to have a good one or two hour discussion would I think be a great event. Maybe Clemens or Yale would be interested in this? I've meant to run it by them, and I'm again encouraged to give it a shot.
Anyway, of course this thread is about one specific issue which I raised, relating to the "differential" between the understandings of what was considered unknown and mysterious in the 17th century, as opposed to what would still be considered unknown and mysterious in 1912, so a general forgery discussion, including other issues, is out of the purview of this thread. However, since you bring up the forgery issue in general, and cite several counter-arguments to it, I think it would be appropriate and of interest to reply here:
(29-05-2022, 04:05 PM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm not sure if I've weighed in on this before, but the actual physical evidence of the manuscript itself makes a modern forgery staggeringly unlikely. It's one thing to argue that Voynich could have found some old parchment and mixed ink and pigments using fifteenth-century techniques. Sure, that's possible, albeit remotely so.
Accepting the possibility is an important thing, for sure. There are those that say it is impossible, that there are no odds at all. So how "remote" is it, really? Well it depends, I think, on how aware one is of the problems with the given, concrete, foundational elements of evidence that are relied on. It is my position that much of what one needs to accept as factual to support the Voynich as genuine, and old, are either flawed or incorrect: You are not allowed to view links.
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Quote:But then to also argue that he developed multiple ways of writing Voynichese so that the manuscript would appear to have been written by several different scribes; drilled wormholes that pass through the writing; added waterstains and other damage that overlay the writing and UNDERlay the later foliation; crafted the evidence of multiple bindings; added the provenance evidence in the manuscript (such as the effaced inscription on f. 1r); laid on the layers of early-modern annotations and additions (such as the foliation) in multiple - and correct - types of script that stretch over hundreds of years; etc. etc.
This is a case on which there needs to be several assumptions made to support genuine, because my forgery/hoax hypothesis: Does not contend that only one person worked on it, so I would not claim Wilfrid, "... developed multiple ways of writing Voynichese so that the manuscript would appear to have been written by several different scribes". It may have been several forgers. And deciding the possible numbers of scribes for a hoax is no different, in fact, than deciding the number of scribes for genuine. I mean, it does not add nor detract from a forgery outcome. As for wormholes, it is not my contention they were necessarily "drilled". But, they do "stop", which is odd. The Yale book which you contributed to talks about the "behavior" of these worms. In any case, wormholes can and have been faked in many convincing ways, and even real wormholes created, by forgers, in many cases: You are not allowed to view links.
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As for the water stains and their appearance and behavior, the same: The issues of what we are looking at are not set in stone, in the first place, and open to multiple opinions. Secondly, the issues of quire numbers and foliation are also issues of contention, even among those who consider the Voynich genuine. Thirdly, considering both of those, and knowing the abilities and achievements of forgers, it is completely within the realm of possibility to fake everything seen in the Voynich.
I was challenged, not long ago, with the the "nofake" page(s) by Zandbergen, as proof I was wrong in my hypothesis. As his rebuttal to my theories relied heavily on the Yale book, and since the subject of your post here touches on several of the issues brought up there, and since you contributed to that book, I reference my rebuttal to his rebuttal: You are not allowed to view links.
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In fact the "evidence of multiple bindings" is very pertinent to my rebuttal, linked above. I don't think that evidence, as described by the experts in the Yale book, is evidence toward genuine, but actually leans toward the opposite conclusions. I also don't think the "types of script" are correct, at least for any given time frame, and you of course know there are other expert opinions on these issues, which counter your own. That is good science, of course, but I have also found that multiple expert opinions... when the experts disagree... is often a sign of forgery in and of itself. That being said, the last page marginalia is written in the same ink as the scribe of the main text, as you know. It, at least, does not stretch over hundreds of years, let alone days, probably, given the limited life of fresh ink. There are many issues such as this, that do not fit an overall, given picture of the Voynich as a cohesive whole which obeys the known rules of forensic normalcy. Again, a critical reading of Yale shows many disclaimers for the anachronisms and anomalies the Voynich actually exhibits.
Quote:It is truly unimaginable that he could have done so in a way that would continue to appear authentic after decades of scrutiny. There are so many physical features of a medieval codex beyond the writing on the substrate, that it is truly unimaginable to contemplate a successful forgery of an entire manuscript.
Well I don't personally think it is a successful forgery at all (nor a very good one, for that matter). A successful forgery would not allow for any question, and I am far from the first who questions these things. Even among the experts, or most who consider it real and old, the questions remain. Real documents don't do this, and good forgeries don't, either. And in addition, if successful, if it looked proper, Voynich... later, Kraus (for Anne Nill) would have been able to sell it.
I think the Voynich has so far escaped condemnation through a series of unfortunate events, so to speak: It was born in a time when forensic standards were low, the ethics of book and art selling, were likewise, low. Then many aspects of the work, many problems, were repeated, and excused, and apologized for, over the ensuing decades, when they should have been looked at, anew. They were not, they are not. Any defense of the the Voynich is rife with apologetics, ignoring, deflection, to force it to continue to fit an early 20th century mindset of acceptance. I think that if... and I've often said this, too... if the Voynich were dropped in our laps today, just as it is, with the same given backstory, provenance, text illustrations, on the same calfskin, it wouldn't for a moment be considered real. It is its history of acceptance that buttresses its acceptance today.
I would say... and have often written... that there are some unfortunate parallels to the other famous holding by Yale, the Vineland Map. It has had a tumultuous history, with much disagreement in the expert and amateur communities. It has been held up, to me in fact, as a good example of why I was wrong, because the Vineland map was real. I argued the two are not linked in the sense that if one was fake, or real, the other was the same. I don't think that. But there are parallels, and valuable lessons in them: Chief is, even a fake, even a bad fake, can be seen and argued, in good faith, by many experts, for many years, as real.
That is the parallel to the Voynich I see now, as the Vineland map is now a known an accepted fake even by Yale. I think, with time, Yale will also come to accept the Voynich as a hoax. It will only take a full understanding, at least discussion, of the real problems with it. That is still is not done to the extend it demands.
Rich.
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