Is there a possibility that the Voynich manuscript is all one big hoax? I've been researching this topic for almost a year now, and I've heard countless theories, and I feel as though it would make sense, especially for the time period it was made in, as at that time many royals collected rare texts, so maybe a con artist did so very well with this text. But I'm open to being proven wrong, so if you know anything, please reach out!
In fact, the hoax hypothesis is one of the most discussed hypotheses on the nature of the manuscript. The variant of this hypothesis considered the most plausible is that during the early 1400s, someone or a group of people created a gibberish medicinal manuscript in order to sell it at a high price to a gullible, wealthy book collector. There is a vocal minority that argues Wilfrid Voynich himself forged the manuscript in the early 1900s, writing on blank medieval parchment.
The best quantitative studies of the hoax hypothesis are by Torsten Timm and Andreas Schinner, who have documented large-scale statistical properties of the manuscript that are straightforwardly explained if the text is iteratively generated gibberish. In 2019-2020, Timm and Schinner even outlined a “self-citation algorithm” that can generate Voynichese-like text.
Importantly, there is a distinction between whether the manuscript is meaningless and whether the manuscript is a “hoax” created to deceive. Glossolalia, also known as speaking in tongues, also would generate what we would classify as gibberish, but the initial purpose of generating that text would have been very different than running a 15th-century scam.
I should also note here that there is no consensus on any one hypothesis on the nature of the manuscript. Other ideas include that it’s an artificial language, a one-off attempt to develop a writing system for a language, or a complex and unusually advanced cipher.
People often think that "it might be gibberish" = "hoax", but as Michael explains, those are different things.
Most hoaxes are meaningful. And all medieval gibberish I know of is genuine.
It may have been entirely meaningful to its creator(s) but not understood by anyone else (to this day).
Just to show that the possibilities are legion.
Certainly, its authors could have understood it perfectly.
(13-01-2026, 09:46 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It may have been entirely meaningful to its creator(s) but not understood by anyone else (to this day).
Question for Rafal: is the language of the Rohonc codex (as far as it can be determined) grammatically correct, or did the author took liberties with it too?
All the best, --stolfi
Quote:Question for Rafal: is the language of the Rohonc codex (as far as it can be determined) grammatically correct, or did the author took liberties with it too?
This is an important question Jorge.
I believe that Rohonc Codex is written in a kind of constructed language and as we know constructed language hypothesis was also suggested for Voynich Manuscript by William Friedman.
You must remember that each language has its own grammar and things that are ungrammatical in English may be grammatical in other language. So if we translate some language word by word to English it will usually look
"ugly".
You may check
interlinear translations of the Bible to see what I mean
You are not allowed to view links.
Register or
Login to view.
[
attachment=13425]
Another thing is that some language have more "
loose" grammar and some have more "
rigid" grammar. If language A is loose and language B is rigid, then sentences in language A may seems very ungrammatical to a speaker of language B. But they are perfectly grammatical in language A.
The language grammar used in the Rohonc Codex is loose. For me it is actually quite similar to a pidgin ( You are not allowed to view links.
Register or
Login to view. ). It looks ugly.
But the sentences make sense, make patterns and make a consistent story which agrees with the Bible. So it was most probably grammatical for the author.
Unfortunately I don't see similar patterns in Voynich Manuscripts. There are patterns but they are very "inhuman", not possible for me to imagine in any language, like clusters of similar words appearing together.
And going back to the original question - yes I think it may be a hoax. I haven't spend so much times as others with VM, just about 4 years, but I have my opinion.
And I believe that the hoax hypothesis will be gaining momentum, unless someone comes out of the blue and cracks it which I give low chance unfortunately.
I feel that people are a bit tired of banging their heads against the wall for so many years. If there was a meaning then they would get it. If there was a meaning then William Friedman and his team would get it. They were routinely breaking modern German and Japanese war ciphers.
Would anyone living in the 1400s be really able to create something so both anachronistic and perfect, better than anything else created before let's say 1950?
Of course you must be careful with the "hoax" word. As I wrote in other thread recently there are two independent issues:
- is the text meaningful?
- when it was created?
When speaking about "hoax" people often mean that it must have been created around the year 1600 for emperor Rudolf or around 1900 by Voynich himself.
But there is another possibility, closest for me, that is a genuine thing from 1400s but still a hoax.
It would mean that it was deliberately designed to cheat people. To make them think that it contains some extremely rare and valuable wisdom while in fact it contains nothing.
So, according to you, all the information is in the script and the imagery contains no ideas, it doesn't mean anything. Since there's no information in the script, then the Voynich manuscript means nothing.
Quote:So, according to you, all the information is in the script and the imagery contains no ideas, it doesn't mean anything. Since there's no information in the script, then the Voynich manuscript means nothing.
Okay, I must be more precise.
Imagery is to some extent meaningful. It is not an abstract art, it depicts plants, stars and naked women. I guess we all agree about that.
But I believe the pictures are frankensteins.
Plants are imaginary, built of parts of another plants.
And other pictures are frankensteins too. For example the artist stole bathing ladies from a balneology treatise and put them on a zodial wheel stolen from astrological treatise. They made sense in their original manuscripts but don't make sense together.
Or he stole Diogenes talking from a laying barrel, replaced him by a naked lady and placed on a Zodiac wheel. Diogenes in a laying barrel makes perfect sense. Naked lady in a laying barrel on a Zodiac wheel doesn't make sense.
Imagery has some meaning but these are "leftovers" of the original meaning in the original sources. Then it was all mixed up by some guy who could be 18 years old and understand about 10% of the original symbolism.
It is of course interesting and enlightening to search and find possible parallels and inspirations for VM.
And does VM has any message? Well, kind of...
1) Give me your money
2) You are fools. I tricked you.
Doctor bullatus, asinus coronatus. That's what you are
By the way, I am not 100% convinced about the above. But I would say something about 70%
I will write more about it in the future.