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+--- Thread: [Article] One Hand, Five Labels (/thread-5413.html)
One Hand, Five Labels - Torsten - 02-03-2026
One Hand, Five Labels:
A Critical Examination of the Five-Scribe Hypothesis for the Voynich Manuscript
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. by Torsten Timm
Quote:This paper presents a critical examination of the five-scribe hypothesis proposed for the Voynich Manuscript. The analysis suggests that the supposed distinctions between scribes may instead reflect a continuous development of a single evolving hand. It offers detailed observations on glyph forms, patterns of handwriting variation, and their broader implications for interpreting the manuscript’s text.
RE: One Hand, Five Labels - Bernd - 02-03-2026
Again, I cannot speak for the text but in my opinion, your finding is reflected in the imagery which is more consistent with a continuous evolution than different individuals. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and I find it very hard to argue that - despite obvious differences between A and B plants, these were drawn by different individuals. Consistent with your autocopy hypothesis, it looks like the artist later re-used building blocks in other plants, within and between different Hands. Similarly the quality of Hand1 plants ranges from very good to very careless ,as does the text. Style also varies from naturalistic to abstract in Hand1/A plants while B plants are more abstract which is consistent with an artist developing his own style. Yet there are some (although weak and due to the small sample size statistically problematic) differences in plants drawn by the scribal hands 3 and 5 identified by Lisa. Especially the Quire8 plants are a weird mixture with A-ish features as Koen You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. This is also reflected the the drawings of human figures.
In your model of continuous evolution, where would you place these Hand5 herbal pages, or Q8 in general?
RE: One Hand, Five Labels - dashstofsk - 02-03-2026
Thanks very much, Torsten, for another quality article. I very much agree with much of what you say.
I am still finding it difficult to accept the opinions of the experts that the first 17 lines of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. should necessarily be in a different 'hand', as discussed [ You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ].
RE: One Hand, Five Labels - Torsten - 04-03-2026
(02-03-2026, 12:52 PM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Again, I cannot speak for the text but in my opinion, your finding is reflected in the imagery which is more consistent with a continuous evolution than different individuals. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and I find it very hard to argue that - despite obvious differences between A and B plants, these were drawn by different individuals. Consistent with your autocopy hypothesis, it looks like the artist later re-used building blocks in other plants, within and between different Hands. Similarly the quality of Hand1 plants ranges from very good to very careless ,as does the text. Style also varies from naturalistic to abstract in Hand1/A plants while B plants are more abstract which is consistent with an artist developing his own style. Yet there are some (although weak and due to the small sample size statistically problematic) differences in plants drawn by the scribal hands 3 and 5 identified by Lisa. Especially the Quire8 plants are a weird mixture with A-ish features as Koen You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. This is also reflected the the drawings of human figures.
In your model of continuous evolution, where would you place these Hand5 herbal pages, or Q8 in general?
Thank you for the thoughtful observations — especially the point about the illustrations showing continuous evolution rather than distinct hands. That's a valuable independent line of evidence.
Regarding Quire 8 and Hand 5: I think there are three observations to consider.
- Davis herself described the identification of Scribe 5 as emerging from "outliers" within Scribe 3's annotations that she eventually separated into a distinct category. (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., minute 15)
- Your own observation is that the Quire 8 plants are "a weird mixture with A-ish features".
- If we look at the text, f57/f66 does not use <ed> words as heavily as other Herbal B pages — placing it closer to the A end of the spectrum than a typical B folio.
Considering all three observations together, a plausible hypothesis is that f57/f66 represents an early Herbal B folio — written at a point where the vocabulary was still transitioning from Currier A patterns, which would naturally produce both the A-ish visual features you describe and the lower frequency of <ed> words. In the continuous evolution model, Quire 8 would sit precisely at that transitional zone, which explains why it looks like an awkward mixture rather than fitting cleanly into either category.
RE: One Hand, Five Labels - LisaFaginDavis - 06-03-2026
I have responded to Torsten's critiques of my work on numerous occasions, including on this forum on several different threads, and so I'm not going to do it again. I stand by my peer-reviewed publications on this topic.