24-08-2026, 11:04 AM
(23-08-2026, 10:57 PM)oshfdk wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Suppose every single word of what Voynich said about the manuscript was made up, the signature forged and the letter sourced separately. Does this really change a lot? This is genuine ~15 century parchment, judging by the images this manuscript was created in Europe, looking at wear and tear and insect holes going through the ink, the writing appears to be old too.
I agree.
Quote:What would materially change if the provenance story is wrong? There are of course hopes that tracing the provenance further in time would answer a lot of questions, but as it stands now, the provenance doesn't affect our reasoning about what the manuscript is and how to approach it.
But the Standard Provenance theory is affecting the reasoning of many people, because it makes it seem likely that the VMS was made in Central Europe (not just by an European scribe).
Could it have been created in Constantinople or Yerevan or Samarkand by an European scribe? Or by a local scribe who was used to writing in Greek or Armenian or Glagolitic but in paragraph format like European scribes did? Currently, most people would consider that unlikely, because it seems unlikely that a manuscript produced in those places could have been sold to Rudolf in Prague by ~1590.
But suppose that Wilfrid in fact did not get the VMS from the Jesuits, but instead obtained it from some other source; and then faked Jacobus's "signature". and falsely claimed that Marci's letter had been attached to it. Then that objection above would disappear.
Quote:Marci, Baresch, Kircher appeared to be as clueless about the manuscript they talked about as we are about the Voynich Manuscript.
That is a weak argument for the provenance. There were hundreds of thousands of manuscripts that would have left them equally clueless.
All the best, --stolfi
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