J. Janick interpretations of the VMS...

[Emma May Smith]

I guess R.Sale does not put the carbon dating under suspision, but he speaks about the MS having been written on old stock vellum. As I recall, there are counter-arguments to that in terms of style, in particular the marginalia style, aren't there?

It doesn't need a counter-argument. The probability of unused parchment being kept for decades is so low that we can safely ignore it. Even if you can find examples of unused parchment, that will never negate the fact that most was used shortly after manufacture. The Voynich manuscript was found before carbon dating was thing, so nobody would have thought to 'fake' a date with old parchment. And what is the possibility of a bizarre manuscript such as the Voynich just "happening" to be written on old parchment?

Let me put it another way. The Voynich manuscript could have been written in Nahuatl because an unrecorded sailor went to America before 1450 and made the manuscript then. I've no proof, but it could have happened, therefore we should discuss this hypothesis. Let me show you all the ships from the early 1400s which could have crossed the Atlantic! I don't know which one did, but if one of them could have made the journey, then you can't discount my theory. Of course, we've never heard of this sailor, but that's because he encrypted his journey in an obscure language with a invented script...