Why is the MS not a copy of older, non European sources?

[-JKP-]

What nobody ever seems to consider is the possibility that the illustrations are more recent than the text.  ...

I've considered it many times but the evidence (text accommodating the imagery rather than the imagery accommodating the text) appears to lean toward the drawings being there first. There are examples pointing in this direction on almost every page.

In fact, in at least one place, the last letter of a vord was left out when it butted up against a picture, a letter that would be expected under most circumstances (just as dain always has the swooped back tail at the end, if you saw it without the tail where it was running into a drawing, the likelihood is that the picture was there first).