[split] Rich SantaColoma's comments to Lisa Fagin Davis

[LisaFaginDavis]

I've studied the VMS and the Marci letter in person on several occasions, and I have identified forgeries in other contexts. I haven't seen anything that makes me suspect the VMS and the Marci letter aren't authentic. In the end you are welcome to believe what you believe, of course. But what is more likely? That Wilfrid Voynich found some old parchment, mixed inks and pigments according to medieval recipes, invented a writing system with identifiable patterns in two different "languages", established five different ways of writing that system (the five scribes, that is), faked wormholes, binding holes, evidence of rebinding, evidence of later annotations and use, and forged the Marci letter to go with it? Or that the manuscript was written in the early fifteenth century and bears the scars of six hundred years of history? I have to go with the latter.