I'm not that much concerned with the provenance and the vellum dating, so I wasn't triggered by these inaccuracies (frankly, while I caught the wrong century, I just went huh? when you mentioned King Philip, but couldn't remember the right name at all).
My general approach to researching the VMS is first to assume that people that have been working in various lines of investigation knew what they were doing, and if they haven't found anything that would "crack" the Voynich mystery so far, then I should look elsewhere. My attitude towards Voynich is that this is a real object with some ink writing and drawings that could have been made by some alchemist or some crackpot or Santa Clause or little green men or Voynich himself, doesn't really matter as long as there are some rules and principles telling which sequences of glyphs to write.
Having said that, your post makes a lot of assumptions, that I feel are unwarranted:
> If it were a working document for someone who could actually understand it, it became unusable when they died.
Unless they told someone how to read it. But eventually this information was lost, this is true.
> So, where would someone salt away a useless manuscript for two hundred years only to have someone come along and acquire it because they know their boss, the king likes this kind of stuff.
Cupboard? Literally, you could keep it anywhere. Given it was partially eaten by the worms that attacked its old (presumably) wooden cover, I suppose at least for some part of its history (pre-Rudolph or afterwards) it was just tucked away somewhere and neglected.
> Would a commoner, or anybody but clergy or royalty be afforded the luxury of having something archived for a century or two?
"Archived" as in "kept in the attic" - easily. It could have been lost and rediscovered this way a few times. Would actually explain very well why no information of provenance was kept and passed over together with the MS.
> Who would even want it? Were encrypted books a thing back then? Puzzles without a key get thrown in the fire.
Pre-internet time was different. I remember keeping various odd books and magazines, that I didn't need, just because I knew that I wouldn't be able to easily find them again if I lost them. I cannot reliably imagine what it would be like living in the 15th-16th century, but I suppose I'd keep the VMS if I stumbled upon it. It does look curious.
> Forum members have shared numerous illustrations suggesting that the VM was largely copied from other and better works.
With all due respect to Koen and Marco and other researches working with images, but no. I haven't yet seen a single piece of strong evidence suggesting that any part of VMS was copied from any other known work.
> If manuscript was for personal use, the rough and ready finish would be understandable, the perfection in the script is just that, too perfect.
What do you mean by the perfection in the script?
> I think if it was a recipe book, where are the numbers?
Some people think it's all numbers
Really hard to tell what it is with no ability to read it.
My general approach to researching the VMS is first to assume that people that have been working in various lines of investigation knew what they were doing, and if they haven't found anything that would "crack" the Voynich mystery so far, then I should look elsewhere. My attitude towards Voynich is that this is a real object with some ink writing and drawings that could have been made by some alchemist or some crackpot or Santa Clause or little green men or Voynich himself, doesn't really matter as long as there are some rules and principles telling which sequences of glyphs to write.
Having said that, your post makes a lot of assumptions, that I feel are unwarranted:
> If it were a working document for someone who could actually understand it, it became unusable when they died.
Unless they told someone how to read it. But eventually this information was lost, this is true.
> So, where would someone salt away a useless manuscript for two hundred years only to have someone come along and acquire it because they know their boss, the king likes this kind of stuff.
Cupboard? Literally, you could keep it anywhere. Given it was partially eaten by the worms that attacked its old (presumably) wooden cover, I suppose at least for some part of its history (pre-Rudolph or afterwards) it was just tucked away somewhere and neglected.
> Would a commoner, or anybody but clergy or royalty be afforded the luxury of having something archived for a century or two?
"Archived" as in "kept in the attic" - easily. It could have been lost and rediscovered this way a few times. Would actually explain very well why no information of provenance was kept and passed over together with the MS.
> Who would even want it? Were encrypted books a thing back then? Puzzles without a key get thrown in the fire.
Pre-internet time was different. I remember keeping various odd books and magazines, that I didn't need, just because I knew that I wouldn't be able to easily find them again if I lost them. I cannot reliably imagine what it would be like living in the 15th-16th century, but I suppose I'd keep the VMS if I stumbled upon it. It does look curious.
> Forum members have shared numerous illustrations suggesting that the VM was largely copied from other and better works.
With all due respect to Koen and Marco and other researches working with images, but no. I haven't yet seen a single piece of strong evidence suggesting that any part of VMS was copied from any other known work.
> If manuscript was for personal use, the rough and ready finish would be understandable, the perfection in the script is just that, too perfect.
What do you mean by the perfection in the script?
> I think if it was a recipe book, where are the numbers?
Some people think it's all numbers
Really hard to tell what it is with no ability to read it.
![[+]](https://www.voynich.ninja/images/collapse_collapsed.png)