01-08-2025, 10:30 AM
Much of this discussion is about opinions, and I have my own, in some cases.
I think that a good argument can be made that there is a single 'brain' behind this MS, which one can consider a single creator or author.
The 2022 conference paper of Elona Dunkin and Klaus Schmeh even put this in a historical perspective.
I trust the expert opinion that there are multiple scribes. This suggests that at most one of the scribes was also the 'author'.
Both the writing and the drawings have (at least in some places) been emended in a second pass. Whether that was within days or much later seems impossible to say. Of course, there are also ink variations simply from pen pressure and/or parchment quality, but I think these cases can be distinguished.
I am aware of one point in the MS that convinces me that it was partly written (i.e. copied) by someone who did not understand the purpose. This requires a visual demonstration, and I will do it after Sunday - still a bit busy with my talk ;-)
I think that a good argument can be made that there is a single 'brain' behind this MS, which one can consider a single creator or author.
The 2022 conference paper of Elona Dunkin and Klaus Schmeh even put this in a historical perspective.
I trust the expert opinion that there are multiple scribes. This suggests that at most one of the scribes was also the 'author'.
Both the writing and the drawings have (at least in some places) been emended in a second pass. Whether that was within days or much later seems impossible to say. Of course, there are also ink variations simply from pen pressure and/or parchment quality, but I think these cases can be distinguished.
I am aware of one point in the MS that convinces me that it was partly written (i.e. copied) by someone who did not understand the purpose. This requires a visual demonstration, and I will do it after Sunday - still a bit busy with my talk ;-)