Speculative fraud hypothesis

[proto57]

My chief problem with most hoax theories is that the amount of effort required makes the proposition that it was made as a hoax to fool someone gullible out of money stupid: a fraudulent actor simply finds someone more gullible to con, not spend a year's worth of scribing effort to create a fraudulent artifact. Such forgeries do happen, but when the amount of money thus received is tremendous - like an art forgery. The manuscript, to my mind, doesn't fit this criteria.

Wilfrid Voynich did hope to make a great deal of money from the manuscript. Early on he offered Newbold 10% "of the first $100,000", and I think 50% of anything over that, if Newbold's Roger Bacon attribution stuck. $100,000 in 1920 would be worth $1,673,823.83 today. Hans Kraus wrote that Voynich had wanted $160,000 for it (maybe he knew this through Anne? I forget how), and that would be worth $2,987,727.17, if Voynich came up with the latter figure in 1925.

Both would have been a great deal of money, and a great incentive for forgery. Even if it took a year or two of laborious effort, there are few people who would turn down between $1.6 and $2.9 million dollars to do it. But in reality it probably only took about two months or so.

Dexdex I'm not dismissing your alternate possible scenario, that does make sense. But making the Voynich as a hoax for outright sale, either for 600 Ducats in 1420 or 1588, or for $100,000 in 1910, that kind of money would pay for a huge "amount of effort", even if required.