copy of an older, barely legible manuscript?

[oshfdk]

Oh my God, no, I'm not that far yet... I'm still in the herbal section—and I'm still a long way from claiming to have a viable solution. I've failed too many times for that... and I'm not one for quick fixes.  I have to prove the code to myself first... I think you understand that...

I was just interested in whether the theory that the duplications could have arisen from a series of possible variants really makes sense.

I don't know. But this might work in the context of Stolfi's Reader-Author-Scribe scenario, if either the Author couldn't always perfectly represent phonetically what the Reader was saying and decided to include several variants to figure it out later. Or the scribe had to copy a draft that they couldn't read perfectly, and so decided to include several variants when the original wasn't clear.