The Modern Forgery Hypothesis

[rikforto]

As for the patterns detected in the writing of the Voynich, by many and varied tests, yes some have detected "language-like" patterns. But two things about that: If there is meaning in the Voynich, it is not a sign of genuine, as most forgeries actually have meaning... think of the Protocals of the Elders of Zion, the Howard Hughes will, the Oath of a Freeman, the Diary of Hitler... and on and on. Yet I've seen several people in lectures, and in writing, incorrectly equating meaning=genuine in the Voynich.

I chose my wording carefully to indicate that I felt this held even if it were a fake and there was no underlying plain text. This differs from many of the examples you give; there is no need to explain what Russian is or why the Protocols are written in it to make sense of the forgery---though I am given to understand there were linguistic lines of evidence to establish it was unlikely the product of any Jewish group. For the VMS, there are looming questions like: who are the hands (are they all Voynich?), why are the languages separable but similar, how was the text actually composed? These don't necessarily have to be resolved to consider the MFH proved on other grounds, but my point remains that so long as they aren't, they are serious loose ends that bear serious consideration.

If pressed on the matter, I do think if it is a meaningful text then it is more likely to be genuine in this case, if only because it's proved a very crafty cipher that was well ahead of even the 20th Century's huge increase in cryptographic tools and know-how, and that's such an incongruous choice if Voynich's goal was to cash in on a newfound Bacon. But I offer that not because I think that clinches the argument so much as I think it shows Stolfi's point that I thought was inadequately addressed when I first jumped into this discussion. Multiple features of the text need to be explained, and this hypothesis does not, as of yet, fully explain them.