The Modern Forgery Hypothesis

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I wanted to revisit a book I mentioned in response to Rene's excellent suggestion that we learn about the case of the Archaic Mark, and that is You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

As I wrote in my listing on my You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.,

This book is unique on the subject of the forged Oath of a Freeman, as it contains the interviews of the forger and murderer Hofmann, along with essays by various experts and law enforcement people. This gives a view from the mind of the forger, the methods he used and why, and how that forgery both fooled some experts, and was discovered by others. Spoiler alert: Walter McCrone was fooled, he stated definitively it was genuine.

I also find this one of the better insights into the "process of apology" that often permeates expert opinion: On the one hand, their experience notices problems; on the other, they dismiss those problems, with prejudice. Experts often do the forger's work for them, without even realizing it.

It is a fascinating story in its own right, but it also obviates the common claim that "If the Voynich were a forgery, the experts would know". Because in this case, as in many others, forgeries are sometimes so good that it takes outside events to reveal them, such as Hofmann accidentally blowing himself up in his car in a parking lot, leading to the revelations of this murders, and then, through finding the very ingenious plates he created to print his forgery... and the perfect inks he made... the gig was (finally) up. 

Hofmann created perfect inks, which fooled McCrone. In fact, Hofmann's ink had NO anomalies, while the Voynich's does. He created false provenance by flying to New York City (or Boston? I have to read it again...), going into a bookstore, and buying an item for a few dollars, one which would elicit a description "close enough" to his forged Oath, so that he could falsely claim that he bought the latter document at the store.

And so on and so forth. One knowing this... and there are many other stories with similar elements to this... one will realize that 1) there is no practical reason to consider that the Voynich may not be, likewise, a forgery, and 2) the libraries and museums of the world are probably filled with forgeries which were just good enough to pass, because nobody accidentally blew themselves up, or whatever.