I have to say I enjoy this thread very much, just don't have anything interesting to add to it. I definitely won't bet on VMS being a modern forgery, but I think it's less fantastic than many seem to believe. Certainly not in the flat earth category to me.
But this didn't expose the hypothetical fraud? Even though Voynich claimed this to be a Bacon's work, and some contemporary experts said it was more likely to be a later manuscript, I don't think there were any serious accusations of forgery?
I'm not an expert in forgeries, but to me the manuscript ticks a few points that could make it work well as a forgery.
1) For starters - it is extremely vague and ambiguous in almost all aspects - which enables plausible denial. You can say it's Bacon, but if someone proves it can't be Bacon, you can say, ok, it's Pico della Mirandola, and if this doesn't work either you can just say you are stumped yourself.
2) Undecipherable text. I'm not sure it is very easy to fool experts by faking a completely new work of Bacon. You have to mimic the specific style, language and take into account what knowledge was available to Bacon and what not. If this is a "ciphered MS" which for some reason can never be deciphered, all the better.
3) Vague images, which seem to support many possible interpretations.
4) Provenance that both includes some famous figures (Kircher, Rudolf) and at the same time lacks specific details, which could be found in contradiction with one another.
The main thing that makes me think MFT implausible is that, as far as I understand, the experts say all parts of the MS look genuinely old (stitching, creases, trimmings, etc) and the McCrone analysis (even if vague in some aspects, as people say) doesn't seem to show any strong evidence of a modern work.
(20-11-2025, 09:24 PM)Mauro wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But then, why choose Bacon when he knew the imagery he used was ~200 years later? Yet again, given his expertise with rare books, he knew he was going to expose his fraud. Why not choose, say, a lost work of Pico della Mirandola, from the right time period? It's weird, Voynich could not be both intelligent and expert and dumb and ignorant, I think.
But this didn't expose the hypothetical fraud? Even though Voynich claimed this to be a Bacon's work, and some contemporary experts said it was more likely to be a later manuscript, I don't think there were any serious accusations of forgery?
I'm not an expert in forgeries, but to me the manuscript ticks a few points that could make it work well as a forgery.
1) For starters - it is extremely vague and ambiguous in almost all aspects - which enables plausible denial. You can say it's Bacon, but if someone proves it can't be Bacon, you can say, ok, it's Pico della Mirandola, and if this doesn't work either you can just say you are stumped yourself.
2) Undecipherable text. I'm not sure it is very easy to fool experts by faking a completely new work of Bacon. You have to mimic the specific style, language and take into account what knowledge was available to Bacon and what not. If this is a "ciphered MS" which for some reason can never be deciphered, all the better.
3) Vague images, which seem to support many possible interpretations.
4) Provenance that both includes some famous figures (Kircher, Rudolf) and at the same time lacks specific details, which could be found in contradiction with one another.
The main thing that makes me think MFT implausible is that, as far as I understand, the experts say all parts of the MS look genuinely old (stitching, creases, trimmings, etc) and the McCrone analysis (even if vague in some aspects, as people say) doesn't seem to show any strong evidence of a modern work.