The Modern Forgery Hypothesis

[proto57]

I'd figured it just had been relegated to the dustbin of Voynich discussion.

This rarely ever happens. 
- Cheshire still thinks it is proto-Italic
- The Ardic family still thinks it is Turkish
- Jules Janick still thinks it is Meso-American
- There is a whole list of relatively basic substitution cipher solutions by people who are still convinced about them

What you say is true about those examples, Rene, but I do know of the opposite: There are a few people who have given up on a 1420 Genuine Voynich, and come to believe it is a fake. At least a half dozen or more. And a great many more than that have begun to think fake is a possibility, if not yet convinced of it, when they used to think it impossible.

I'm actually one of them, of course... having first believed the Voynich was a genuine notebook from the early 1600's.

And this is the usual pattern for most fakes: Discovery>Acceptance>Concerns>Challenges>Defense>Exposure That was the pattern of of the Vinland Map, the Howard Hughes Will, The Donation of Constantine, The Protocals of the Elders of Zion, Mussolini's Diaries, the Howard Hughes diaries, Lincoln's love letters, the White Salamander letter, Shakespeare's supposed play, "Vortigern", the Oath of a Freeman*, the list goes on and on. I personally think the Rohonc Codex will be added to the list someday, but I don't study it as closely as the Voynich (or the Vinland map), so I could be wrong.

All, like the Voynich, were accepted as genuine, for varying lengths of time, all had "problems", some more than others, all had people raising concerns, all were challenged, and eventually, all were exposed as forgeries/fakes/hoaxes or whatever.

There may be cases where people who thought the Voynich was fake at first, then changed their mind and thought came to think it was real, and old, but I haven't seen any yet.

Rich

* I think the Oath of a Freeman would still, to this day, be accepted as genuine, had the forger not accidentally blown himself up in his car. This example is, for me, a "Proof of Concept", showing us that a forgery can be made to pass all tests, and will not be revealed until and unless outside events cause it to be revealed. I'm sure there are a great many forgeries still existing in collections, which remain undetected, maybe even not questioned, because they are that good... it is just that the forger made it from cradle to grave without doing something stupid to draw attention to themselves.