The Modern Forgery Hypothesis

[proto57]

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.

You don't think that there are people who thought the Voynich was a modern fake prior to the carbon dating and then subsequent to the carbon dating changed their mind. I would have entertained the possibility that it might be a fake prior to the carbon dating, but subsequent to it I think it extremely unlikely.

Hi Mark: Well I didn't know anyone, and you answered it. Perhaps there are many others. So you did think it was a fake, of course I didn't know that. I've been "around" since 2007 or so, and have of course read mailing list and BB traffic going back to the 90's, and I can't recall anyone else who seriously considered this. There were a couple of mentions on the web, but it usually was in the form of offhand musings. There is the 1989 article by Michael Barlow in Cryptologia, but he asks it as a question, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..*

On what bases did you think it was a fake, back before the testing? Was it the illustrations, writing, the provenance, or something else? Did you think it was a modern fake or an old one? Did you think someone had used modern parchment to make it? I mean, most forgeries are made from old materials anyway, and when the results came out people were surprised at the age of the parchment. What age did you think the parchment was, and where did you think they sourced it?

I'm genuinely curious what features made you think this, and how you feel about those same features now, and why the dating of the parchment caused you to change your mind about them?

Rich