13-01-2026, 12:52 PM
And going back to the original question - yes I think it may be a hoax. I haven't spend so much times as others with VM, just about 4 years, but I have my opinion.
And I believe that the hoax hypothesis will be gaining momentum, unless someone comes out of the blue and cracks it which I give low chance unfortunately.
I feel that people are a bit tired of banging their heads against the wall for so many years. If there was a meaning then they would get it. If there was a meaning then William Friedman and his team would get it. They were routinely breaking modern German and Japanese war ciphers.
Would anyone living in the 1400s be really able to create something so both anachronistic and perfect, better than anything else created before let's say 1950?
Of course you must be careful with the "hoax" word. As I wrote in other thread recently there are two independent issues:
- is the text meaningful?
- when it was created?
When speaking about "hoax" people often mean that it must have been created around the year 1600 for emperor Rudolf or around 1900 by Voynich himself.
But there is another possibility, closest for me, that is a genuine thing from 1400s but still a hoax.
It would mean that it was deliberately designed to cheat people. To make them think that it contains some extremely rare and valuable wisdom while in fact it contains nothing.
And I believe that the hoax hypothesis will be gaining momentum, unless someone comes out of the blue and cracks it which I give low chance unfortunately.
I feel that people are a bit tired of banging their heads against the wall for so many years. If there was a meaning then they would get it. If there was a meaning then William Friedman and his team would get it. They were routinely breaking modern German and Japanese war ciphers.
Would anyone living in the 1400s be really able to create something so both anachronistic and perfect, better than anything else created before let's say 1950?
Of course you must be careful with the "hoax" word. As I wrote in other thread recently there are two independent issues:
- is the text meaningful?
- when it was created?
When speaking about "hoax" people often mean that it must have been created around the year 1600 for emperor Rudolf or around 1900 by Voynich himself.
But there is another possibility, closest for me, that is a genuine thing from 1400s but still a hoax.
It would mean that it was deliberately designed to cheat people. To make them think that it contains some extremely rare and valuable wisdom while in fact it contains nothing.