The Modern Forgery Hypothesis

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Just for the record, here are my probabilities for the various candidates to previous owners of Beinecke MS 408 through time:

1. Wilfrid Voynich - 99.99%
   
2. The Jesuits guarding the Kircher Carteggio - 90%
   
3. The Gregorian Pontifical University - 87%
   
4. Athanasius Kircher - 83%
   
5. Marcus Marci - 80%
   
6. Georg Baresch - 77% 
   
7. Jacobus Tepenecz - 40%
   
8. Rudolf II - 10%
   
9. Widemann - 5%
   
10. John Dee - 0.1%
    

My prob of (2) is not 100% because I still find it quite possible that Wilfrid got MS 408 from some other source, attached Marci's letter to it, and ultimately "revealed" that he bought it from the Jesuits, only in order to be able to claim that MS 408 "was probably" a Bacon Original.  

My probs decrease from (2) to (6) because I think that there is a nonzero possibility that MS 408 got substituted for the original book by mistake along all those translations.  The 3% drop per step may be too much... but may also be too little.

My prob of (7), Jacobus, is so low because I still think that there is a non-negligible prob that Wilfrid forged that signature.  He definitely had the necessary means, opportunity, motivation, ability, and lack of scruples.

My prob of Rudolf is only 20% (generously) because I read Raphael's remark in Marci's letter as just a wild guess based on hearsay of the purchase.  It would be the first Crazy Voynich Origin theory on record. (Baresch's own theory, of course, was not crazy.   )  Apart from that claim, I don't see any reason to even think that MS 408 could have been in Rudolf's library at some time.   Even if I assumed that Jacobus was indeed an owner before Baresch (that is, even if I set (7) to 100% instead of 40%).

All the best, --stolfi