The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Jorge_Stolfi]

I think the concern is that removing the flavor/temperature and provenance text, the structure of the SBJ becomes a lot more generic. With them in place, the text would have an easily discernible structure that the SPS doesn't have. Without them, it looks a lot like any list of discrete entries, with a rare or unique starting word and then a body of more common words.  Being able to remove distinctive  structural elements of the text is a degree of freedom allowed to the one trying to make a match, even of those cuts are plausibly justifiable.

Well, the VMS text is what it is.  Whatever the Author did, we can solve the puzzle only if we correctly infer or guess what he did, and act accordingly.

I think that one of the reasons why 100+ years of Voynichoscopy produced no results was the mistaken conclusion that the language was "European", because of the clearly European materials and illustration styles.  But an even stronger reason was the conviction (indirectly based on the previous one) that the text was encrypted.   

From that second conviction followed the tacit assumptions that (1) the text had a simple history: there was a plaintext, the Author carefully applied an encryption algorithm to it, and the result is what we see; and (2) the puzzle has a neat and simple solution: find the encryption algorithm, apply it in reverse, and that is it.

But in fact the VMS was the result of an unusual, complicated, and messy process, and then was modified several times by complicated steps, and accumulated many errors and distortions along the way.  It seems that people stil refuse to admit this, even just as a possibility.

It was only recently that people began to accept the idea that the Author did not create the VMS directly "brain to vellum", and instead there was a draft that was copied to vellum by a somewhat incompetent Scribe who could not read the text.  But it seems that most people still assume that the color paints are original, that the month names and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. were written at the same time as the rest of the text, and there were no changes or correction after that.  

Yet I see clear evidence that most of the text and large parts of the drawings were carefully retraced at some point, decades or centuries after the original scribing, because the original ink had faded to the point of being invisible; and then retouched again here and there, with much less care, by another owner.  And then the color paints were applied by yet another owner.  With more errors added at each of these steps.

And, because of the SPS=SBJ find, I believe that the draft itself was created by a very messy process of phonetic transcription from a Chinese book, by an Author who had only an imperfect understanding of it, and then copied by him at least once before being given to the Scribe.

Thus I am convinced that, even if my evidence for SPS=SBJ turns out to be a pile of incredible random coincidences, the solution to this puzzle will not be neat and simple, like cracking a typical cryptogram.  It will be more like deciphering a lost language like Etruscan or Minoan form a bunch of damaged inscriptions or fragmented clay tablets.  It will be a sequence of small partial decipherment steps, stretching over decades or centuries...

All the best, --stolfi