The Modern Forgery Hypothesis

[eggyk]

Hi Eggo (do you have Eggo frozen waffles where you live?):

No, I don't think so 

1) Moved the goalposts: I have practically told you what Voynich put in his coffee in the cafe he loved to stop at on his way over to the BNF, and what he and Mr. Grunel were wearing in their chat in Leon's book binding shop, that rainy morning in Joot, or Jost, while discussing Voynich's cut would be, should he unload the Lives of the Martyrs to Greene, and the Hours to Walters. I mean, it is clear I have more than fulfilled the terms of my Voynich Theorem #1... heck I wrote the damned thing, and purposefully didn't put it anything near the levels you now insist on before you accept it has been met!

I'm really not trying to move goalposts at all. I accepted outright that most forms in the VMS meet your theorem. I apologise if I didn't make that clear.

As for points 2-7, they are deliberately discussing a related, but different matter: the likelihood that the forms (that fit the theorem) would have been seen and used by Voynich. The hypothetical scenario was crafted to give a favourable chance to him coming across the month name forms before choosing to use them later. The idea of it was this: if it would have still been unlikely in such a crafted scenario, then other scenarios where he saw fewer manuscripts and fewer such sources would be even more unlikely. But it would also mean that any scenario where he would have seen more sources would make it more likely. 

I was not saying that he actually sought out such examples or actually did specific research on medieval french name forms - it was just the premise of the hypothetical. The same scenario would work by saying he had a particular interest in expensive/sought after books of hours, or that he happened to view 1000s of french sources; i'm not assigning any actual motive to the actual Voynich.

Saying "he could have found them in the first 5 minutes" requires an acceptance of your theorem, because it admits that those forms did exist in places accessible to Voynich, and we have no way of knowing what he looked at exactly, or why.

Why would one calendar have to have "all of these forms" to have had him use them? And anyway, by asking that question, you actually have buttressed my point #3, above... as you are by using it, unwittingly emphasizing that it would be unusual, and hence unlikely, to even find "all five forms" on one document... exactly my point! It an anomaly to find them all together, and is evidence of forgery.

The "one-of-a kind calendar with all of these forms" comment was for the same purpose as the "first 5 minutes" statement I explained above. Just a way of saying "regardless of how likely or unlikely I think it was, its entirely possible he could have found the (theorem-conforming) forms easily".

I disagree that the anomaly of finding the month forms together represents evidence of a forgery. I actually don't see it as evidence of anything in particular. Given what we see so far there is no evidence of that mixing practice in genuine manuscripts. So in my opinion: 
- Such mixing is not evident in known manuscripts, and so is either completely unique or very unusual
- A forger trying to produce a believable manuscript would surely know this, so using a mix represents a huge risk to the forgery's credibility

So to be clear, based on this variable I am not saying that the manuscript is not a forgery, and I am not saying the manuscript is genuine either. Both have pros and cons with regard to this, and both theories have issues in explaining this anomaly for certain.

No matter they are all different spellings and in several different languages and from hundreds of miles and possibly years apart, but in the same hand made with the same ink at the same time... no, I must prove Voynich himself actually saw each particular example you all found?

That being said, I actually strive to have my standards for evidence set high, yet find it rich that they are set impossibly and illogically high for forgery, while genuine skates along with wishes and maybes.

No, of course i'm not expecting you to prove that, or even try to prove that. As you rightly say, that would be an impossibly high standard to request. I'm just laying out what I think on the matter. There is no "prove he saw them or it wasn't a forgery" going on here (from me, at least). 

The only two forms that truly puzzle me are yong and iollet, because neither have been found yet by anyone. We have both admitted that this represents an issue that requires explaining in some way. Both genuine and forgery theories can try to explain these in some other way anyway, so even that isn't a 'gotcha' for either overarching theory. 

But -as far as we know- they are forms that do not fit the theorem, at least not yet. If we ever properly find either, it's entirely possible that it will be in a source that was accessible to voynich. It is also possible that we will find something later, instead of in the 15-16th century. Time will hopefully tell.   

Possibly, but I don't necessarily agree this was the case. Well, at least that the difference between those two possibles, as sources, is unknowable. I do not know how deep into Gruel's collection Voynich read, nor how many hours he spent in libraries. But I think I can safely speculate that he spent a very good chunk of his life in libraries of all kinds, and as I suggested above, his head was probably filled to overflowing with a veritable alphabet soup of almost every character and word known to man, and each in every style. And I think it entirely reasonable and common nonsensical that he, as really almost anyone can, drew from his memories and experiences of them all.

I believe that we are broadly on the same page then. Neither of us know for certain what he had access to, but it was a lot. I appreciate the answer on how accessible the BNF would have been, as I genuinely didn't know. I just meant that if the forms were present in sources strongly linked to Voynich personally -such as the manuscript he personally got involved with to sell- that would be far more convincing to me personally. 

It would be, I would say, an unlikely coincidence. 

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Seperately, out of interest, if we were to find a genuine manuscript with the same french+german sequence found in the VMS, and that manuscript was not yet uncovered/discovered before 1912, what would you think of that?

For me, there are two ways I could go: 
1) The unusual VMS has a sequence attested in a genuine manuscript that voynich didn't see, so the VMS is likely genuine
or
2) If we find a second example, there were likely many many more examples out there, which means Voynich may have seen one of the others