The Modern Forgery Hypothesis

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Why did that author randomly write a latin month name instead of french? Why did that dutch writer use a 4/6 split? We will never know. But I imagine that both scribes were used to writing/using latin in their work, which may have caused them to write latin by mistake, or absent mindedly.

Yes, in my opinion, the fact that these are "language X and Latin" would be explainable as you have... that is, most scribes and scholar were, at the time, familiar with both their native language plus Latin, whereas I think less likely to switch between several other non-Latin languages, as we see in the Voynich month names. But of course that is my opinion, I cannot say it will never be found.

My personal preference leans to "rare, currently unattested dialect". Yes, there is currently no proof that such an exact dialect existed, but we know that many unique dialects did exist. We are constantly finding new, interesting, otherwise-unattested forms, and going forward we will likely continue to find them as there seems to be a large pool of them undiscovered. Due to this, I find it entirely possible that the VMS forms may be found amongst them given enough searching.

I do obviously see the issue here in that neither can be disproven, and I could always say "well, we haven't found it yet". This is true, but even if the forms are never found it is entirely possible that they existed and then were lost to history, like 100s of other unique dialects have been. It is arguably what we should expect from such a dialect, so it completely normal if it is the case and not proof of forgery.

Therefore, the best I can give you is that the month names are consistent with what we would expect from a genuine, obscure, potentially lost dialect -or a mistaken mixing of 2 languages- but they are not proof of the VMS being genuine. I would say that the lack of attestation for a full sequence is not evidence of forgery either, as many otherwise-unattested sequences exist as well.

Hi Roe Spawn: I started here with your conclusion(s), but of course the various cases used by you to arrive at this is in the post before.

Thank you for your carefully thought out research and candid responses, first of all. I value seeing the thought process and chain of reasoning of those who have different opinions than I do, probably more than the opinions themselves. The "why" is more important that the "what" someone thinks.

I have heard this basic premise you describe, that this or that evidence or like example probably, or may exist, or may have existed, and really there is no counter to that, because it is strictly true. There could always be that bit of evidence, that we may or my not ever find, which would then support one contention or another. This has been used many times in the Voynich field, and is, in fact, the very reason we all search deeper and deeper for more evidence... hoping that nugget may turn up.

Lisa has used this a couple of times, in discussions with me and others. One case that stands out is the anomaly, and possible (to me probable) gross anachronism of the use of foldouts in the Voynich. There simply is no other example from the time revealed by the C14 tests. Yes, "accordion type" prayer books, bound small and meant to be carried on sashes or whatever, for portability and accessibility. Also, there are rare examples of unbound folded panels "tucked" into some books, for astrological charts and medical information, and so on. But as used in the Voynich, bound in, no. These foldouts are used, here, to offer a larger surface in order to display like information over a greater area, and are part of the book. I think it is at least 150 or more before this method appeared anywhere else.

And Lisa is technically correct in explaining... paraphrasing here... that since only about 10% of all manuscripts are assumed to have survived down to us, today, a similar use of foldouts, this early, may have existed among that missing 90%, and therefore we cannot actually say that this use is really anomalous. Of course that is true.

But I don't know if you saw my response to that or not, but my argument is that in science, we rely greatly on the practice of "sampling" to gauge the likelihood, or not, of any element in an hypothesis. I mean, say we want to know the acidity of soil in a farm. We don't truck millions of yards of soil into the lab, we take a flurry of random samples from representative points, then test those, and come to a reasonable conclusion as to what the overall Ph of the soil is for the whole farm.

Now whether or not one considers the results from this 10% sampling we have for "all manuscripts" reliable in any particular case, that would be up to to the individual observer, and perhaps various common-sense applications of what we are looking for. In the case of the foldouts, I do disagree with Lisa and others that 10% is insufficient evidence that foldouts were not created in this era, while admitting that, no, until and unless every last of the remaining 90% turned up, I could not claim I knew, empirically, that at least one other does not exist.

But also, in my opinion, there are other factors to this: Off the top of my head... 1) Foldouts are cool, and might tend to survive over manuscripts without them, 2) it is often claimed that in the 15th century, parchment was very expensive, thus resisting the use of them, 3) to my knowledge, not only do they not exist from the 15th century, they are also not described, 4) It might sound circular, and could be to some extent, but that anachronistic foldouts "just happen" to be in a manuscript with dozens of other suspected and real anachronisms in the style, illustrations, and construction is to me, too much of a coincidence to accept as normal, 5) and that none of the remaining 10% likewise contain these other anomalies and anachronisms further makes it unlikely that there is a missing, coincident example among the missing 90%. I think there would be more, but this is off the top of my head: the point being, the simple math of this 10/90 ratio is to me not enough to at least not seriously favor that the entire manuscript is anomalous and anachronistic enough to actually be far newer than claimed.

So in response to your points here, I fully agree that it is absolutely possible that among the so far unexamined, and if not ever found, among the many missing other manuscripts, some "similar enough" example may exist, or have existed, which might help support that the month name conundrum as found in the Voynich is not alone, and does have some other explanation than my own. It is therefore a matter of one weighing the relative importance in the totality of all we know, in order to come up with our own differing opinions as to what conclusions we might draw from this.