Bored, so wrote this theory because Human. --This post is kinda relevant so Admins move or remove as you deem fit
Five students have a beef with their Professor,
so they want to make a nonsense mss and totally fool him to prove to themselves he is the chump that they take him for.
They get a bargain basement batch of vellum from one of their buddies who is the son of a parchment producer.
Yes its got holes and flaws in some sheets, the sheets have differing thicknesses and havent been trimmed but its a good price for that much vellum.
They invent a Rugg+Taylor / Timm+Schinner type method add some cherries on top via grove words, Gallows top-line,paragraph start, behaviour.
Creating pseudotext is way easier than inventing a two-way method to both encode and decode text
with the bonus that if it was encoded it could be decoded and their impish knavery will be revealed,
whereas if the text is nonsense no-one will ever decode it and their dastardly schemings will forever remain hidden.
They are practised at quill writing using standard iron gall ink but not real good at it and none of them can draw very well.
At the weekends and or during boring lectures they create the vms.
Using the University library they have access to lots of books, incunabula, etc.
Starting with the Herbals , they just use the template of 'Alchemical Herbals' and combine that with some observations of local plants
and create the voynich plants.
After they have made a few herbal folios they decide to add some sections to keep it interesting and because they find the process enjoyable.
The text creation method evolves, could be thats inherent to the method or intentionally done.
They move on to the other sections using their resources and giving the zodiac, the cosmo/astro illustrations
their own little tweaks, taking bits from various sources within the theme of a section and combining them
to make something similar to but slighly different from existing sources.
--Exception is the pharma , AFAIK there is no known comtemporary illustrations of bits of plant and roots all on the same page.
After say a year of part time work, Bingo, the VMS has been created.
They show it to the Prof. along with some story about its provenance including a mysterious merchant from Egypt or some such.
The Prof. laps it up , much Lulz ensue , maybe the Prof. even purchases it from them which makes the rascally students laugh harder, ( grrrr...evil students )
and so the origin story of the Voynich Manuscript is concluded.
Later on the VMS gets rebound out of order and painted possibly by a youngster who may have made the chicken scratches as well as the slapdash painting.
Case Closed.
Except:
I want to believe...that is has meaning :hopeful emoji: