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How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

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• How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

• How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

  Koen G > 29-11-2025, 05:01 PM

  I'm curious to see how the opinions are divided on the matter of "how many scribes". I like to know this, since for example in a video I might say "the majority view is...", but I need to know whether my impression of the majority view is correct.
  
  This is an anonymous poll, vote for the answer you think is most likely. No need to take the opinions of others into account, nor to be absolutely certain. Just vote how you feel. Discussion in the thread is allowed, of course.
  
  It is only about the main text of the manuscript, so ignore all marginalia, month names, page numbers etc etc. Also ignore any Authors or Masterminds or other background figures. Count only the people who put Voynichese to parchment.

• RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

  RobGea > 29-11-2025, 05:23 PM

  Honestly, i cannot tell.  Sure, some of it is neater than other bits, but as whether more than 1 person wrote it, then i go with Currier and LFD.
  Edit:
  Oops, sorry, i clicked a bit fast. I voted for "more than 2"  when in retrospect i should have voted for the "I don't know anything ..." option.

• RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

  oshfdk > 29-11-2025, 05:47 PM

  I voted for "more than 2", because this is my answer to the question as it is posed. But since I was arguing for a possibility of one person solutions, I'll elaborate.
  
  I can't exclude any number in particular. This could be a single person who had too much time on their hands. But I also have a pet hypothesis that the center of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. shows the production team of the manuscript and this is some kind of "credits" or "circular signature" thing. Maybe even including the alphabet as written by each of the authors, hence 4x17 feature. Two of the authors hid their faces, and two are shown openly, maybe because they are not afraid of prosecution for some reason. Or maybe these two shown persons are dead, and the authors are two persons whose faces are not shown.
  
  So, I'd say my probabilities are 20% for a single author and 80% for more than 1 author with the peak probability at 4 authors.

• RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

  Bluetoes101 > 29-11-2025, 05:53 PM

  majority/expert opinion.
  
  This is mine^

• RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

  Koen G > 29-11-2025, 06:08 PM

  It's interesting that by some opinions being expressed more vocally than others, one can get a warped view on the situation.

• RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

  rikforto > 29-11-2025, 06:09 PM

  I voted more than two with the big caveat that I am open to the A-cluster and B-cluster hands being one scribe each separated by a significant timespan. I know from personal experience that one's handwriting can change immensely over time---you can see in my notebooks where I learned Japanese and where I learned Korean because both mark a huge shift in my Latin handwriting---and there was a lot of debate about good scripts in early 14th Century Italy. But even then, there might be 3 scribes over 5 hands, it's all very uncertain

• RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

  oshfdk > 29-11-2025, 06:16 PM

  I wonder what would be the result for "do you think it is a real possibility that the manuscript has only one author". For this one I would vote yes.

• RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

  Koen G > 29-11-2025, 06:43 PM

  (29-11-2025, 06:16 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I wonder what would be the result for "do you think it is a real possibility that the manuscript has only one author". For this one I would vote yes.

  
  I would expect overwhelming "yes" there, since even Lisa likes to say that everything remains possible - just not everything is equally likely.

• RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

  oshfdk > 29-11-2025, 07:22 PM

  (29-11-2025, 06:43 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I would expect overwhelming "yes" there, since even Lisa likes to say that everything remains possible - just not everything is equally likely.

  
  Then probably there was some misunderstanding on my part in the other thread, where you said the most conservative estimation was "at least two scribes", which I read as "there ought to be two or more scribes, certainly not fewer", with "conservative" meaning "the least challenged position" (which for me would be the trivial "there was at least one scribe"). But probably the meaning was something like "the most likely scenario is two or more scribes"?

• RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

  Koen G > 29-11-2025, 08:40 PM

  Well, I'm just differentiating between things that are possible and things I find the most likely. When handwriting variation like this is found in different manuscripts, the standard assumption is multiple scribes. Which happens very often, by the way. Number of hands is one of the categories you'll often encounter in catalogue descriptions. 
  
  Standard assumption does not mean "I see absolutely no scenario where this is the case".
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