I am not convinced by the provenance history of the VMS

[Bernd]

I am not specifically claiming that it is a modern hoax by Voynich. There are also the following two possibilities that should be, in my opinion, seriously considered:

• An 18th or 19th century forgery,
  
• Parts of the VMS are forgery, others are not. What if the herbal section is genuine 15th century "magical" herbalism, like in the second half of MS 02.48, while the pharma section, which is written in a totally different hand and features what appears to be 18th century microscopes, were added later as a forgery?
  

While I agree the provenance is shaky, it has already been pointed out that this is fairly normal for medieval manuscripts. I see no serious evidence that the VM is not a 15th century work and I think this still remains a more parsimonious hypothesis compared to being an 18th century+ forgery.

I would categorically rule out that the VM was 'expanded' by a hoaxer. Lisa has told us that there is no difference in parchment quality. There also are no hard breaks in the VM, even between scribal hands. A forger would have needed extensive knowledge of Voynichese beyond our current understanding to forge an entire section. Furthermore the art style shows gradual development. While Balneo imagery may be especially weird (due to a weird Taccola source?), it contains elements such as faces identical to Astro (which in turn contains highly similar faces as in faces in Cosmo and Pharma and even some plants) and decoration and building blocks that can equally be found in all other sections, including plants. I doubt that even a highly skilled and motivated forger could have emulated the VM text and imagery in this way. There also is a lack of motive for such endeavor. I believe there is ample evidence that the VM was created by or under the supervision of one person. All VM imagery relays the same odd 'mindset', and so does the entire text, regardless of scribal hand.