VMs: Re: Barachias

[Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

    > [Prof. Miller(?):] There is no connection between your man
    > Baresch and the Barachias [Nephi] of the Peiresc and Kircher
    > correspondence. That name refers to a fictitious rabbi of the
    > 9th century that Kircher invented to cover over his fabrication
    > of a key to hieroglyphics.

Ohmy!

Notice that the manuscript, Marci's "cover letter", and all the
original letters that mention Georg Baresch and/or the VMS were found
among Kircher's correspondence at PUG...

...so here is Voynich Theory 12,332-B: not only the VMS, but also all
those letters, were faked by Kircher himself!  And Georg Baresch is no
more real than Rabbi Barachias!

This theory explains a lot of things, e.g. the ludicrous laudatory
comments about Kircher contained in those letters. How obvious:
that is just Kircher praising himself!

And how about the Chinese theory, you ask? Well, Kircher himself wrote
a book about China ("China Illustrata", 1678), and he even got help on
that from a Christian Chinese native, who was called Matthew and lived
in Rome. So there you have it: the VMS was created by Matthew reading
aloud some Chinese text, which Kircher wrote down in a new Universal
Alphabet which he invented one day over breakfast. The purpose? Well,
consider the barely disguised price-pumping ad on the cover ("an
Emperor once paid 600 ducats for this book"), spiced up by a hint at
Bacon's authorship...

All the best,

--stolfi ;-)

PS. If you got an error while trying to access my Voynich site, please
try again the next day, and the next, and.... 

Unfortunately our main servers are literally falling apart, and now
are down 90% of the time. We have just been reassured that the
upgrades which we bought six months ago will be installed "as soon as
possible"... 8-(