Authenticity
Most of the scholars that specialize in the field of mythological studies and Slavic linguistics (such as Boris Rybakov, Andrey Zaliznyak, Leo Klein and all Russian academic historians and linguists) consider it a forgery. According to these scholars the thorough analysis of the book shows that it was written sometime in the 20th century. The history of the book can be reliably traced only as far as mid-1950s, when the transcribed book and the photograph of one of the planks first appeared in a San Francisco-based, Russian émigré newspaper. Several scholars believe that the entire book is a product of collaboration of the editors of this newspaper and Yuriy Mirolyubov, who later claimed to have found the book. Others believe that either the entire book or the only plank available, were forged in the early 19th century by the Russian collector and forger Alexander Sulakadzev.
The book is written in a language using for the most part Slavic roots and different affixes found also in old East Slavic language. Consequently, a large part of the book's text, once transcribed into a modern alphabet, is readable (albeit with some difficulty) by modern speakers of Slavic languages. However, professional linguists and historians, particularly the specialists in ancient Slavic, question many features of its language — vocabulary (modern or medieval Slavic words occasionally and unwittingly used in place of their ancient equivalents), spelling, phonetics (distinct reflections of the nasal vowels, both following Polish and Serbian patterns in different places, the haphazard handling of reduced vowels, etc., etc.), grammar (grammatical forms incompatible with early Slavic languages, combinations of affixes that contradict each other in meaning), etc. These features seem to indicate that the text was artificially "aged" by someone with superficial knowledge of ancient Slavic, and cannot be adequately translated because of lack of any consistent grammar system. In the words of the philologist O.V. Tvorogov:
This analysis leads us to a definite conclusion: we are dealing with an artificial language, "invented" by a person unacquainted with the history of Slavic languages and one who could not create his own language system.
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The opponents of this position claim, however, that the problems with language could be attributed to local dialect variations (if the book was written or compiled from accounts of multiple people, as it is claimed by its supporters). The alphabet of the book is also a controversial issue, since the book was written using an alphabet similar to Cyrillic, and the letters are attached to a horizontal line like in Devanagari. The very existence of written language among Slavs prior to the introduction of Cyrillic during 10th century is still disputed.
In addition, the supposed deity Belobog (white god) is not attested in any reliable source, while Crnobog (black god) appears to be a Christian mis-interpretation - possibly deliberately inflated and confounded with the Devil; it is only attested by a single source discussing an account of West Slavic (not Russian Slavic) paganism, based on secondhand knowledge and dating to the Christianization of the Slavs. The existence of these supposed deities which are invoked by name in the inscription was uncritically believed in modern times, until the late 20th century. Nowadays however, at least Belobog is generally considered a modern hoax itself, while Crnobog - if not a byname of another deity - is rarely if ever accepted by scholars as anything than a local West Slavic deity, and the idea of light/dark dualism is usually regarded as a Christian concept unknown in pagan Slavic culture (see also Perun/Perkele and Dabog/Dažbog).
Read more about this topic: Book Of Veles