[split] Did the VM go straight from cerebellum to vellum?

[Jorge_Stolfi]

There are other additions or exceptions you could add onto the theory of multiple scribes (it's copying from an earlier text, it's a phonetic transcription, it's oral knowledge passed down) but each of these requires its own leaps in logic and speculative assumptions. If the text had multiple scribes to copy a previous text, who wrote THAT text? Was it one person? Meaning one person wrote the entirety of a Proto-Voynich Manuscript, and then later paid 5 scribes to write it again? For what purpose would someone do it this way, instead of just writing it themselves?

It would be insane to write anything on vellum straight from one's head.   It would be like writing a document today with the keyboard connected directly to the laser printer.

Vellum was expensive and difficult to erase from.  Moreover that task required an experienced hand capable of writing tiny letters neatly; something that not everyone would have. 

Thus I bet that practically every manuscript on vellum, including the VMS, including encrypted letters,  was written on (much cheaper) paper first, with all the correcting and crossinging-out that may have been necessary.  And only then this paper draft would be copied to vellum.  

And this last step was a boring mechanical task that required good "quill driving" skill but no understanding of the text.  Thus it must have been usually delegated to a secretary or more-or-less professional scribe, or to "scribal shop" (like a monastery).  

Then the VMS Author would be the person who wrote the draft, not the person(s) who put quill to vellum.  Most likely, he was only one person for the whole book.   

The Author would have to teach the Voynichese alphabet to each scribe, and have the scribe practice until he could copy it satisfactorily well.  This point argues against multiple scribes working at the same time.  But it would allow for a different scribe for each section (counting Herbal-A and Herbal-B as two sections), if they were composed by the Author in separate epochs, separated by substantial time intervals.

All the best, --stolfi