{"id":1552,"date":"2026-11-13T02:09:10","date_gmt":"2026-11-13T02:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/the-counters-of-the-torah-and-the-three-scrolls-of-the-temple-court\/"},"modified":"2026-11-14T01:16:42","modified_gmt":"2026-11-14T01:16:42","slug":"the-counters-of-the-torah-and-the-three-scrolls-of-the-temple-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/the-counters-of-the-torah-and-the-three-scrolls-of-the-temple-court\/","title":{"rendered":"The Counters of the Torah and the Three Scrolls of the Temple Court"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Somewhere in Babylonia, among the sages of the Talmud, a teacher named Rav Yosef asked a question that sounds at first like a riddle. His teachers had handed down a set of numbers about the Torah. The vav of the word ga\u1e25on<\/em>, \u201cbelly,\u201d in the list of creeping things in Leviticus 11:42, was the middle letter of the whole scroll; the words darosh darash<\/em>, \u201cdiligently inquired,\u201d in Leviticus 10:16 were the middle of its words; and the verse that begins \u201cThen he shall be shaven,\u201d Leviticus 13:33, was the middle of its verses.1<\/a><\/sup> Rav Yosef wanted to know on which side of the line the vav itself fell. Did it close the first half of the Torah or open the second? His colleagues gave the obvious answer: \u201cLet us bring a Torah scroll and count the letters.\u201d Had not Rabba bar bar \u1e24ana once reported that the men of old \u201cdid not move from there until they brought a Torah scroll and counted\u201d?2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rav Yosef refused. The old counters, he said, had known which words were written with the silent letters vav and yod and which without them, the \u201cdeficient and plene forms of words,\u201d and so they could count precisely. \u201cWe are not experts in this regard,\u201d he said, and a count made by his own generation would settle nothing.3<\/a><\/sup> When Abaye suggested that they could at least count the verses, Rav Yosef refused again, because a visitor from the Land of Israel, Rav A\u1e25a bar Adda, had reported that in the West one verse of Exodus was divided into three.4<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Talmud tells this story to explain a name. The first sages, it says, \u201cwere called: Those who count [soferim<\/em>], because they would count all the letters in the Torah.\u201d5<\/a><\/sup> Soferim<\/em> is the ordinary Hebrew for scribes, and the pun turns writers into counters. Behind the joke is a real history: a guild of copyists, teachers and correctors who were remembered, more than a thousand years before the Masoretes of Tiberias, as the first guardians of the letter of the text. What follows traces what the sources say they did, what they were paid for, and what one remarkable story about three Torah scrolls in the Temple court suggests about how a single text came to be chosen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ezra at the Water Gate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Bible gives the type of the sofer<\/em> in one man. Ezra, says the book that bears his name, \u201ccame up from Babylon, a scribe expert in the Teaching of Moses that the ETERNAL God of Israel had given.\u201d6<\/a><\/sup> The book of Nehemiah sets him in a public square. On the first day of the seventh month, the people gathered \u201cin the square before the Water Gate\u201d and asked Ezra the scribe to bring the scroll of the Teaching of Moses.7<\/a><\/sup> He read from it \u201cfrom the first light until midday,\u201d standing \u201cupon a wooden tower made for the purpose,\u201d with thirteen named men beside him; when he opened the scroll all the people stood, and when he blessed God they answered \u201cAmen, Amen,\u201d with hands upraised.8<\/a><\/sup> Then the Levites moved among the crowd: \u201cThey read from the scroll of the Teaching of God, translating it and giving the sense; so they understood the reading.\u201d9<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rabbis read that verse as a charter for everything the scribes would later be credited with. In the Babylonian Talmud the words are parsed phrase by phrase. \u201cThey read in the book\u201d is the Bible itself; \u201cdistinctly\u201d is the Aramaic translation; \u201cand they gave the sense\u201d is \u201cthe division into verses\u201d; and \u201ccaused them to understand the reading\u201d is the punctuation of the text with cantillation, or, as some say, \u201cthe traditions that determine the proper vocalization of the Bible.\u201d10<\/a><\/sup> In one exegetical sweep the scene at the Water Gate became the origin of the Targum, of the verse division and of the accents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, summarising this tradition at the beginning of the twentieth century, explained that the main object of the scribes was \u201cto teach the Torah to the Jewish masses, and to the Jewish youth in particular,\u201d and that their method was the one described in Nehemiah: they read the Hebrew, translated it into the vernacular, and explained it by dividing it into verses.11<\/a><\/sup> The same article dates the period of the soferim proper from Ezra to Simeon the Just, and it records a rabbinic tradition that in Ezra\u2019s time the Torah was rewritten in the square script, called ketav ashuri<\/em>, leaving the older Hebrew characters to the Samaritans.12<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

An earlier prophet had already used the scribes as a byword. \u201cHow can you say, \u2018We are wise, And we possess GOD\u2019s Instruction\u2019? Assuredly, for naught has the pen labored, For naught the scribes!\u201d13<\/a><\/sup> Jeremiah\u2019s complaint shows that before the exile there were already men whose profession was the written Teaching, and that a prophet could accuse them of serving it badly. After the return the profession acquired a hero, and a long memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/picture>
Illustration: the reading at the Water Gate in Nehemiah 8, where Ezra read \u201cfrom the first light until midday\u201d from a wooden platform. An imagined scene, not a portrait.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Why They Were Called Counters<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The pun in Kiddushin was not the only rabbinic etymology of the name, but it became the most famous. The Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> notes that the rabbis derived soferim<\/em> from the verb \u201cto count,\u201d and lists the passages in the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds where the derivation appears.14<\/a><\/sup> It also records the modern argument, associated with Zacharias Frankel and Nachman Krochmal, that the scribes of the Persian period were the same body as the Men of the Great Assembly, and points to a phrase in First Maccabees, a \u201ccompany of scribes,\u201d as possible support.15<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Great Assembly appears at the head of the Mishnah\u2019s chain of tradition. \u201cMoses received the Torah at Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets to the Men of the Great Assembly. They said three things: Be patient in [the administration of] justice, raise many disciples and make a fence round the Torah.\u201d16<\/a><\/sup> The Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>\u2019s article on the Great Synagogue read the saying as a programme for teachers rather than for the people: caution in judgment, care for schools and pupils, and protective rules around the Law, a programme that the Pharisees inherited.17<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scribes left a legal category behind them. Rulings that the rabbis regarded as theirs rather than as explicit Scripture were called divre soferim<\/em>, \u201cthe words of the scribes.\u201d The Mishnah, discussing a rebellious elder, makes a startling claim about them: \u201cThere is greater stringency with regard to traditional rabbinic interpretations of the Torah than with regard to matters of Torah.\u201d An elder who denied the duty of phylacteries outright was exempt from punishment as a rebel; one who taught that the head phylactery should have five compartments instead of the four established by tradition was liable.18<\/a><\/sup> The scribes\u2019 tradition, being unwritten, needed more defence than the text it served.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tradition also gave the scribes credit for changes to the text itself. The Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> lists among their works the tiqqune soferim<\/em>, eighteen places where the scribes were said to have altered a wording thought disrespectful to God, such as Genesis 18:22, where \u201cthe Lord stood yet before Abraham\u201d was said to have become \u201cAbraham stood yet before the Lord,\u201d and it notes the dots placed over certain words whose meaning seemed doubtful, ascribed to Ezra himself.19<\/a><\/sup> Those emendations have their own essay on this site, Tiqqune Soferim<\/em>, the eighteen corrections of the scribes<\/a>. Here the interest is in the counting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Bearded<\/picture>
Illustration: Babylonian sages over a Torah scroll, after Kiddushin 30a, where Rav Yosef declined to settle the middle letter by counting. An imagined scene.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A Verse Divided in the West<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Rav Yosef\u2019s refusal is the most honest moment in the passage. He did not doubt the numbers of the old soferim. He doubted himself. The question of the vav could not be settled by a count because the scrolls of his own day could differ in exactly the letters that made the count possible: the vav and yod that Hebrew spelling could add or omit without changing a word\u2019s sound or meaning. The same was true of verses. The baraita that followed gave the total as 5,888 verses in the Torah, with the book of Psalms eight more and Chronicles eight fewer, but Rav A\u1e25a bar Adda\u2019s report from the West showed that Babylonians and Palestinians did not even divide the verses in the same places.20<\/a><\/sup> The verse he cited was Exodus 19:9, \u201cAnd the Lord said to Moses: Lo, I come to you in a thick cloud,\u201d which in the Land of Israel was split into three.21<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They were experts in the deficient and plene forms of words and therefore could count the letters precisely. We are not experts in this regard.<\/p>Rav Yosef, b. Kiddushin 30a, trans. William Davidson Edition22<\/a><\/sup><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The modern reader can do what Rav Yosef declined to do. In 2007 three authors, Sheldon Epstein, Bernard Dickman and Yonah Wilamowsky, published a quantitative study of the Talmud\u2019s counts in the journal \u1e24akirah<\/em>.23<\/a><\/sup> Their figures are sobering. A standard Ashkenazic Torah scroll has about 304,805 letters, of which 30,509 are vav and 31,522 are yod; a Sephardic scroll has 304,801.24<\/a><\/sup> The true middle letter is therefore letter 152,403, which falls at the start of Leviticus 8:29. The vav of ga\u1e25on<\/em>, by contrast, is approximately letter 157,225, so that the Talmud\u2019s middle letter \u201cdiffers from our middle letter by over 4,800 letters.\u201d25<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The authors tested Rav Yosef\u2019s own explanation. If the whole gap came from uncertainty over vav and yod, the scrolls would need to differ in at least 7.7 per cent of those letters, a minimum, since random changes on both sides of the middle would cancel each other; \u201cit is difficult to assume that such an error rate is a realistic possibility.\u201d26<\/a><\/sup> The verses tell the same story. A count of the verses in printed Bibles gives 5,845, which makes Leviticus 8:8 the true middle verse; the soferim\u2019s middle verse, Leviticus 13:33, is the 3,082nd, an undercount in the first half of about 160 verses.27<\/a><\/sup> They note too that the vav of ga\u1e25on<\/em> is written large in Torah scrolls, and that Tractate Soferim gives the reason in so many words: it must be tall because it is half of the letters of the Torah.28<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What, then, were the soferim counting? The authors observe that the numbers cannot simply be the letters of the present text, and that the old scribes \u201cseem to have been practical people and\/or codifiers, not theorists.\u201d29<\/a><\/sup> Whatever the answer, the passage preserves something rarer than a precise count: the memory of a moment when sages in Babylonia knew that their scrolls were no longer identical in the smallest letters, and said so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three Scrolls in the Temple Court<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The most famous rabbinic story about scribal collation is set further back, in the Temple itself. It survives in several versions. The Sifrei on Deuteronomy, the shortest, attaches it to the phrase \u201cThe Primordial God is a refuge\u201d in Deuteronomy 33:27: three scrolls of the Torah were kept in the Courtyard; in one scroll the word was written one way and in two another, and \u201cSages suppressed the one version and preserved the other two.\u201d30<\/a><\/sup> The Jerusalem Talmud tells it as a discovery: \u201cThree scrolls were found in the Temple courtyard, the Meone scroll, the Zaatute scroll, the hee scroll,\u201d and after each variant, \u201cThey confirmed the two and annulled the one.\u201d31<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fullest version is the one in Tractate Soferim, in the name of Rabbi Simeon ben Laqish. One scroll read ma\u02bfon<\/em> in Deuteronomy 33:27 where the other two had me\u02bfonah<\/em>, \u201ca dwelling place,\u201d \u201cso they adopted the reading of the two scrolls and discarded that of the one scroll.\u201d One scroll said that Moses sent the za\u02bfa\u1e6du\u1e6de<\/em>, an unusual word, of the children of Israel to offer sacrifices at Sinai in Exodus 24:5, where the other two had the familiar na\u02bfare<\/em>, \u201cyoung men.\u201d The third difference concerned the pronoun spelled hi\u02be<\/em>, with a yod, for \u201cshe\u201d; in the Sifrei and the Jerusalem Talmud one scroll had it nine times and the other two eleven, while Tractate Soferim frames the variant as eleven cases of hu\u02be<\/em> against eleven of hi\u02be<\/em>.32<\/a><\/sup> Each time the majority won.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read quickly, the story describes a committee of scribes collating three manuscripts and choosing the reading of two against one, a procedure that would not look out of place in a modern critical edition. In 1962 Shemaryahu Talmon, in an article in the Hebrew University Bible Project\u2019s journal Textus<\/em>, read it more carefully. He began from the many signs in rabbinic literature that \u201cBible MSS current in the period of the Second Temple differed from each other textually in varying degrees,\u201d and from Saul Lieberman\u2019s division of the manuscripts of the Temple period into three kinds: authoritative books kept in the Temple, popular books in general use, and inferior texts surviving in small communities.33<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talmon showed that the three statements, about me\u02bfonah<\/em>, about the young men and about the spelling of hi\u02be<\/em>, had no essential relation to one another. He concluded that they had been joined because of \u201ca custom of the scribes to assemble guiding rules for the accurate transcription of Torah scrolls in accordance with a text accepted by them as standard,\u201d and he called the result \u201ca very early case of massoretic-type or proto-massoretic notation, the kind which constitutes the core of classical massoretic works.\u201d34<\/a><\/sup> The story of the three scrolls, in other words, is not only about the Masorah\u2019s prehistory. It is already written in the Masorah\u2019s form, a numbered list of spellings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The third statement mattered most to him. The Masoretic Text of the Torah spells the pronoun hi\u02be<\/em> with a yod in exactly eleven places, which the Masorah counts and lists, and Talmon argued that the discarded scroll with nine reflected an earlier stage in \u201cthe uncontrolled, unsystematic, and unequal penetration of a new phonetic spelling\u201d into manuscripts of the Pentateuch.35<\/a><\/sup> The two medieval recensions of Avot de-Rabbi Natan<\/em> that list the eleven cases agree on only nine of them, which suggested to him that the traditionists had first authorised a nucleus of nine.36<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Peg on Which to Hang a Decision<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Talmon\u2019s conclusion was cooler than the story. The rabbis, he wrote, were not creating a textus receptus by collation. They were confirming a reading they had already accepted, and banishing alternatives \u201ccurrent among the adherents of dissident groups,\u201d which is why the losing codex was not corrected but discarded.37<\/a><\/sup> The aim was \u201cto create a stable textual tradition in those parts of the O.T. which were used as proof-texts in the religio-social controversies of the time.\u201d38<\/a><\/sup> As for the vote of two against one, \u201cthe authorization of a reading on the strength of a fortuitous majority of two codices against one out of three found in the Temple Court was a mere formality, a sort of expedient peg on which to hang a legal decision.\u201d39<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Half a century later Gary Rendsburg returned to the story in the same journal. Talmon\u2019s article, he wrote, \u201cremains unsurpassed in its treatment and remains valid unto the present day.\u201d40<\/a><\/sup> He noted that no one familiar with the scrolls from Qumran and with the Samaritan Torah would have trouble imagining a scroll that read ma\u02bfon<\/em> in Deuteronomy 33:27, or one that spelled hi\u02be<\/em> with a yod nine times instead of eleven. The real puzzle was the word za\u02bfa\u1e6du\u1e6de<\/em> in Exodus 24:5.41<\/a><\/sup> Rendsburg also recorded a dissent: Solomon Zeitlin, in the Jewish Quarterly Review<\/em> in 1966, denied the historicity of the rabbinic tradition altogether.42<\/a><\/sup> For Rendsburg, the answer lay in the peculiarity of Exodus 24 itself, a chapter in which the young men of Israel, \u201cwho are they?\u201d, offer sacrifices, blood is sprinkled on the people, and the elders see the God of Israel; a chapter \u201criddled with linguistic peculiarities\u201d might well have carried a rare word in one witness.43<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whatever the historical core, the story fits what the scrolls themselves have shown. Emanuel Tov summarises the evidence: before the first century of the Common Era \u201cwe witness a textual plurality among Jews, with multiple text forms conceived of as \u2018the Bible\u2019\u201d; around the turn of the era the consonantal proto-Masoretic text was accepted by the proto-rabbinic movement, and after the first century it became the only text used by organised Judaism.44<\/a><\/sup> The soferim of the Temple court, real or remembered, stand at the hinge of that change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Proofreaders Paid by the Temple<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If there was a standard text in the Temple, someone had to look after it, and the Talmud preserves a note about their wages. In a list of Temple employees paid from the public funds of the chamber, Rabba bar bar \u1e24ana reports in the name of Rabbi Yo\u1e25anan: \u201cThe proofreaders of the Torah scrolls in Jerusalem would take their wages from the collection of the chamber.\u201d45<\/a><\/sup> They are listed beside the scholars who taught the priests the laws of slaughter and of the handful of flour, and the women who wove the curtains of the sanctuary: people whose work the Temple needed every day.46<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same concern for corrected copies runs through the sayings Talmon gathered. Rabbi Akiva charged Rabbi Simeon bar Yo\u1e25ai to teach his son \u201cfrom a corrected scroll,\u201d and a later sage explained why it should be a new one: \u201cfor once an error has entered, it remains.\u201d47<\/a><\/sup> An uncorrected scroll, said Rabbi Ami, could be kept for thirty days; after that it was forbidden, \u201cbecause it is said: \u2018Let not unrighteousness dwell in thy tents.\u2019\u201d48<\/a><\/sup> The Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>\u2019s article on the Torah scroll repeats the rule that a scroll with errors must be corrected within thirty days or put away.49<\/a><\/sup> The scribe\u2019s duty did not end when the scroll left his hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rules for the Hand<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Much of what the soferim were remembered for survives as practical law, collected in the post-talmudic Tractate Soferim. Its first chapter begins with materials and script. A sacred scroll may not be written on certain skins, nor with coal, shoe-black, gum or vitriol in the ink; it may not be written in the old Hebrew characters, nor in Aramaic, Median or Greek, \u201csince they must be written in the Assyrian [script].\u201d50<\/a><\/sup> It defines the spaces that separate sections. An open section is one that does not begin at the beginning of a line; a closed section is separated by a space in the middle of the line; and in each case the space must be wide enough for \u201ca name of three letters.\u201d A scroll in which an open section was written as closed, or the reverse, \u201cmust be stored away.\u201d51<\/a><\/sup> Those divisions have their own history in open and closed sections in the Hebrew Bible<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rules on decoration are as firm. \u201c[The sacred scrolls] may not be written in gold. It is related that in an Alexandrian scroll of the Torah all the divine names were written in gold, and when the matter came before the Sages they decided that it should be stored away.\u201d52<\/a><\/sup> The Babylonian Talmud gives the same list of disqualifications: a scroll written in the layout reserved for poetry, or poetry written as prose, or a text written without ink, or with \u201cthe mentions of God\u2019s names in gold,\u201d must all be suppressed.53<\/a><\/sup> The Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> takes the story as evidence that Alexandrian scribes were noted for their skill in illumination, and that the rabbis of Jerusalem would not let that skill touch a scroll for public reading.54<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tractate Soferim also preserves lists of the text\u2019s peculiarities, the kind of lists the Masoretes would multiply. Its sixth chapter counts ten places in the Torah marked with dots: the dot over the second vav in Genesis 19:33, the dots over the whole of the word \u201cand kissed him\u201d in Genesis 33:4, the dotted \u02beet<\/em> in Genesis 37:12, the dotted word Aaron in Numbers 3:39, and others, ending with the dotted \u02bfayin in Deuteronomy 29:28, \u201cthe secret things belong unto the Lord our God.\u201d55<\/a><\/sup> The three scrolls of the Temple court appear immediately after that list.56<\/a><\/sup> Their position supports Talmon\u2019s view that the story was handed down among the scribes as one more rule for copying.57<\/a><\/sup> Other peculiarities, such as large and small letters, are treated in the unusual letters of the Hebrew Bible<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Fly on the Crown of a Letter<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Behind the rules stood a professional ethic, and the Talmud preserves it in a handful of vivid exchanges. Rabbi Meir recalled coming to study with Rabbi Ishmael, who asked him his trade. \u201cI am a scribe [lavlar<\/em>] who writes Torah scrolls,\u201d he answered. Rabbi Ishmael told him: \u201cMy son, be careful in your vocation, as your vocation is heavenly service, and care must be taken lest you omit a single letter or add a single letter out of place, and you will end up destroying the whole world in its entirety.\u201d58<\/a><\/sup> The Talmud\u2019s explanation is the difference between emet<\/em>, truth, and met<\/em>, death: one letter. Rabbi Meir answered that he was an expert in deficient and plene spellings; what worried him was that \u201ca fly might come and land on the crown\u201d of a letter and smudge it, and so he put iron sulphate into his ink.59<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scribe was also forbidden to trust his memory. Rav \u1e24isda once found Rav \u1e24ananel writing Torah scrolls without copying from a written text, because he knew it all by heart. \u201cIt is fitting for the entire Torah to be written by your mouth,\u201d Rav \u1e24isda told him, \u201cbut this is what the Sages said: It is prohibited to write even a single letter of the Bible when not copying from a written text.\u201d60<\/a><\/sup> Even a perfect memory, on this view, was not a substitute for an exemplar, and the chain of copies was the only guarantee of the text. The Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> notes that the model copy from which a scribe worked came to be called a tiqqun soferim<\/em>, \u201cwhich must not be confounded with ti\u1e33\u1e33une soferim<\/em>,\u201d the emendations.61<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When a letter was damaged, the test was not learned at all. Rami bar Tamrei found that the leg of the vav in the word \u201cAnd the Lord slew\u201d in his phylacteries had been severed by a hole. Rabbi Zeira told him: \u201cGo bring a child who is neither wise nor stupid, but of average intelligence\u201d; if the child read the word correctly, it was fit.62<\/a><\/sup> The same page tells how Moses, ascending on high, found God \u201ctying crowns on the letters of the Torah,\u201d the ornaments that a later sage, Akiva, would interpret.63<\/a><\/sup> The scribe\u2019s craft was framed between those two scenes, a heavenly ornament and an ordinary child reading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Virtuosity was not admired for its own sake. The Mishnah and a baraita remember a man called Ben Kamtzar who \u201cwould take four quills between his fingers, and if there was a word consisting of four letters that he wanted to write, he could write it simultaneously.\u201d He refused to teach the technique, and unlike other Temple craftsmen with family secrets, he could give no reason except his own honour; to him the sages applied the verse \u201cBut the name of the wicked shall rot.\u201d64<\/a><\/sup> A scribe\u2019s skill, on this view, belonged to the community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nor was the craft expected to make anyone rich. Explaining why the wages of scribes of sacred books bring no blessing, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said that the Men of the Great Assembly had observed twenty-four fasts so that scribes who write Torah scrolls, phylacteries and mezuzot \u201cwill not become wealthy from their craft, as were they to become wealthy, they would no longer write these sacred items.\u201d65<\/a><\/sup> The Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, writing in New York around 1905, added drily that \u201ceven to this day the vocation of the sofer is the worst paid of all Jewish professions.\u201d66<\/a><\/sup> The detailed laws of that vocation, as later codified, are the subject of Halakhot Sofer STaM<\/em><\/a> and of Meiri\u2019s Kiryat Sefer<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seventy-Two Elders in Seventy-Two Rooms<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The scribes\u2019 suspicion of translation appears in the same first chapter of Tractate Soferim, in two stories that sit uneasily side by side. The first is bleak: \u201cIt once happened that five elders wrote the Torah for King Ptolemy in Greek, and that day was as ominous for Israel as the day on which the golden calf was made, since the Torah could not be accurately translated.\u201d67<\/a><\/sup> The second is the familiar legend of the Septuagint. Ptolemy \u201cassembled seventy-two elders and placed them in seventy-two [separate] rooms without telling them the reason,\u201d and asked each to write him the Torah of Moses; \u201cthe Omnipresent inspired them and the mind of all of them was identical,\u201d so that each wrote the same translation, with the same thirteen alterations.68<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The list of alterations is a list of places where a word-for-word Greek rendering might have suggested something theologically awkward to a Greek reader: \u201cGod created in the beginning,\u201d so that \u201cIn the beginning\u201d would not be taken as a power beside God; \u201cI shall make a man in image and likeness,\u201d without the plural \u201cus\u201d; God \u201cfinished on the sixth [day] and rested on the seventh.\u201d69<\/a><\/sup> The story is not history, but it records a scribal judgment. A translation was only acceptable to the soferim when its departures from the Hebrew could be counted, named and justified, in the same way as the dots, the large letters and the readings of the three scrolls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What the Counters Left<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Rabbi Yitz\u1e25ak, in the Babylonian Talmud, listed the scribal elements of the text that he held to be as old as Sinai: \u201cThe vocalization of the scribes, and the ornamentation of the scribes, and the verses with words that are read but not written, and those that are written but not read are all halakha transmitted to Moses from Sinai.\u201d70<\/a><\/sup> The examples he gives are the pausal forms of words like \u02beere\u1e63<\/em> and shamayim<\/em> at the end of a verse; a handful of expressions with \u02bea\u1e25ar<\/em>, \u201cafter,\u201d that the scribes understood in their own way; and words such as \u201cEuphrates\u201d in 2 Samuel 8:3 that are read aloud but not written in the scroll.71<\/a><\/sup> Every one of those categories reappears, centuries later, in the margins of the Tiberian codices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is the deepest sense in which the soferim were counters. The Masoretes of the ninth and tenth centuries inherited from them not only a consonantal text but a habit of mind: the conviction that the text could be described by number, that its oddities could be listed, and that the lists themselves protected the text from drift. Tractate Soferim\u2019s ten dots, its three scrolls and its tall vav of ga\u1e25on<\/em> are early specimens of the same genre as the Masorah parva and magna, and Talmon was right to call the Temple-court story proto-Masoretic.72<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The counters were also honest about their limits. The Talmud preserves both the numbers of the first sages and Rav Yosef\u2019s admission that his generation could no longer verify them. It preserves the story of a majority vote of scrolls and, in the stringency of divre soferim<\/em>, the recognition that a tradition needs guarding precisely because it cannot be checked against a written page.73<\/a><\/sup> The modern count by Epstein, Dickman and Wilamowsky puts numbers on Rav Yosef\u2019s doubt; Talmon and Rendsburg put a history behind the three scrolls.74<\/a><\/sup> Neither undoes the achievement. The text that the soferim chose and counted is, letter for letter, very close to the text still copied by hand today, and the habit of counting it never stopped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hub page on the soferim<\/a> gathers the wider subject: the scribes as teachers, the divre soferim<\/em>, and their place between Ezra and the Masoretes. Related essays on this site follow the scribal tradition into the songs of the Torah and how scribes set them out<\/a>, into the Dead Sea Scrolls<\/a>, which show what the text looked like before the counters\u2019 choice prevailed, and into the medieval nakdanim<\/em><\/a>, who inherited both the counting and the care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
    \n\n
  1. Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin 30a, trans. William Davidson Edition (Koren No\u00e9 Talmud), at sefaria.org<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  2. b. Kiddushin 30a. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  3. b. Kiddushin 30a. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  4. b. Kiddushin 30a. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  5. b. Kiddushin 30a. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  6. Ezra 7:6, trans. The JPS Tanakh: Gender-Sensitive Edition<\/em> (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2023), at sefaria.org<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  7. Nehemiah 8:1\u20138, trans. The JPS Tanakh: Gender-Sensitive Edition<\/em>, at sefaria.org<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  8. Neh 8:1\u20138 (JPS). *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  9. Neh 8:1\u20138 (JPS). *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  10. Babylonian Talmud, Nedarim 37b, trans. William Davidson Edition, at sefaria.org<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  11. Isidore Singer, M. Seligsohn, Wilhelm Bacher and Judah David Eisenstein, \u201cScribes,\u201d Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901\u20131906), at jewishencyclopedia.com<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  12. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201cScribes\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  13. Jeremiah 8:8, trans. The JPS Tanakh: Gender-Sensitive Edition<\/em>, at sefaria.org<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  14. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201cScribes\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  15. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201cScribes\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  16. Mishnah Avot 1:1, trans. Joshua Kulp, Mishnah Yomit<\/em>, at sefaria.org<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  17. \u201cSynagogue, the Great,\u201d Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901\u20131906), at jewishencyclopedia.com<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  18. Mishnah Sanhedrin 11:3, trans. William Davidson Edition, at sefaria.org<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  19. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201cScribes\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  20. b. Kiddushin 30a. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  21. b. Kiddushin 30a; Sheldon Epstein, Bernard Dickman and Yonah Wilamowsky, \u201cSymmetrically Designed Sifrei Torah: A Quantitative Analysis,\u201d \u1e24akirah, the Flatbush Journal of Jewish Law and Thought<\/em> 5 (2007): 171\u2013225, at hakirah.org<\/a>, 172\u2013173. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  22. b. Kiddushin 30a. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  23. Epstein, Dickman and Wilamowsky, \u201cSymmetrically Designed Sifrei Torah\u201d, 171. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  24. Epstein, Dickman and Wilamowsky, \u201cSymmetrically Designed Sifrei Torah\u201d, 177. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  25. Epstein, Dickman and Wilamowsky, \u201cSymmetrically Designed Sifrei Torah\u201d, 178. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  26. Epstein, Dickman and Wilamowsky, \u201cSymmetrically Designed Sifrei Torah\u201d, 178. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  27. Epstein, Dickman and Wilamowsky, \u201cSymmetrically Designed Sifrei Torah\u201d, 182. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  28. Epstein, Dickman and Wilamowsky, \u201cSymmetrically Designed Sifrei Torah\u201d, 178\u2013179. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  29. Epstein, Dickman and Wilamowsky, \u201cSymmetrically Designed Sifrei Torah\u201d, 179. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  30. Sifrei Devarim, Pisqa 356:1, trans. Martin S. Jaffee, at sefaria.org<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  31. Jerusalem Talmud, Ta\u02bfanit 4:2, trans. Heinrich W. Guggenheimer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1999\u20132015), at sefaria.org<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  32. Tractate Soferim, chapter 6, trans. A. Cohen, The Minor Tractates of the Talmud<\/em> (London: Soncino, 1965), at sefaria.org<\/a>; Sifrei Devarim 356:1; y. Ta\u02bfanit 4:2. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  33. Shemaryahu Talmon, \u201cThe Three Scrolls of the Law That Were Found in the Temple Court,\u201d Textus<\/em> 2 (1962): 14\u201327, at bibleproject.huji.ac.il<\/a>, 14. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  34. Talmon, \u201cThree Scrolls of the Law\u201d, 19. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  35. Talmon, \u201cThree Scrolls of the Law\u201d, 21. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  36. Talmon, \u201cThree Scrolls of the Law\u201d, 21. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  37. Talmon, \u201cThree Scrolls of the Law\u201d, 27. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  38. Talmon, \u201cThree Scrolls of the Law\u201d, 27. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  39. Talmon, \u201cThree Scrolls of the Law\u201d, 27. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  40. Gary A. Rendsburg, \u201cHow Could a Torah Scroll Have Included the Word {he:\u05d6\u05e2\u05d8\u05d5\u05d8\u05d9<\/span>}?,\u201d Textus<\/em> 26 (2016): 121\u2013141, cited by the page of the author\u2019s PDF at openscholar.huji.ac.il<\/a>, 1. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  41. Rendsburg, \u201cHow Could a Torah Scroll Have Included the Word {he:\u05d6\u05e2\u05d8\u05d5\u05d8\u05d9<\/span>}?\u201d, 2. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  42. Rendsburg, \u201cHow Could a Torah Scroll Have Included the Word {he:\u05d6\u05e2\u05d8\u05d5\u05d8\u05d9<\/span>}?\u201d, 2. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  43. Rendsburg, \u201cHow Could a Torah Scroll Have Included the Word {he:\u05d6\u05e2\u05d8\u05d5\u05d8\u05d9<\/span>}?\u201d, 4\u20135. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  44. Emanuel Tov, \u201cThe Bible and the Masoretic Text,\u201d TheTorah.com, at thetorah.com<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  45. Babylonian Talmud, Ketubot 106a, trans. William Davidson Edition, at sefaria.org<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  46. b. Ketubot 106a. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  47. Talmon, \u201cThree Scrolls of the Law\u201d, 15. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  48. Talmon, \u201cThree Scrolls of the Law\u201d, 15. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  49. \u201cScroll of the Law,\u201d Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em> (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901\u20131906), at jewishencyclopedia.com<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  50. Tractate Soferim, chapter 1, trans. A. Cohen, The Minor Tractates of the Talmud<\/em> (London: Soncino, 1965), at sefaria.org<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  51. Soferim 1. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  52. Soferim 1. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  53. Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 103b, trans. William Davidson Edition, at sefaria.org<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  54. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201cScribes\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  55. Soferim 6. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  56. Soferim 6. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  57. Talmon, \u201cThree Scrolls of the Law\u201d, 19. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  58. Babylonian Talmud, Eruvin 13a, trans. William Davidson Edition, at sefaria.org<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  59. b. Eruvin 13a. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  60. Babylonian Talmud, Megillah 18b, trans. William Davidson Edition, at sefaria.org<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  61. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201cScribes\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  62. Babylonian Talmud, Menachot 29b, trans. William Davidson Edition, at sefaria.org<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  63. b. Menachot 29b. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  64. Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 38b, trans. William Davidson Edition, at sefaria.org<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  65. Babylonian Talmud, Pesachim 50b, trans. William Davidson Edition, at sefaria.org<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  66. Jewish Encyclopedia<\/em>, \u201cScribes\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  67. Soferim 1. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  68. Soferim 1. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  69. Soferim 1. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  70. b. Nedarim 37b. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  71. b. Nedarim 37b. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  72. Talmon, \u201cThree Scrolls of the Law\u201d, 19. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  73. b. Kiddushin 30a; m. Sanhedrin 11:3. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  74. Epstein, Dickman and Wilamowsky, \u201cSymmetrically Designed Sifrei Torah\u201d, 178; Talmon, \u201cThree Scrolls of the Law\u201d, 27; Rendsburg, \u201cHow Could a Torah Scroll Have Included the Word {he:\u05d6\u05e2\u05d8\u05d5\u05d8\u05d9<\/span>}?\u201d, 1. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n<\/ol>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The Talmud says the first sages were called soferim because they counted every letter of the Torah, and remembers a Babylonian teacher who refused to check their count. From Ezra at the Water Gate to three scrolls compared in the Temple court, the scribes left the habits the Masoretes inherited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1553,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-text-transmission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1552"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1663,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1552\/revisions\/1663"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}