[soh-fer; Seph. Heb. saw-fer; Ashk. Heb. soh-fer] 
[-fer-im; Seph. Heb. -fe-reem; Ashk. Heb. -fe-rim] . (often initial capital letter
) Judaism. | scribe 1 (def. 3). |
[skrahyb] noun, verb, scribed, scrib⋅ing.| 1. | a person who serves as a professional copyist, esp. one who made copies of manuscripts before the invention of printing. |
| 2. | a public clerk or writer, usually one having official status. |
| 3. | Also called sopher, sofer. Judaism. one of the group of Palestinian scholars and teachers of Jewish law and tradition, active from the 5th century b.c. to the 1st century a.d., who transcribed, edited, and interpreted the Bible. |
| 4. | a writer or author, esp. a journalist. |
| 5. | to act as a scribe; write. |
| 6. | to write down. |
| so·fer (sō'fər, sô-fŭr') n. pl. so·fer·im (-fər-ĭm, -fə-rēm') Judaism A scribe. [Hebrew sōpēr, active participle of sāpar, to count, write; see spr in Semitic roots.] |
soferim
any of a group of Jewish scholars who interpreted and taught biblical law and ethics from about the 5th century BC to about 200 BC. Understood in this sense, the first of the soferim was the biblical prophet Ezra, even though the word previously designated an important administrator connected with the Temple but without religious status. Ezra and his disciples initiated a tradition of rabbinic scholarship that remains to this day a fundamental feature of Judaism.
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