Scribe (Heb. sofer), among the Jews, originally a kind of military officer, whose business appears to have been the recruiting and organising of troops, the levying of war-taxes, and the like. Later the Hebrew name sofer seems to have been especially bestowed on a copist of the law books (Gr. grammateus). After the exile, under Ezra, apparently the copist became more and more an expounder of the law (Gr. nomodidaskulos). In Christ's time the name had come to designate a learned man, a doctor of the law. Christ himself recognises them as a legal authority (Matt. xxiii. 2); they were the preservers of traditions, and formed a kind of police in the Temple and synagogues, together with the high-priests; and the people reverenced them, or were expected to reverence them, in an eminent degree. They were to be found all over the country of Palestine, and occupied the rank and profession of both lawyers and theologians. Their public field of action was thus probably threefold: they were either assessors of the Sanhedrim, or public teachers, or administrators and lawyers. Many of these teachers had special classrooms somewhere in the Temple of Jerusalem, where the pupils destined to the calling of a rabbi sat at their feet. The calling of a scribe being gratuitous, it was incumbent upon every one of them to learn and to exercise some trade. Those scribes who were not eminent enough to rise to the higher branches of their profession, to enter the Sanhedrim, to be practical lawyers, or to hold schools of their own, occupied themselves in copying the Book of the Law or the Prophets, in writing phylacteries, contracts, letters of divorce, and the like. Much of the Halacha, Haggada, and Mishna was due to them. As a rule they were Pharisees (q.v.), and, in their zeal to keep the law pure from any foreign influence, even Chasidim (q.v.). Amongst famous scribes are to be reckoned Hillel, Shammai, and Gamaliel.
See JEWS, PHARISEES, EXEGESIS, MISHNA, TALMUD; also the histories of the Jews by Ewald, Graetz, and others; and Schürer's History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ (Eng. trans. 1886-90).