THE SCRIBES AND PHARISEES
Throughout the Gospels, Jesus addresses the “scribes and Pharisees” very frequently. These are two titles associated with the Jewish rabbinic class in the first century. Essentially, they are two sides of the same coin. The Pharisees were involved in orally teaching the people, whereas the scribes were involved with writing sacred texts. Although Pharisees no longer exist today, there are still are scribes. To this day, in synagogues around the word, Jews read the Torah from a handwritten parchment scroll. The process of writing a Torah scroll is a long, painstaking process that is still done by hand, just as in ancient times. Each Torah scroll contains over 300,000 letters which must be meticulously copied down by a scribe so that no errors are made.
SOFER STAM - סופר סת"ם
The scribe is known by the interesting Hebrew title "sofer stam" סופר סת"ם.The first word, sofer סופר comes from the Hebrew root s-f-r ספר which concerns the act of writing things down. The second term in the title, stam סת"ם is an acronym representing 3 letters: S, T and M. These stand for the 3 kinds of holy texts that a Jewish scribe is responsible for producing:
S: Sefer Torah: a scroll of the Five Books of Moses
T: Tefillin: phylacteries, scrolls that are attached to one’s head and arm during prayer
M: Mezuzah: a piece of parchment attached to the doorpost
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