Soferim (Talmud)

Masekhet Soferim "The Tractate of the Scribes" (Hebrew: מסכת סופרים) is a non-canonical Talmudic treatise dealing especially with the rules relating to the preparation of the holy books, as well as with the regulations for the reading of the Law.

It belongs to the so-called "smaller tractates," a term applied to about 15 works in rabbinical literature, each containing all the important material bearing on a single subject. While they are mishnaic in form and are called "treatises," the topics discussed in them are arranged more systematically; for they are eminently practical in purpose, being, in a certain sense, the first manuals in which the data scattered through prolix sources have been collected in a brief and comprehensive form.

The work is generally thought to have originated in eighth-century Palestine, and being of late and uncertain date is now generally printed as Talmudic addenda.

Ancient authorities mention especially seven such treatises, which are doubtless the earliest ones; and among these the tractate containing the rules on the writing of the "books" occupies a particularly prominent place on account of the importance of its contents. The name as well as the form of the smaller treatises indicates that they originated in the period of oral tradition which was dominated by the Talmud and the Midrash, so that these treatises are doubtless of great antiquity, some of them having been compiled in their main outlines before even the final redaction of the Talmud in the 6th century. This theory holds good with regard to the treatise Sefer Torah also, to which the treatise Soferim bears an especially close relation.

Soferim consists of 21 chapters, containing 225 paragraphs ("halakot") in all. The contents may be summarized as follows:

According to Zunz (G. V. 2d ed., p. 100), "the little work is now badly disarranged, as is shown by the confusion of the two principal themes [i.e., the preparation of the scrolls, and the ritual of lessons and prayers], and the position and character of the haggadah," a statement which he defends as follows: "Rules for writing and for the Masorah are found in i. 1-6, 9-14; ii.; iii. 1-9, 10a, 11, 12, 13 (in part), 14-16; iv.-viii.; ix. 1-7; xii. 8b, 9-12; xiii. 1-4, 6a, 7; xv. 1-5; xvii. 1; synagogal ritual in ix. 8-11; x.; xi.; xii. 1-7, 8a; xiii. 5, 8-14; xiv.; xv. 12, end; xvii. 2-11; xviii.-xx.; xxi. 1-8; haggadah in i. 7-8; iii. 10b, 13 (in part); xiii. 6b, 10; xvi. 1-11, 12a; xxi. 9" (ib. notes a, b). Zunz likewise shows the relationship existing between this work and later aggadot.

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