Scribes

Scribes (sopherim) were professional writers and copyists who played an increasingly important role in Jewish religious life from the post-exilic period onward. In the early monarchy they served as royal secretaries and administrators (2 Sam. 8:17; 2 Kings 12:10). After the exile, Ezra is the paradigmatic scribe: "a scribe skilled in the Law of Moses" who studied, practiced, and taught the law of the LORD (Ezra 7:6, 10). By the Second Temple period, the scribes had become the professional interpreters and teachers of Torah, alongside and sometimes in tension with the priests.

In the NT the scribes (often paired with Pharisees) are frequent interlocutors with Jesus — questioning, testing, and opposing him. Jesus acknowledged their teaching authority ("The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses's seat," Matt. 23:2) while sharply criticizing their hypocrisy. He contrasted his own authority with theirs: he taught "as one having authority, and not as their scribes" (Matt. 7:29). The "scribe trained for the kingdom of heaven" in Matthew 13:52 presents an ideal of one who brings out of his treasure "things new and old."