Over the course of thousands of years, Jewish scribes wrote copies of the Old Testament over and over again. Scholars have now split these thousands of years of scribal tradition into several different time periods.
You’ve probably heard of at least one group that scholars have sectioned off: the Masoretes, authors of the Masoretic Text.
The Sopherim (or Soferim), however, refers to the Jewish scribes who worked from around the 400s BC to around 200 BC.
There is one good starting point that historians use though. Many simply say that Ezra the High Priest (of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah) was the first Sopher (singular of Sopherim).
Then, scholars give the name of “Sopherim” to the next couple centuries of scribes also. This lasted until the Pharisees took over in the second century BC. Scholars give different names to the periods of scribes during the time of the Pharisees.
So, what does Sopherim actually mean?
Well, it’s the Hebrew word translated as “scribes” throughout the Old Testament.
The word sofer also just means “to count”. Some people think this is because the Sopherim would count every letter in the Torah as part of their process to make sure they copied it precisely right.