Meticulous Jewish Scribes

Before the invention of the printing press, every copy of every manuscript had to be made by hand—painstakingly page after page, line after line, word after word. To prevent errors from being introduced, the Jews developed rules for preventing scribal errors in scrolls used in the synagogue.

  • All materials had to be made according to strict specifications. Parchments had to be made from the skins of clean (kosher) animals and quills made from feathers of clean birds. The ink must be black and prepared according to scribal specifications.
  • No word or even a letter could be written from memory. A scribe must have another scroll open before him and pronounce every word out loud before copying it. 
  • Before writing the name of God, a scribe must reverently wipe his pen and say, “I am writing the name of God for the holiness of His name.”
  • Every letter had to have some space around it. If one letter touched another or if a letter was defective because of incorrect writing, a hole, a tear, or a smudge so that it could not be easily read, the scroll was invalidated. 
  • Within thirty days of completion, an editor would review the manuscript, count every letter and every word as a way of checking. The editor would also make sure that the middle word on each page of the copy was the same as the middle words on the manuscript being copied.
Picture
Shlomo Washadi, Jewish scribe from 1930s (Library of Congress)

  • Up to three mistakes on any page could be corrected within thirty days. If more mistakes were found or if mistakes were not fixed within thirty days, the entire manuscript had to be buried. If a single letter was added or a single letter left out, the manuscript had to be fixed or buried.

In case you were wondering, the Torah (Pentateuch) has 304,805 letters and 79,976 words in Hebrew.