What’s in a Word?

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סופר · סופרים · לבלר · ספרא

Bottom line

Both words mean scribe, and Rashi uses each to define the other. Sofer is the Hebrew word, at home in Tanach and in the Mishnah; lavlar is the later term, confined to Mishnaic and Talmudic Hebrew. The one thing not to get wrong is the plural: sofrim in rabbinic usage usually does not mean "scribes" at all but the Sofrim, the early Sages, so divrei sofrim is "the words of the Sofrim," never "the words of the scribes."

Distinctions

sofer (סופר)

Root ס-פ-ר, the root behind sefer ("book"), sippur ("telling"), and mispar ("number"). At its plainest a sofer is one who produces a sefer. In Tanach it is both a common noun (Tehillim 45:2, Yirmiyahu 8:8, Yechezkel 9:2-3) and a title borne by particular men: Seraya, Shevna, Shafan, Elishama, Baruch, Ezra HaSofer, Tzadok. In the Mishnah sofer is the working scribe (Shabbos 12:5, Pesachim 3:1, Gittin 3:1, Bava Metzia 5:11, Sanhedrin 4:3).

But Chazal read the word from the "counting" sense of the root. The Gemara (Kiddushin 30a, Chagigah 15b, Yerushalmi Berachos 1:4) teaches that sofer means one who counts, and the early Sages are called sofrim because they counted the letters of the Torah. The Yerushalmi (Shekalim 5:1) gives a second account of the same title: they "counted" in the sense of drawing up numbered lists as a memory aid for involved halachos, and every example is a Mishnah that opens with a tally: five who may not separate terumah (Terumos 1:1), five grains obligated in challah (Challah 1:1), fifteen women who exempt their co-wives from yibum (Yevamos 1:1), thirty-six sins punishable by kares (Kerisus 1:1), four avos nezikin (Bava Kamma 1:1), thirty-nine melachos of Shabbos (Shabbos 7:2). On this reading the Sages took a scribal habit and applied it to Torah she'be'al peh.

lavlar (לבלר)

Not a word of Tanach. It appears three times in the Mishnah: in the name Nachum HaLavlar (Peah 2:6), in the rule that a lavlar may not go out with his quill close to Shabbos (Shabbos 1:3), and in a man hiring a lavlar to write a get (Gittin 3:1). It is a loanword, from the Late Latin libellarius ("scribe"), itself from libellus, a small book; the Hebrew and the Latin terms are thus built the same way, each from its own language's word for a book.

That the two words are one in meaning is shown from three places. Rashi defines each by the other (Sotah 20a, Gittin 67a, Bava Basra 21b). The Mishnah's ruling that a sofer who writes up a loan on interest transgresses along with the lender (Bava Metzia 5:11) is repeated in the Tosefta (Bava Metzia 6:17) with lavlar in its place. And while Targum normally renders sofer by the Aramaicized safra, Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur notes in Meturgaman that in one place (Targum to Esther 3:12) it renders sofer as lavlar.

On the vowels: the common lavlar looks to be a slip. The Kaufmann manuscript of the Mishnah, the earliest vocalized one, reads livlar, and the Yerushalmi (Gittin 3:1, Bava Metzia 1:4) spells the word with a yud after the lamed, which points to a chirik rather than a patach.

Rendering guidance

  • Render both scribe. Where a Mishnah and its Tosefta parallel use the two words for one halachah, keep "scribe" in both and let a note carry the variation; nothing in the halachah turns on it.
  • Trap: English "scribe" also absorbs sofrim in the honorific sense. Decide by the phrase, not the word. Sofer STaM, sofer of a get, sofer of a loan document: "scribe." Divrei sofrim, tikkun sofrim, mi'divrei sofrim, takkanas sofrim: "the Sofrim," or "the early Sages," left transliterated in a sefer.
  • Where a passage plays on both senses at once, as the Gemara in Kiddushin does, translate "scribes" and let the derashah on counting be spelled out; a rendering that picks only "counters" loses the pshat of the word.
  • Safra in an Aramaic passage is simply the Aramaic of sofer; do not treat it as a third term.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Bishalach: Scribal Culture," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach (2023-02-04): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/10818-bishalach-scribal-culture.md. Primary loci: Shoftim 5:14 (mosh'chim b'shevet sofer); Kiddushin 30a, Chagigah 15b, Yerushalmi Berachos 1:4, Yerushalmi Shekalim 5:1; Mishnah Peah 2:6, Shabbos 1:3, Gittin 3:1, Bava Metzia 5:11 with Tosefta Bava Metzia 6:17; Rashi to Sotah 20a, Gittin 67a, Bava Basra 21b; Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur, Meturgaman, on Targum to Esther 3:12.

The article's one proposed difference in meaning (that sofer names an official scribe holding a post while lavlar covers any freelance scribe, or that the loanword carries a more formal ring) rests on two academic works, and is omitted here under house rule 9; so are the Proto-Indo-European derivations it gives for libellus and its English relatives.