Talk:Scribe

"Scribe (Egyptian)"
---C.Garcia

Jean Miélot, a European author and scribe at work.
I notice that very often instead of Wikipedia pages showing the 1st, they articles show the Europeans only. Re scribes, in ancient khemet aka Egypt, scribes were used but are ignored in the article. We must stop white-washing history of humanity. by: True Seeker Sorry if this is in the wrong place, please move to another area if necessary. I shall learn more about Wikipedia editing and continue to improve my comprehension of where and how to edit. Thanks. ==

Possibly a new article: Scribe (Egyptian). It would cover at least three items:
 * 1–the art of the writing (languages, etc).
 * 2–the statuary themselves (One temple had 4 identical seated scribe statues).
 * 3--the God Thoth, the (moon, etc)god of the Scribe. ...MMcAnnis (use the four 'tildes' to sign ~ ~ ~ ~). (no spaces)Mmcannis 15:01, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Can the bible be used as a historical source like that?

No. Also that reference is random and unorganized. It's outta here. Gritironskillet 06:21, 28 September 2006 (UTC) scribes were high on the pyrimid of of socailaligie hey i have a report due on them 2 ♥g —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.141.253.80 (talk) 20:57, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree, people use the bible as a source, as though it is 100% historically accurate. However, if you are suggesting that scribes did not exist in ancient Egypt/Khemet, you are wrong. Over 1,000 years before scribes existed in the region we called Europe, Africa had scribes (in Khemet/Egypt, etc.) Thanks.

"See also" section
What's with the "See also" section? What connection does peer-to-peer have to this article? What is the purprose of the "Main" subheading, and if List of professions fits under that heading, why not Scrivener? Why is Beowulf listed at all, much less in the "People" section? The story Beowulf was copied and edited by scribes, but if that's the only reason, why not list most every other piece of archaic literature? Margery Kempe and John Barbour both had scribes do some of their writing. As did, presumably, most everyone else who needed something written in the 1300s. Yet surely we don't intend to list all authors of that time period? According to Talk:Ibn Warraq, that name might mean "son of a scribe", but there's apparently evidence to the contrary, so the article itself mentions nothing of scribes. Even if Ibn Warraq did mean "son of a scribe", should this section list everyone whose name is related to the word? Michael William Balfe is apparently listed solely because an ambiguous linking of one of his librettists led here instead of to Eugène Scribe. Ooh, better add Eugene to the list. And the word "scribe" doesn't appear at all in Muhammad, Baruch, or John Milton, so why are they in this list?

Sidney Rigdon appears to be the only one in the list who actually was a scribe, not merely the employer of one, and thus seems to me the only reasonable person listed in the section. If there's going to be a list of random names and subjects, perhaps some reason should be given, especially when it's otherwise obscure. - Severinus 01:20, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Egyptian scribe
I just added the Egyptian scribe (just Stub-info), and the Pic from Commons. Since it predates Alllllll..... later scribes, but is contemporary with the Mesopotamian, and Akkadian scribes how about if somebody pulls the pic and Stub info and starts an "egyptian scribe" article? and puts it in at least: Category:Ancient Egyptian culture ? The egyptian scribes are obviously tied to hieroglyphs and papyrus, but not for the beginning centuries of Egypt.. from the SonoranDesert province of Arizona- ...--Mmcannis 21:53, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Outline this "Article"
This article, I believe started out focussed on the 'Medieval Scribe'.

Guess what: Folks-(Gals and Guys), the Cuneiform script scribes, and the Egyptian language scribes preceded them. Even the Mycenaean scribes were ahead of the Medieval scribes. take note. ..(from the SonoranDesert of Ariz.) -Mmcannis 06:32, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Scribes in other cultures
Ironically, the last section of comments complains that Medieaval Scribes were the only ones talked about in the article. Now they're completely gone. Where are they? For that matter, what about Islamic scribes? Chinese scribes? etc. 69.95.234.102 (talk) 13:28, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Some added back, but there was never much there, & all of these need expansion Johnbod (talk) 14:08, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree that this article should also refer to scribal traditions in other cultures, particularly the Near East, India, China, and Japan. Is the term "scribe" specific to the West, and does it exclude the writers of Chinese characters? Epikouros (talk) 12:10, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

European scribes played a huge role in the Middle Ages, mostly monks. I believe they are worthy of mention here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.36.121.227 (talk) 16:49, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Middle Ages
216.73.77.244 asked for some expansion about scribes in the Middle Ages. Anyone interested? TheFeds 18:42, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Scribes of Israel and Judaism in relation to Christianity
I found the first paragraph about the Dead Sea Scrolls to be extremely offensive. Everything can be considered to have been done one way "before Christ" and then perhaps continued the same way "after Christ". This wasn't talking about chronology here ... That adds zero information to the article. Also the use of the term "Old Testament" here for documents that were physically written well before any New Testament existed is Christian-centric and also offensive. We shouldn't assume that someone from a non-Christian culture will understand offhand what the "Old Testament" is when the actual best point of reference for these documents is the term "Hebrew Bible" (or "Tanakh" but that is a bit more technical and obscure, and Hebrew Bible serves just as well here).

However, I don't even think this section belongs in this article at all. The accuracy of the transmission of the Biblical text is a very important topic, and part of the articles on textual criticism and biblical criticism. There could be corresponding long sections on the accuracy of the transmission of ... [name your favorite religious or early literary text there]. Techniques to insure scribal accuracy, as mentioned in the previous section, are relevant, but the discussion of the accuracy of the transmission of individual historical texts is not.

Epikouros (talk) 12:10, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Mesopotamian papyrus?
The reference to cuneiform written on papyrus seems to be wrong:

Writing in early Mesopotamia ... writing and arithmetics engraved in cuneiform letters into tablets of clay.[11]  ... They wrote on papyrus paper[12] as well as clay tablets. ...

This would refer to:

^ Carr, op.cit., p.39

which in turn refers to:

^ David McLain Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature, Oxford University Press 2005, ISBN 0-19-517297-3, p.66

But when I read page 39 in this book it only talks about reframing and recombining older literature by later scribes (after the literature of Mesopotamia "settled" in to a canoncial form), but there is no mention about writing cuneiform on papyrus.

So, are there any other references for Mesopotamian writing on papyrus? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.11.220.249 (talk) 23:19, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Modern scribes
Some text I wrote a while ago on the reemergence of scribes in today's computerized health-care systems got deleted. The text is cited to a reliable source that calls the health-care workers in question "scribes" from start to finish. No, their jobs are not the same as the scribes of ancient Egypt or the middle ages, but it seems to me to be original research to arbitrarily decide that their profession doesn't deserve the name. YLee (talk) 23:41, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

They are computer operators Nexia asx (talk) 17:15, 13 May 2011 (UTC)


 * YLee, I think the problem here is that you misunderstand the way Wikipedia assigns primary topics and our method of disambiguating between topics with similar names. This article--this ENTIRE article-- is about (quoting the lead) "a person who writes books or documents by hand as a profession and helps the city keep track of its records." That's it. All the other possible meanings of "scribe," including scribe (ER) are given a separate article and linked to via a disambiguation page: Scribe (disambiguation). The information you are attempting to add, while in itself valid (insofar that it is encyclopedic and referenced) does not belong here.


 * I realise that from your perspective, the ER-specific meaning behind "scribe" is important and that you feel it requires recognition. And it IS important, as is all encyclopedic knowledge. Unfortunately, the meaning under discussion in this article, that of the traditional scribe, is the primary topic. Your information therefore belongs at Scribe (ER), just as the practice of scribing belongs at Scribing (cartography). Nobody is claiming that ER scribes do not deserve the title "scribe," and in fact their article is under that title; the only difference is the "(ER)" qualifier, which is necessary to disambiguate it from this topic. Does this make sense to you? Furthermore, your framing of ER scribes as a "reappearance" of scribes in modern times can in fact be seen as original research, or flat-out idiosyncratic. Wikipedia is not an essay. I must ask you to cease your attempts to introduce such off-topic information that does not belong in this article. --Hadal (talk) 07:17, 6 June 2011 (UTC)


 * I see your point about the disambiguation page, but Scribing (cartography) isn't a valid counterexample; it and all other disambiguation examples are of objects, people, or something else that isn't a profession.
 * The idea that modern scribes are a revival of the ancient profession isn't original research; see (the basis for the healthjournalism.org blog post), for example. How do you think they got the name in the first place? Like ancient scribes, these hospital workers are literate in a new "language" and act on behalf of others who aren't. Ylee (talk) 09:15, 6 June 2011 (UTC)


 * "How do you think they got the name in the first place?"
 * Because of parallels between the professions. That doesn't mean they're the same thing. For similar situations look at director or minister. Film director is an entirely different profession than a director of an orchestra. Similarly, a minister of a church and a government minister are not simply variations of the same professions. The names are the same, but their functions differ greatly. I think the parallel between an ER-scribe and a traditional scribe is like between a physical mailbox and an electronic one, or between wallpaper in a house as opposed to on a computer desktop. It's not that the term scribe does not adequately describe an ER-scribe, but just that in common usage, that is not what people mean by it. Lindert (talk) 14:53, 6 June 2011 (UTC)


 * You make a very good point about the different types of directors and ministers. However, you bolster my case by doing so. No news article today would link or draw parallels between the professions of film and orchestra director in any way, as the two are clearly seen as distinct. The fact that at least one reliable source (and I've done zero research on this, mind you; for all I know there are a dozen more such RSs out there) does link ancient and modern scribes indicates that society at large does not distinguish between them in a meaningful way. Thus, a brief stub section at the bottom of the article with a link to Scribe (ER) does not seem inappropriate. If the profession of hospital scribe proves to be a lasting one and society sees it as one separate from ancient scribes, perhaps down the road only the disambiguation hatnote is required, but we are not at that stage now. Ylee (talk) 20:57, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Sopher
This redirects here, but it is not mentioned on the page. Could we introduce information about the connection? Ranze (talk) 23:25, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Muslim group
The Wikipedia portal on Islam has a core link that directs here, but someone has erased that page, which now comes here. There is not one word explaining why the Islam portal directs to this page, which is entirely about Egyptian & Judeochristian scribes in Europe. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.187.40.50 (talk) 19:36, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
 * There is also lacking of information about Asian scribes in general, like from India, China, Japan, etc. Rupert Loup (talk) 16:49, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I think one difficulty is the difference (perceived or real) between scribes and calligraphers. We have numerous articles, some of which are now listed under the "See also" heading in this article, on calligraphy in those cultures. Not so much on scribal writing as such, since scribes tend to have bureaucratic and secretarial functions, or preserve sacred writings where exactitude is a priority. It's a tenuous distinction, and of course there are, for instance, Chinese court scribes (hence the section in the article). But there seems to be a real difference in the scholarship as to whether "scribe" or "calligrapher" is used, with the latter predominant in most of the cultures listed as omitted. Cynwolfe (talk) 21:05, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Sofer / Jewish scribes
Can anyone explain what this phrase (from the article) means, which to me is ambiguous?
 * The middle paragraph, word and letter must correspond to those of the original document.

Thanks Eteb3 (talk) 21:06, 19 January 2021 (UTC)