The scribal tractates and the transformation of the Torah scroll

This article examines certain texts heretofore known as ‘minor tractates’ that prescribe regulations for producing Torah scrolls. The rabbinic writers responsible for these scribal tractates (as I call them) were fixated on the proper production of Torah scrolls. I argue that the scribal tractates are motivated by a desire to distinguish the Torah scroll from the codex , which became a popular technology of writing for Jews in the early Islamic period. With the rise of the Jewish codex in the early Islamic period, certain rabbinic Jews used the literary vehicle of Mishnah-imitation to represent the Torah scroll not only as a sacred artefact – an object with special ritualized status – but as an instrument of reading that had to be defined in opposition to the codex.