Hebrew alphabet

“ Its correct utterance, mark well. For knowledge of the most amazing and terrible kind is there, waiting release by him who knows, and who greatly dares.
"And you shall later learn that sound is power. The Hebrew alphabet you must know intimately, and the intricate association of its letters with number, color, harmony and geometrical form, all of which are but symbols of the Realities at the very roots of life. ”

“ The Hebrew alphabet consists entirely of consonants, the vowel sounds having always been inserted orally, and never marked in writing until the "vowel points," as they are called, were invented by the Masorites, some six centuries after the Christian era. ”

“ In these inscriptions the Yod (iota) is represented by a simple point. See Alexander's Kitto, vol. 3, p. 1173.)
The Rabbinic is a modification of the Assyrian or square writing, for the purpose of giving it a more cursive character.
3. The Hebrew alphabet, like all the other Shemitic alphabets—with the exception of the Æthiopic, which is syllabic, the vowels being indicated by certain modifications in the forms of the consonants—was originally a skeleton alphabet, an alphabet of consonants, in which, however, certain letters, called vowel-letters, performed in a measure the office of vowels. ”

“ We know that the numerical value of the Hebrew letters is given with reference to their place in the alphabet, which was arranged for reasons that can hardly have had anything to do with arithmetic. The Greek alphabet is modified from a Semitic one, but instead of letting the numeral value of their letters follow throughout their newly-arranged alphabet, they reckon α, β, γ, δ, ε, properly, as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 259then put in σ for 6, and so manage to let ι stand for 10, as י does in Hebrew, where it is really the 10th letter. ”

“ Now, every educated Jew knows more or less Hebrew, and, although he is able to read and write only the modern square Hebrew character, it is so easy to transpose one alphabet into another that the mere language would afford no security. Therefore, I expect that, when the experts translate this document, the translation or transliteration will be a mere farrago of unintelligible nonsense. ”

“ Certain priests have attempted to prove that the vowel points and final letters were in use in Ezra’s time; but it is now generally admitted by scholars that they were inventions of the middle ages. Hear what the learned Christian Dupin, Doctor of the Sorbonne, says: [Pg 273] —“The Hebrew alphabet is composed of twenty-two letters, like those of the Samaritans, Chaldeans, and Syrians. But, of these letters, none are vowels, and, in consequence, the pronunciation cannot be determined. The Hebrews have invented points, which, being put under the letters, answer the purpose of vowels. ”

“ It is an alphabetic poem; each distich begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. This, combined with the position of the work at the close of the various collections of proverbs, of itself suggests a date not far removed on the one side or the other from the Exile period, when Hebrew literature became undoubtedly more artificial and technical. From 155xxxi. 23 (‘the elders of the land’) we may perhaps infer that it was written in Palestine. It is very interesting to see the ideal of womanhood formed by a late Hebrew poet. ”

“ Alphabet, Christian Use of the.—The Hebrew, Greek, and Latin alphabets have been variously made use of in Christian liturgy. During Holy Week the Hebrew alphabet is sung, each of its letters preceding one of the verses of the Lamentations of Jeremias at Matins ”

“ Returning again to the Semitic, beth, the name given to the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet, is really Aramæan. Like the corresponding word in Hebrew, baith, it signifies a house, to which it has some faint resemblance.
B is a flat mute, the voice not being so entirely shut off in pronouncing it as it is when one of the sharp mutes, p or f, is uttered. The b sound is produced by compressing the lips, a vowel being added to render it audible. ”

“ If we study the alphabets of the various peoples, we shall find in them clear indications of the physical and social conditions under which they evolved. Thus the Hebrew alphabet carries with it unmistakable evidence of the nomadic and simple life of those "dwellers in tents." ”

“ To make the subject still more clear, let us assume that a standard numerical value is attached to each letter in the English alphabet. A has the value of 1, B 2, C 3, D 4, E 5, F 6, G 7, H 8, I 9, J 10, K 20, L 30, M 40, N 50, O 60, P 70, Q 80, R 90, S 100, T 200, U 300, V 400, W 500, X 1000, Y 10,000, Z 100,000. And let us now assume a point in dispute in order to illustrate how it is solved by Gematria. Suppose that the subject of discussion is the comparative superiority of the Hebrew and English languages, and Hugo and Baruch are the disputants. ”

“ This latter passage is important, not only as showing the difference of the two languages, but also as showing the existence of two scripts, one called Hebrew (עברית‎) , the other Ashuri (אשורית‎) which is variously rendered "upright," "sacred," or "Assyrian." The old alphabet and the Aramaic language were profane: the Hebrew and the new alphabet, which came with Ezra from Babylon, were sacred. ”

“ Greek is written like our writing, from left to right; but Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian are written from right to left. So, in those languages a book begins where our books end. It was found, too, that the Hebrew writing now in use is very different externally from that used by David and Solomon, although the names and general shape of the letters are the same. Have you ever seen a Hebrew Bible? The alphabet in which the Old Testament was originally written looked very different from that which the Jews now use in their Bibles; it was much nearer the Phœnician in appearance. ”

“ Like the Babylonian words, they are written in cuneiform characters, and since these denote syllables and not mere letters we know exactly how the words were pronounced. It is an advantage which is denied us by the Phoenician alphabet, whether in the inscriptions of Phoenicia or in the pages of the Old Testament, and we can thus obtain a better idea of the pronunciation of the Canaanitish language in the century before the Exodus than we can of the Hebrew language in the age of Hezekiah. ”

“ After the deciphering of the Egyptian hieroglyphs, it was seen to be probable that not only were the ancient Egyptians the first inventors of alphabetic writing, but that the Phœnician and Hebrew alphabet was itself borrowed from the Egyptian hieroglyph-alphabet. Mr. Samuel Sharpe made the attempt to bring together the Egyptian hieroglyphs in their pictorial form with the square Hebrew characters. The Vicomte de Rougé's comparison, left for years unpublished, of the Egyptian hieratic characters with the old Phœnician letters, confirms Mr. ”

“ Though there is really little resemblance between the Ethiopic and the Hebrew letters, and not much more between 424 that and the Samaritan, yet I have a very great suspicion the languages were once much nearer a-kin than this disagreement of their alphabet promises, and, for this reason, that a very great number of words are found throughout the Old Testament that have really no root, nor can be derived from any Hebrew origin, and yet all have, in the Ethiopic, a plain, clear, unequivocal origin, to and from which they can be traced without force or difficulty. ”

“ Hebrew literature, so scantily represented for this period, has to mourn this great loss. A page of fragments, gathered from the Talmud and 195the Midrāshīm, [279] is all that we can, with some occasional hesitation, plausibly regard as genuine. There is indeed a small work, called the Alphabet of Ben Sira, consisting of two series of proverbs, one in Aramaic, and one in Hebrew. ”

“ The Phœnicians and Hebrews are supposed to have borrowed their alphabet from the Egyptian hieratic writing; and in the transition the irregular character of the markings of the reed pen on papyrus disappeared and monumental regularity took its place, as nearly all of the early Phœnician and Hebrew writing was in the form of inscriptions on stone and metal. But in this transition the letters did not revert to the Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol, but simply became an angular, simplified form of the hieratic, so that the A became a V or caret-like form with a line crossing it. ”

“ The later alphabets—Parsi, Hebrew, Syriac, Mongolian, and Arabic—were at first local varieties of the Aramean. Owing to accidental circumstances they became the sacred scripts of the five great faiths of Asia—Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Northern Buddhism, and Islam. Hence the descendants of the Aramean alphabet occupy a space on the map second only to that filled by the Latin alphabet itself. ”

“ Nor were Hebraists of our own age much better informed, even Gesenius and other later Semitic specialists had nothing more than Phœnician texts on which to ground their statements with respect to the ancient alphabet of Israel. No Jewish monumental text was available for research, as none such was known to be in existence. The opinions, therefore, of even the most profound scholars as to the form of the letters which were actually used by the sacred penmen were based rather on probability and analogy than on positive knowledge. ”

“ There is no reason to suppose that the Hebrew language was written at the time of the exodus, though some such mnemonic system might have been invented as was used by several of the Indian tribes. If Moses had all the knowledge of the Egyptians, but no more, he could not have used any better mode of writing than their hieratic, in which it was not possible to write intelligibly any long document in the Hebrew language, simply because the advance made by the hieratic, in which the use of phonetics began, was not sufficient to express all the Hebrew vocables. ”

“ Infinite labor, years of toilsome study, almost endless efforts of perverted ingenuity were given to the mistaken effort to establish this point, which was regarded by these in-the-dark-working linguists as one, almost if not quite, of religious importance. Now we know that the Hebrew language is totally, radically different from all the Indo-European languages; that they have no kinship whatever, and are as unlike as if they were spoken on two separate planets by creatures of different species. ”

“ What prevented, however, for a long time the progress of the science of language was the idea that Hebrew was the primitive language of mankind, and that, therefore, all languages must be derived from Hebrew. ”

“ The appendices in 22:17-24:34 contain many repetitions of proverbs found in the larger collection. The prevalence of intemperance, the existence of a merchant class, and the allusions to exiled Jews (e.g., 24:11) point rather clearly to the dissolute Greek period as the age when these small collections were made. The word meaning "transcribe," that is found in the superscription to the second large collection (25-29) , is peculiar to the late Hebrew, and implies that this superscription, like those of the Psalms, was added by a late Jewish scribe. ”

“ On the other hand, it is somewhat inferior to many others, as, for example, the Greek, in poetical forms and shape, in richness and variety of development, and in precision of scientific diction. In its essential character, the Hebrew language is prophetical, like the people itself, even in the present evil days of their dispersion—the people in whom the living word of the twofold ancient prophecy, now that the Jews have handed it over to the Gentiles, has first attained its perfect accomplishment. ”

“ Any student seriously bent on the science of language should learn at least enough Hebrew to spell out a few chapters of Genesis, for all the other languages commonly taught in England being of the Aryan family, this will serve to bring his mind out of that groove, by familiarizing him with speech of a different material. A very moderate number of roots, mostly of three consonants, by altering their internal vowels and changing their affixes, are made to form the greater part of the language so regularly that Hebrew dictionaries are arranged throughout by the roots. ”

“ On the other hand, the Hebrews seem to have been provided with an alphabet as soon as they were to constitute a nation; and they were taught to use the successive letters of that alphabet to express the first ten numerals. In this way b and c might denote 2 and 3 just as well as those figures; and numbers might thus be expressed by single letters to the end of the alphabet, but no further. They were taught, however, and the Greeks learnt from them, to use the letters which follow the ninth as indications of so many tens; and those which follow the eighteenth as indicative of hundreds. ”

“ The only book in the Old Testament which attempts to grapple with an abstract subject in plain prose—namely, Ecclesiastes—dates from a time when Hebrew was dying out or was already dead. That the gifted author does not always succeed in giving clear expression to his ideas is partly due to the fact that the language had never been employed for any scientific purposes whatsoever. With regard to grammatical forms, Hebrew has lost much that is still preserved in Arabic; but the greater richness of Arabic is in part the result of later development. ”