Seek the Roots: Page Five

One Thing is Clear. Hebrew is a Lot Easier than English

        When thinking about these changes, the time element must be considered. It was not that long ago that America celebrated its 200th birthday - two centuries. To keep these transitions in perspective we must remember most of these changes took two or three times that span of years.
            Certainly, the first immense influence to our languages and writing was the initial 'sound ' alphabet created by the Phoenicians. The next huge influence was Greek. About 400 years (or two USA's) before Jesus - as previously mentioned - our Greek friends reversed the basic sound alphabet to read from left to right and caused many of the letter symbols to be mirrored. The fact that today you read from left to right, while both those who speak Arabic as well as the Hebrew Jews and the original Bible read from right to left, is entirely their fault.
   Thus, after the Greeks settled on left to right the second letter reversed to:

.
Then hundreds of years later it looked like this:

.
At the pinnacle of Greek worldly influence it finally evolved into this:

.

Within the history of A and B, 1 and 2,
all these items are strongly related to one another:

food
alpha~
A
1
aleph~

shelter
~bet
B
2
~beyt

Before we move on to the fascinating words of the original Hebrew Old Testament, it should also be pointed out our alphabet isn't the only thing we have in common with Hebrew. Many of our common everyday English words had their roots in these ancient terms. For example, consider the Hebrew word

spelled yud- shin (Rule #1: right to left). Properly pronounced "yesh", this word translates to a positive indication (a concept similar to "there is" or "it is necessary" affirmative) - the predecessor roots of our own affirmative, "yes ".

You've now seen some of the primitive roots of our letters and words. You have also seen the strange gyrations they went through to eventually arrive at what we use today. But this project isn't about our

English alphabet. It's about the original Bible - and it's about Hebrew. Some of you may not have been extremely

excited about the idea our 'A' and 'B' (as well as our '1' and '2') originally came from the symbol-words for 'food' and 'shelter' - but the storyline behind the twenty other Hebrew alephbeyt characters is just as fascinating, especially one of them. If the oxen-A and the house-B didn't get your attention, then also consider this ;
The ancient characters shown above were used when writing was brand new. Thousands of years before the birth of Jesus there existed another Hebrew symbol called a Taw. This symbol was to eventually evolve into the modern Hebrew letter Tav, which is the final or closing letter of the alephbeyt. What is far more intriguing however, is the original meaning of this particular word-symbol. The Taw symbol represented simply two crossed sticks. But five thousand years ago this symbol meant a monument, a signal, or remembrance. 3,000 years before Jesus, that shrine symbol looked exactly like this:

Now that you've seen the many twists and turns each character took to arrive at both the modern Hebrew letters as well as our own English alphabet, some of you may be curious about the entire collection. Fascinating roots aren't limited to the first two letters or the amazing Taw. Another example, the concept of our 'M' beginning with a simple drawing of water waves could be discussed in length - but to save a little time we present instead the following complete table for you to study and enjoy. Several other interesting things may catch your eye, such as the symbol for 'Hey !' - "Look at me!". If you've ever referred to legs as "gams", the origin of that is here. Especially bewildering is the symbol for a 'son' or 'heir':

once a picture-word for 'seed' - an interesting symbol which existed thousands of years before microscopes looked at the male sperm.
It is the recognition of each character having a root meaning that gives us the Root Character Method and our dictionary of these words. On the page which follows we'll get back to those original words.

the Journey Continues ...