38. THE ALPHABET AS IMMUTABLE ORDER

38. THE ALPHABET AS IMMUTABLE ORDER
Revelation 1:8: "I AM alpha and omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty."

In the beginning God created Order, (aleph ve tau), a concept. This divine Order manifests itself as Wisdom, the Logos. Before God spoke a word He created the order which gives meaning to language, syntax, for a word without a linguistic context is meaningless. Without syntax His words would, like the earth, also have been chaotic. This beginning of creation is described in Proverbs 8:22-31:

The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of His acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth; before he had made the earth with its fields, or the first of the dust of the world. When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master workman; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the sons of men, (RSV).

In the English translations this original act of creation is not apparent in Genesis 1:1, but there is an untranslated word ᾽eth, spelled aleph ve tau with another vowel, as marker of a direct object, in the original Hebrew of that verse which is the sign of syntax, Order, the Logos: “In the beginning God created – (Bereshith bara Elohim – ).” Here we find that the next word is not the translated words “the heavens and the earth,” but the untranslated syntactical sign ’eth, spelled with the letters aleph and tau.

The essential original act of creation was, therefore, the creation of Order. That creation is expressed by the word ’eth, that is, aleph ve tau, and was initially demonstrated by the linguistic act of speaking the Word that brought forth Light as an Ordered sequence.

Light then became the medium through which the raw material of creation was made orderly. Light, as the intermediary between the concept and the physical creation, was made manifest intellectually through the immutable Word of God. It was made manifest spiritually through the knowledge of God by revelation of Himself. It was then manifested physically in the creation of the immutable order of the great lights, sun, moon and stars, the time-indicators.

Time is, above all, the awareness of an Immutable Order. The immutable order in the motions of the great lights made it possible for Man to count the units and revolutions of that order. It is this counting of the order of the great lights that we call Time. This Immutable Order is the prototype of Law, and a proof of the covenant-keeping God. This appears in the word translated “fixed order,” (RSV), in Jeremiah 31:35, 36:

Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar – the Lord of hosts is his name: “If this fixed order departs from before me,” says the Lord, “then shall the descendants of Israel cease from being a nation before me for ever,” (RSV).

The Hebrew for “fixed order” is chôq, primary meaning of which is: “that which is established, or definite,” in other words, “a law.” It is from the triliteral root châqaq, meaning “to cut in, inscribe, decree.”

The same word is used again in an almost identical context in Jeremiah 33:25-26 where it is translated ordinance:

Thus says the Lord: If I have not established my covenant with day and night and the ordinance of heaven and earth, then I will reject the descendants of Jacob and David my servant and will not choose one of his descendants to rule over the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

The idea is that a law, ordinance or decree was carved or written in stone in such a way as to be permanent. Yet God had a better, more permanent and immutable way to write His laws: to inscribe them upon the heavens. In the creation account of Proverbs 8 quoted above, forms of the word choq are translated “drew (a circle)” in verse 27 and “marked out” and “limits” in verse 29. In a similar context Job 26:10 uses the word again when describing the creation: “He has described a circle upon the face of the waters,” RSV.

This circle which God drew in the creation may literally be what mankind perceives as the circle of the ecliptic. Proverbs describes it as “upon the face of the deep,” while Job describes it as “upon the face of the waters.” In Proverbs 8:29 He assigned to the sea its limits, chôq, the law for the sea.

In Psalm 148:6 it is the “fixed bound” of the “waters above the heavens” that cannot be passed over, as well as the bounds of the sun, moon, and shining stars. So the great circle drawn in the creation may have been, not only of the horizons of the oceans of the earth, but primarily that of the great ecliptic of the heavens, the law for the heavens.

This is further borne out by the fact that the word chôq is used to mean “statutes and ordinances,” (Deut. 4:5, 8, 14; 6:24; 11:32; 12:l, to name a few). Some of these, for example the Passover law, (Exod. 12:24), and the law for tending the eternal light in the tabernacle, (Exod. 27:22, BH, 27:21 in RSV) are called a “statute forever,” or “everlasting law,” (Ges. Lexicon). The words forever and everlasting are from the Hebrew ‘olam, usually translated “eternal.” These are ‘olam laws; ‘olam perhaps should include the meaning “infinite,” referring to both time and space.

Job 14:5 applies these immutable, (‘olam), laws to Man: “You have appointed his bounds (chuqaw, a form of chôq) that he cannot pass over.” These bounds are time-bounds, 14:13: “O that thou wouldst appoint me a set time (chôq) and remember me.” He sees that these laws of the heavens, these time-bounds, rule the earth, though Man cannot control them: 38:33:

Do you know the ordinances, (chûqoth), of the heavens? Can you establish their rule on the earth? (RSV).

To return to the use of choqaq, it is used in Isaiah 30:8 and Ezekiel 4:1 to mean “to engrave letters and figures on a tablet,” that is, to write.  It is translated to the Greek graphein, “to write,” perhaps “to delineate, to paint,” in Isaiah 49:16 and Ezekiel 23:14, (Ges. Lexicon s.v.).

A word parallel to choqaq is the word chaqah, meaning “to represent, imitate,” (BDB).  Here we have the basis for the philosophy that the heavens are to be reflected or represented on the earth; that the signs of the heavens are to teach us and guide us. They represent the eternal, immutable law of God and are a witness, as a written record, to His covenant, the law for Man.

Can a man defy the order of the universe? Can he change the celestial movements of the sun, moon and stars? If not, then why should he think that he can change the Ten Commandments? God's Law is immutable, unchangeable. It is the Law of the Order of Creation. It is represented graphically in the order of the alphabet, as a symbol of the universal Law. And Jesus is "Alpha and Omega," "Aleph and Tau"  the Wisdom of God, the Beginning of Creation.

37. ALPHA AND OMEGA - THE BEGINNING AND THE END

37. ALPHA AND OMEGA - THE BEGINNING AND THE END

Revelation 1:8. Alpha and Omega: “I am Alpha and Omega.”

This utterance, the first of the utterances of God in the Book of Revelation, seems to be saying, not only the awesome title “I Am,” but also that “I Am the Alphabet,” since alpha and omega are the names of the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. This is a puzzling statement unless and until we understand the significance of the alphabet as it is used in this context.[i]

The alphabet is a fit symbol of Christ for it is both human and divine. From its earthly mother it inherits its practical, utilitarian and mathematical nature; from God the Father of it and all other Lights, it inherits its generative powers to reproduce spiritual things: Wisdom, Truth, Beauty, Inspiration, Faith, Hope, and Charity.

We must receive this revelation of Christ by examining the words in their context. The context must not be sought in the later speculations of Pharisaic Judaism.[ii] The usage in the Book of Revelation is not related to the later mystical writings of the Gnostics nor the magical writings of the Kabbalists.[iii] [Kabbalah (Cabalah) is the system of magical, occult practices, using the Hebrew alphabet for witchcraft and other occult practices in Judaism.] We must rather look to the canonical Scriptures and to the historical and cultural milieu preceding and during the time of the writing of the Book of Revelation. We totally reject the occult use of the alphabet as practiced by the Kabbalists even today.

Based upon the premise that the book was originally written in Hebrew, we should translate the alphabetic terms back to the Hebrew. The equivalent of alpha and omega in Hebrew is aleph and tau. The aleph and tau, being the first and last letters, represents the entire alphabet and is no doubt the Hebrew word for alphabet. The word we translate and is represented in Hebrew by the letter vau, giving us the three letters aleph, vau, and tau. These three letters, so arranged, spell the word translated sign, or transliterated ’ôwth, or the alternate shortened spelling ’ôth.[iv]

We may readily see that as aleph-vau-tau Christ is the totality of every word that may be uttered, written, or read. He is The Word. However, there are aspects of the ancient alphabet that are difficult to translate. One of those is the fact that the oldest alphabets were not only letters, but were also numerals. As the numerals, Christ is the entire realm of all that can be measured or quantified, that is, all mathematics and science. But this is not yet all that the term aleph-vau-tau indicates, for in the earliest traceable stages, the alphabet was also the means of designating the time-telling stars and constellations in their time-telling movements as well as their function in navigation and cartography, (Seiss, 177).[v] 

Even now there is a system for naming stars that uses the Greek alphabet – roughly in order of their brightness within a constellation: alpha, beta, gamma, … etc. To sum it up, as aleph-vau-tau, Christ is All and in All: The Word, Time, Space, Wisdom, Life.

Origen in his Commentary said that the canonical books of the Hebrew Bible were twenty-two, “like the letters of their alphabet.”[vi] This was a fact noted also by Josephus and other writers of that era. It indicates that they considered the alphabet as representing a totality; that is, the complete Scriptures were contained in the twenty-two letters of the alphabet.

The Semitic alphabet has spread throughout the world to many languages and cultures Consequently, it has been used in multitudes of ways and has followed various lines of development. Much of the original idea of the alphabet has been lost in some of its lines of transmission. Here I will try to show what the original alphabetic idea is in the canonical Scriptures and how it is used as a fit symbol of Christ in that context.

The Word ’Oth (Aleph-Vau-Tau)

In Genesis 1:14 we have the account of the creation of signs. The lights of the heavens, the sun, moon, and stars were created for signs, ’othoth, plural of ᾽oth.  This plural represents the grouping, or pluralizing of the alphabetic signs, creating the constellations.  These signs were for two purposes: to mark time, designating the times and seasons, and to give light, separating the light from the darkness, (Gen. 1:14). From the creation, the signs, the aleph ve tau, the alphabet, was intended to be both numerals and letters witnessing to and symbolizing the Logos of the Most High God.[vii]

As time markers, they fulfilled a numeric function, to mark day and night and the seasons of the year. As light-givers they were to fulfill a literary and artistic function: to give Light on the earth and to separate Light from darkness physically, and wisdom from ignorance intellectually. The original alphabet represented these two distinct rays, the numerical, which first found expression in the time-reckoning function and later in other mathematical uses, and the linguistic, expressed in writing. At this first stage it should perhaps be called the “numero/alphabet.” The original idea of the numero/alphabet represented the idea of order.

As signs, these highest of all symbols, were created as a witness of and to the Most High God, to teach and to inspire worship. We should therefore not wonder that they have been prostituted to idol worship throughout history in many cultures of the world. That is all the more reason we should appropriate them, as symbols, to the worship of Christ, their legitimate and intended use.

But the plural form, ’othoth, may be a reduplication of the form which was already intended to be a plural; that is, the original root may have simply been the single letter aleph. Adding the feminine plural morpheme –oth would make the word mean “plural aleph(im).” Sometime later, however, the form came to be understood as a singular and a reduplicated plural morpheme –oth was added. Such reduplications are attested many times in historical linguistics.

If this be the case, the original aleph would have had the meaning “sign,” and its plural would have been “signs.”  The original plural, then, aleph ve tau, would have indicated the signs of the alphabet, from aleph, the first letter, to tau the last letter.  The word ᾽oth would therefore mean “the alphabet as signs.”

Evidence that this was indeed the case comes from the form ᾽au and tau both of which mean “a sign, mark.”  The original plural of aleph then was the feminine form ’oth and the original of tau was the masculine tam meaning “finished, complete.” The aleph began the circle and the tam completed the circle at the same point, making aleph ve tau the description of a single point of the completed circle, and thus of the circle itself, the complete alphabet. This is clearly what Christ meant when He said: “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending”; that is, that the ending and the beginning were one and the same point.[viii] Christ became the overlapping anchor between the “this age” and “the age to come.” 2 Esdras 6:7 shows that the “dividing of times” means “the end of the first age and the beginning of the age that follows.”

Seiss says that, due to the proclivity of the Jews to idolatrous worship of the heavenly bodies, all the figures of the zodiac were erased and the Hebrew alphabet was substituted in their place, (p. 177). Seiss’ view is perhaps an anachronism, for the more likely scenario was that the zodiac signs were from the creation first designated by the Hebrew alphabet and only when the Hebrews fell into idol worship did they use the signs of the Greek zodiac, the circle of animals. In other words, the Greed zodiac was a later development of what was originally the Hebrew alphabet.

Some history of the alphabet will help to demonstrate its significance as a symbol of Christ. The alphabet did not originate as the phonetic system we have today which roughly represents speech sounds. It had a long history before it reached the phonetic stage of development. As the handwriting of God upon the heavens, it was universally significant to all mankind. Being able to read the signs of the heavens and to know the seasons was a matter of life or death as well as a spiritual experience. Having already acquired this basic significance, it was ideally suited to go into the whole world when it developed into a phonetic system.

The primal idea of the alphabet was that of an immutable order, an order witnessed to by the order of the time-indicating signs of the heavens. Possibly the first use of the graphic symbols of the alphabet was as numerals for counting and naming this ordered series of the progression of time-indicators, the sun, moon and constellations for time-reckoning, that is, the days, months and years, for example, “day one,” “day two,” as in Genesis chapter one.

As symbols of order, it consequently became a mnemonic device for memory units of all kinds.[ix] In time the mnemonic use of these signs for oral literary and historical units developed into semasiographic writing,[x] which, at some point, produced the idea of correlating the signs with speech sounds. At this point the alphabet became phonetic as we know it today.[xi]

The major steps in the history of the development of the alphabet as it progressed through a continual differentiation of usage, meaning, and signs is somewhat parallel to the ever-increasing Light of Christ.

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[i] See also my Commentary on Revelation 1:7, “Coming.” In the Hebrew alphabet the first letter is called Aleph and the last letter is called Tau. The Hebrew word ’ôwth, (consisting of the letters aleph-vau-tau,), is used in Dan.7:13 regarding the “coming” of the Son of Man in the clouds.

[ii] The modern shameful misuse of the Scriptures in the so-called "Omega Code" take their ideas from the Jewish misuse of the alphabet. For example among the non-canonical apocalyptic writings are the Alphabets of Rabbi Akiba, about 1100 AD:

“Apocalyptic Literature, 6. The Alphabets of R. Akiba,"( 680-1). "The chief center of thought of all of them [i.e. the Alphabets,] is the mystical signification, already mentioned in the Talmud, of the letters of the alphabet and of their written forms, and the mysteries of the names of God made up of four, twelve, and forty-two letters. In the Jerusalem Talmud (Hagigah.ii.77c) there is a dissertation on the letters by means of which the world was created, and there, as in these writings, it is stated that the present world was created with He (ה) and the future with Yod (י), and eschatological theories are built up out of the forms of these letters. 

“In the Babylonian Talmud (Shabbath. 104a), also, all sorts of similar interpretations are given in regard to the names, forms, and combinations of the various letters, and are made to bear upon eschatological questions in the same way as in these apocalypses. In Kiddushin 71a, it is said that the mysteries of the three names of God were treated as esoteric doctrine and that whoever became thoroughly initiated into the mystery of the name consisting of forty-two letters might be sure of inheriting both the present and the future world. Similarly, R. Akiba, the reputed author of the “Alphabets,” is especially commended in the Talmud as interpreter of the strokes, dots, and flourishes of the letters (compare, for example, Men. 29b; see also Akiba Ben Joseph),” Jewish Encyclopedia, JE, Vol 1 KTAV Publishing House, Inc., New York, 1901. (Prepared by more than 400 scholars and specialists.) Isodore Singer, project and managing editor.

   Some scholars attempt to show that these "Alphabets" borrow their theosophical speculation from the writings of Islam, ("especially in “Monatschrift,” viii.115 et seq."), however:

"Later Jewish literature had the widest and deepest influence on the formation and development of the views and teachings of Islam .... From the presence of mystical speculations about the essence and being of God, etc., in the Arabic literature, similar to those in the Neo-Hebrew, it is quite impossible to conclude that they found their way from the former into the latter; rather would the opposite conclusion be justified," (ibid.).

In other words, Islam's Koran took much of its teachings from the Jewish Talmud.

[iii] See "Kabbalah (Cabalah)" and "Zohar", The New Jewish Encyclopedia, Revised edition, eds. David Bridger, Samuel Wolk, (Behrman House, Inc., Publisher. 1976). 

[iv] See Commentary at 9:11 “The Hebrew Tongue” also at 16:16 “Armageddon.”  The texts considered sacred to Judaism are as follows:

Targumim = “translations.”

The Babli is the Babylonian Talmud and the Yerushalmi is the Jerusalem Talmud.

Midrash is: (1) the haggadic or halakic exposition of the underlying significance of a Bible text.  (2) A collection of Midrashim. (3) cap: the Midrashic literature written between the 4th century BC and 11th century AD.

Haggadah is: (1) ancient Jewish lore forming esp. the nonlegal part of the Talmud.  (2) The Jewish ritual for the Seder, (Passover feast).

Halakah is the body of Jewish law supplementing the Scriptural law and forming especially the legal part of the Talmud.  Judaism considers the New Testament and Christianity as heretical.

[v] "In the perspective of early Christians who compiled listings of heretics, Israelites who rejected Jesus as Messiah were quintessential heretics. Among this group, the Pharisees were remembered for their devotedness to astrology: 'Fate and astrology were quite popular notions with them,' writes Epiphanius....  Epiphanius further recounts how they possessed a vocabulary of their own in Hebrew for the zodiac and other celestial beings," (Malina, 74).

[vi] As stated by Eusebius, History of the Church, 6.25; that the Apostle John wrote the Book of Revelation (ibid.  6:25.10).

[vii] It could well be argued that this heavenly Pattern is the written Name of God. Its incorporation into the Temple meant that God's Name was there. That is, the Temple was created and designed for the purpose of an observatory of the heavenly Pattern telling the times and seasons and teaching the wisdom of God. See also my Commentary at 1:3 "Christ as Light and Time."

[viii] The KJV includes the phrase "the beginning and the ending" but this is at the translator’s privilege for it was not in the original Greek. The KJV translators felt it was necessary in order to bring out the sense of the verse. The RSV leaves out the phrase "the beginning and the ending" here but includes it at Revelation 21:6 and 22:13 where the saying is repeated, see "First and Last" my Commentary on 1:17.

 [ix] A mnemonic device is a system used to recall the proper order of items in a sequence; i.e. any group of items to be remembered could be arranged according to this fixed numero/alphabetic order and so be more easily recalled.

[x] Semasiographic writing is defined by Gelb as "… a stage of writing in which meaning– not words or sounds– are suggested by signs," Ignace J. Gelb, A Study of Writing: The Foundations of Grammatology, Second Edition, (Chicago, Ill., University of Chicago Press, 1962), 15.

[xi] The Behaviourist School says that language is the only medium of human communication and all human intercommunication outside of language is nothing but a secondary substitute for language, that thinking and ideas are “silent talk.”

   Gelb says that the Behaviourist School is wrong in some instances, that there is not a complete identity of speech and writing, that in the earliest writing, the images expressed meaning without a "linguistic garment." Only after the development of a phonetic system was writing practically identified with speech and lost its independent character. (ibid.)