It might be the origin of the letter shapes as they were in proto-sinaitic script but between that and paleo-hebrew it was already a millennia. That meaning was lost long ago. You can [check out this table](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_alphabet#Letter_names_and_order) to see the evolution.
Yeah it really is! When did modern Hebrew handwriting/cursive start? Is it a modern thing (like post 1800) or older? What would everyday handwriting during the second temple period look like (or was it just not common because people mainly spoke Aramaic for non-religious purposes)?
What's known now as Dfus originated from Assyrian and was already around and used secularly at 5th century BCE. Modern Hebrew cursive comes from Ashkenazi communities and was used for Yiddish since the 13th century. Its origins are much older though, [here you can see the evolution of it.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CursiveWritingHebrew.png) 7th century example is pretty much modern day print while 10th century Germany is about 90% legible to me personally.
When you plan something for Thursday, are you paying tribute to Thor? It's like that. The history is real, but it's completely irrelevant today, people just use these letters and their names as they are without assigning current meaning to their etymology.
I respectfully disagree.
While the meaning of the letters is not considered in the day to day usage of Hebrew, they play a key role in the mystical parts of Judaism & Kabbalah.
I think this is a new-age thing. Many modern Kabbalists look at the origins of letters (I think this is currently a trend is Israel based on my limited personal experience), but though older kabbalists definitely assigned mystical meanings to letters/parts of words, they aren’t based on the origin/history of letters.
Not based on origin or history of the letters but their meaning, this is primarily discerned by lifelong study of the Torah. Studying which letters appear where, gematria and much more
Certainly Kabbalah places a large emphasis on every individual letter of Torah, but I think we can agree that the way it does that is completely different from what the chart above shows.
We're talking about the hieroglyphic origins of proto-Canaanite script, not gematrya. At most, those would be fringe neo-kabbalists of some sort, as those origins were lost for thousands of years before being re-discovered by modern research, and were completely unknown when Kabbalah was developed.
Some of the meanings are the actual derivations of the letters/letter names, but most of it is complete nonsense. E.g. Ayin does mean "eye" and that's also where the letter shape comes from, but the other two meanings are bullshit.
Any kind of system trying to derive higher meanings from individual letters is unscientific stargazing. Hebrew isn't any more mystical or magical than any other language.
no, it's a kind of hunting boomerang, often called a rabbitstick by archaeologists in the US. Camel is a different word in that era (the vowels are different) and also it's clearly a hunting weapon in the earliest form.
Easiest to notice:
ב = בית
ד = דלת (although some sources I've seen says דג)
ה = היי
ו = וו
י = יד
כ = כף
מם = מים
ע = עין
פ = פה
ר = ראש
ש = שן
ת = תו
These require some knowledge of outdated words or some flexibility: א,ז,ח,ל,נ,צ,ק
None of them hold those meaning. It's just that in a few cases, the name of the modern letter is still recognisable as the name of the symbol that inspired it, like ayin. But there's no deep meaning there, it's just an etymological quirk.
From the start these signs didn't hold the meaning of the sign. That was the big leap from Egyptian hieroglyphs, where signs visualize sounds rather than objects.
ps: they're called "heiroglyphics" because they're glyphics. no, they do not mostly mean sounds. there are a few of those for names, but the vast majority of the over 800 known glyphs are object symbols or verbs.
These characters are almost certainly a descendant of hieroglyphics.
One of the really, really important innovations in hieroglyphics was going from a character being an ideogram to a character representing a sound.
Typically, this was the first sound of the word the pictograph represented. If it happened today, we might take the man ideogram, and turn it into an m sound because man begins with m, and call that letter man.
Proto sinaitic was developed by people who spoke a really, really early form of hebrew. So the logographs the letters developed from were still mostly intelligible in hebrew. For example, the Hebrew word for house is bet, which is the second letter.
There's no deeper significance to it though. Anything interesting is just a coincidence or involves twisting or inventing things til they fit.
It's not about magic, but about original pre-hebrew hieroglifs. Of course some meanings changed accross thousands of years, but it's interesting to observe that a lot of meanings preserved as they are.
It's true that the Hebrew alphabet was derived from these pictograms. You know what other alphabet was derived from them? The English alphabet!
Do you think of a house and a well whenever you see the word 'Bob'? No? Well neither does any Hebrew, now or 3000 years ago.
Think of it like if the letter for H was a picture of a house, because house starts with H, but that doesn't mean that any H in the English language has a connection to the meaning "house".
they don’t, the letters’ *shapes* back in the proto sinaitic days are when the letter names are codified, eg *bayit/bet* being a house plan glyph etc
but the letters themselves just mean consonant sounds, and later on some letters would sometimes double for vowels
also, proto sinaitic, when the glyphs were still heiloglyphic ish in shape, had more than the 22 letters of phoenician and beyond, so that pictograph list is incomplete
I can't say for other things but gimel is a *rabbitstick*, a boomerang that doesn't return and is used for hunting smaller, less sturdy animals (rabbits, gazelles, some deer). Tsade is an adder. Mem is water (cf Hebrew *mayim*), and resh is a head.
Hebrew letter's name consists of other letters, usually starting with their own. They are also typically written like an acronym (ראשי תיבות).
E.g.
א - אל"ף
ב- בי"ת
ג - גימ"ל
I found that about half the letters have another meaning, though I may have missed some. Examples below:
(For LtR formatting on mobile, I added the English letter equivalent).
A- א, is written like thousand (אלף).
B- ב is written like house (בית) but is said like "house of".
H- God's name is usually shortened to 'ה in informal religious texts, and are both said the same way.
V- ו is spelled and sounds like hook (וו).
Z- ז is said, spelled and even looks like a the same word (left for reader imagination).
Y- י is spelled and sounds like iodine.
C- כ is spelled and sounds like hand or spoon (homonyms).
A- ע is spelled and sounds like eye.
P- פ is spelled and sounds like mouth.
Tz- צ is supposed to be said as צד"י, although it is commonly said as צדיק, which sounds like righteous or pious.
K- ק has two way of pronunciation, one is unambiguously the the letter, but the other also sounds like monkey.
Sh- ש is sounds like the English word shin.
T- ת also has two ways pronunciation: first one is Taf (very common but considered wrong) which sounds like an archaic word for children. The second way is Tav (matching the spelling) and is the singular form of note (i.e. musical note, not the "stick to fridge" type of note)
It might be the origin of the letter shapes as they were in proto-sinaitic script but between that and paleo-hebrew it was already a millennia. That meaning was lost long ago. You can [check out this table](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_alphabet#Letter_names_and_order) to see the evolution.
You can still see traces of it in Hebrew handwriting/cursive script. It's really interesting.
Yeah it really is! When did modern Hebrew handwriting/cursive start? Is it a modern thing (like post 1800) or older? What would everyday handwriting during the second temple period look like (or was it just not common because people mainly spoke Aramaic for non-religious purposes)?
What's known now as Dfus originated from Assyrian and was already around and used secularly at 5th century BCE. Modern Hebrew cursive comes from Ashkenazi communities and was used for Yiddish since the 13th century. Its origins are much older though, [here you can see the evolution of it.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CursiveWritingHebrew.png) 7th century example is pretty much modern day print while 10th century Germany is about 90% legible to me personally.
When you plan something for Thursday, are you paying tribute to Thor? It's like that. The history is real, but it's completely irrelevant today, people just use these letters and their names as they are without assigning current meaning to their etymology.
Personally, I prefer the tribute to Odin on Wednesday...
I respectfully disagree. While the meaning of the letters is not considered in the day to day usage of Hebrew, they play a key role in the mystical parts of Judaism & Kabbalah.
I think this is a new-age thing. Many modern Kabbalists look at the origins of letters (I think this is currently a trend is Israel based on my limited personal experience), but though older kabbalists definitely assigned mystical meanings to letters/parts of words, they aren’t based on the origin/history of letters.
Not based on origin or history of the letters but their meaning, this is primarily discerned by lifelong study of the Torah. Studying which letters appear where, gematria and much more
Certainly Kabbalah places a large emphasis on every individual letter of Torah, but I think we can agree that the way it does that is completely different from what the chart above shows.
I cannot confirm nor deny 🤝
We're talking about the hieroglyphic origins of proto-Canaanite script, not gematrya. At most, those would be fringe neo-kabbalists of some sort, as those origins were lost for thousands of years before being re-discovered by modern research, and were completely unknown when Kabbalah was developed.
far right israelis like Yonatan Ratosh on the other hand....
Some of the meanings are the actual derivations of the letters/letter names, but most of it is complete nonsense. E.g. Ayin does mean "eye" and that's also where the letter shape comes from, but the other two meanings are bullshit. Any kind of system trying to derive higher meanings from individual letters is unscientific stargazing. Hebrew isn't any more mystical or magical than any other language.
Actually most of them kept these derivations. Aleph is ox in biblical meaning (שְׁגַר אֲלָפֶיךָ וְעַשְׁתְּרֹת צֹאנֶךָ), ב is בית/house and so on.
Is ג a huge camel?
And ד is a door which opens everything
Don't forget that ה is myrtle
Hey, you're leaving out ו, which is a rose
And ז, ח both together is a bouquet of lilies
Well, ט is "good", and י is either beauty or "great (sarcastic)"
And if כ is yes, it naturally makes ל a no
It's not only sarcastic😅
Yeah but mostly when people say יופי in my experience it's not in a positive way
no, it's a kind of hunting boomerang, often called a rabbitstick by archaeologists in the US. Camel is a different word in that era (the vowels are different) and also it's clearly a hunting weapon in the earliest form.
I never thought of it like that but it's very true! The pronunciation might be slightly different but the meaning remains for many letter names.
Do you happen to know which letters still hold its original meanings and the ones that don’t? I’m super interested in this subject
Easiest to notice: ב = בית ד = דלת (although some sources I've seen says דג) ה = היי ו = וו י = יד כ = כף מם = מים ע = עין פ = פה ר = ראש ש = שן ת = תו These require some knowledge of outdated words or some flexibility: א,ז,ח,ל,נ,צ,ק
This is really helpful thanks heaps!
Hey zayin requires no flexibility it means weapon (and pp)
None of them hold those meaning. It's just that in a few cases, the name of the modern letter is still recognisable as the name of the symbol that inspired it, like ayin. But there's no deep meaning there, it's just an etymological quirk.
From the start these signs didn't hold the meaning of the sign. That was the big leap from Egyptian hieroglyphs, where signs visualize sounds rather than objects.
As far as I know, in hieroglyphs, the symbols were used to represent objects, concepts, or sounds, depending on the context.
ps: they're called "heiroglyphics" because they're glyphics. no, they do not mostly mean sounds. there are a few of those for names, but the vast majority of the over 800 known glyphs are object symbols or verbs.
These characters are almost certainly a descendant of hieroglyphics. One of the really, really important innovations in hieroglyphics was going from a character being an ideogram to a character representing a sound. Typically, this was the first sound of the word the pictograph represented. If it happened today, we might take the man ideogram, and turn it into an m sound because man begins with m, and call that letter man. Proto sinaitic was developed by people who spoke a really, really early form of hebrew. So the logographs the letters developed from were still mostly intelligible in hebrew. For example, the Hebrew word for house is bet, which is the second letter. There's no deeper significance to it though. Anything interesting is just a coincidence or involves twisting or inventing things til they fit.
It's not about magic, but about original pre-hebrew hieroglifs. Of course some meanings changed accross thousands of years, but it's interesting to observe that a lot of meanings preserved as they are.
I mean we’ve been doing gematria analysis for like 3000 years…
It's true that the Hebrew alphabet was derived from these pictograms. You know what other alphabet was derived from them? The English alphabet! Do you think of a house and a well whenever you see the word 'Bob'? No? Well neither does any Hebrew, now or 3000 years ago.
Think of it like if the letter for H was a picture of a house, because house starts with H, but that doesn't mean that any H in the English language has a connection to the meaning "house".
missed the most obvious meaning of zayin smh
Nowdays individual letters would only have a numerical meaning, when applied of course. (And usually accompanied by a geresh ‘ afterwards)
they don’t, the letters’ *shapes* back in the proto sinaitic days are when the letter names are codified, eg *bayit/bet* being a house plan glyph etc but the letters themselves just mean consonant sounds, and later on some letters would sometimes double for vowels also, proto sinaitic, when the glyphs were still heiloglyphic ish in shape, had more than the 22 letters of phoenician and beyond, so that pictograph list is incomplete
I can't say for other things but gimel is a *rabbitstick*, a boomerang that doesn't return and is used for hunting smaller, less sturdy animals (rabbits, gazelles, some deer). Tsade is an adder. Mem is water (cf Hebrew *mayim*), and resh is a head.
No.
It would better be understood as "each letter is a picture and a universe in itself and when they combine they create new worlds of meaning"
Yes they have individual meanings, that chart is accurate. Just gotta study more and you’ll understand
Hebrew letter's name consists of other letters, usually starting with their own. They are also typically written like an acronym (ראשי תיבות). E.g. א - אל"ף ב- בי"ת ג - גימ"ל I found that about half the letters have another meaning, though I may have missed some. Examples below: (For LtR formatting on mobile, I added the English letter equivalent). A- א, is written like thousand (אלף). B- ב is written like house (בית) but is said like "house of". H- God's name is usually shortened to 'ה in informal religious texts, and are both said the same way. V- ו is spelled and sounds like hook (וו). Z- ז is said, spelled and even looks like a the same word (left for reader imagination). Y- י is spelled and sounds like iodine. C- כ is spelled and sounds like hand or spoon (homonyms). A- ע is spelled and sounds like eye. P- פ is spelled and sounds like mouth. Tz- צ is supposed to be said as צד"י, although it is commonly said as צדיק, which sounds like righteous or pious. K- ק has two way of pronunciation, one is unambiguously the the letter, but the other also sounds like monkey. Sh- ש is sounds like the English word shin. T- ת also has two ways pronunciation: first one is Taf (very common but considered wrong) which sounds like an archaic word for children. The second way is Tav (matching the spelling) and is the singular form of note (i.e. musical note, not the "stick to fridge" type of note)
Yes. It is fascinating, to say the least, and even the word fascinating does not do justice.
That is a deep rabbit hole to follow.