Template:Hebrew meaning
Letters with meanings
Over 700 years after Jesus was proclaimed king in Judea someone began to create the Masoretic version of the Old Testament with vowel points and cantillation marks.
Hebrew is said to be a “poor” language because it has a relatively small number of words compared to other languages (85,000[1] vs. 600,000 in English[2]). But those numbers may be deceptive because of the way in which Hebrew word meaning is altered through the composition of words[1] by adding or rearranging letters of root words to create new meanings and the fact that many Hebrew words may identify a physical or material object and an associated abstract idea.
To fully understand Hebrew you must translate a word according to the context in which it occurs as well as account for the composition of Hebrew words. Fortunately, these Hebrew letters represent meanings and ideas that give us clues as to the intent of the author. And there is also the composition of the words themselves such as the use of acrostics.[3]
To add a letter or delete it or just change its location actually alters the meaning and in essence creates a new unaccounted word form and meaning. Interpreting these thousand of compositions may require the mind to be open to the idea that private interpretation may have been in error because they are a product more of the tree of knowledge that the inspiration of the tree of life.
Logograph
A Chinese “logograph” or "ideogram", is a single grapheme which represents a base word, which is a meaningful unit of language. While Chinese characters are often thought of as overly complex, in fact they are all derived from several hundred simple pictographs and ideographs in ways that are usually quite logical. Combinations of these ideographs are used to form more words and ideas.
This combining of ideas with symbols actually effects our thinking.
One consequence of this form of writing is that the pronunciation of the language is not tied to letters. The sound of the words may change drastically over a period of time.
Japanese and Chinese writing may be comprehensible to both cultures, but their spoken language bears little or no commonality.
Symbols of Meaning
Scriptural Hebrew dates back to Abraham and has some connection or origin with Sandskrit. As Moses used it we can see that it was set down as a written language. It should not be confused with what has been called “Paleo-Hebrew” which some will say is nor Hebrew at all, but a Hamitic language of the Canaanites. Then there is the Ashkenazic Hebrew, Ladino Hebrew, and Arabic Hebrew. "Words are the symbols of ideas" but in Hebrew the letters are also symbols of both the meaning and metaphor.
Hebrew uses only a few dozen basic symbols which construct three letter base words. Meanings may become more complex or changed by adding different letters or placing them in different orders within the base word.
We must always realize that flesh and blood, letters and symbols cannot reveal the truth of God’s kingdom. It is Revelation of the divine spark that comes from God that will truly reveal His name.
Knowing God is about knowing Him in our hearts and minds because we let him in there. He makes a connection in us between realms of existence. Right now we have fallen to this realm of flesh and things.
Things like language and letters and forms are of the world. The Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed has made that connection for us and sends a spirit of that connection which we must receive into the darkness so that there is light.
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 The academy of the Hebrew language estimates 45,000 words, in addition to 30,000-35,000 word compositions (school in Hebrew is book-house בית-ספר, for example), which totals the estimate in 75,000-80,000 meaningful expressions of either words or word compositions.
- ↑ The Oxford English Dictionary records about 600,000. The Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary, published in 1989, contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries.
- ↑ "Acrostics occur in Psalms 111 and 112, where each letter begins a line; in Psalms 25, 34, and 145, where each letter begins a half-verse; ; in Psalm 37, Proverbs 31:10-31, and Lamentations 1, 2, and 4, where each letter begins a whole verse; and in Lamentations 3, where each letter begins three verses." (Acrostics in the Hebrew Bible) "an acrostic poem is a poem in which the initial letters of each successive line form a word, phrase or pat- tern" (Oxford Companion to the Bible 1999.)