I sure hope the fonts come through on my title. But if they don’t, א ת BS = aleph-taw BS. I”m guessing everyone knows what the last two letters mean if they can’t identify the first two Hebrew letters. (Note: taw is also transliterated and pronounced tav).
Way back in 2009 I was unfortunate enough to see a YouTube video sermon about “alpeh and taw” — the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The speaker equated these letters with the description of Jesus as the first and the last, and as the Word in John 1:1
. The result? Why, Jesus is in Genesis 1:1, since we see a small two-letter word there, made of the letters aleph and taw! As I noted in a 2009 blog post about this, the claim is that “these two letters have mystified scholars for millennia — who were too stupid to see Jesus in the aleph and tav.”
Fortunately, the original video I mocked has disappeared from YouTube. Unfortunately, it’s been replaced by many others spouting the same bunk.
This bad memory returned to me today when I got an email from someone asking about the teaching. Bless that guy for thinking about what he heard. In his email he noted that he’d heard that the “mysterious” aleph-taw combination only occurs 22 times (so clever of God to have encrypted it so seldom — and 22 = the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet … I’m getting goosebumps … or maybe those are hives).
Anyway, I ran two searches through the Hebrew Bible for the inquirer that he could take back to the “teacher” who had spewed nonsense in his direction that decimate the claim. The aleph and taw spell what is known as the accusative (direct object) marker (and scholars have known it for millennia – no mystery here). It is not translated since it is a grammatical/syntactical pointer. There is also an identical preposition in biblical Hebrew. The direct object marker occurs just under 11,000 times, while the preposition is just under 900.
I suppose I’ll get comments now about how mean I am to well-intentioned Bible teachers. Honestly: so what. If you want someone to lie to you in the name of Jesus, you’ll have to go somewhere else.
Ok, brother Mike–As one who wrote you and is planning to attend the conference at Western Theological Seminary—I sure want to talk about this one–I know that you dont “review” material, and wisley dont give heed to every wind of doctrine that comes along, but in some cases, I dont know how we can have a coherent conversation about such and such material if you dont? There is one guy who is doing something very unigue in actual Being from the culture (descendants) anyway, and is very good on the idioms–his name is Victor Alexander, very easily found ,if you punch in “Aramaic Bible Translation ,by Victor Alexander”. And go to his video # 15 and audio #42—I am not asking for a book report, just a quick look at it, so we can talk intelligenly about it. I have never read or heard you refer to the words or concepts that He brings out, so I am wondering about it? He uses the word Brasheeth in Genesis 1 and says that the Bar is the Son. And basicaly is saying that Genesis 1 and John 1 are saying the same thing. Now THAT is obvious. And I know of course, that you know all this, but a lot of US your readers, dont. And I just have never read or heard you say anything like this.So it doesnt seem like we are talking about the same thing here.It is not the Alpeh and Taw thing here, but the “Bar” or just the “B” I think it might be. Anyway, you seem to be VERY strict on your rule of not reviewing any other material , so I might be wasting my time in writing this to you. But I am wishing that you would say something like this “Yes, this man is a decendant from the culture that this comes from , and might just know some things, and I had a quick look(I think just a quick glance at his #15 video title ,would give you as a scholar, all that you need to know in 30 seconds) and here is what the TEXT says.” But unlesss there is just something as a non- ancient language scholar I am not understanding here, is not this correct about the word Brasheeth ?
Exegesis isn’t done by splitting up syllables (in any language).
“Brasheeth” is not comprehensible Hebrew, nor is it what the Aramaic Targums have in Gen 1.1.
Targum Neofiti of Gen 1:1 has “from the beginning [mlqdmyn] with wisdom the son of the Lord [br’ dYYY] created.” Most Targum textual critics believe this reading is an alteration from a late, sixteenth-century, correction.
Targum Onkelos has “In antiquity [bqdmyn] the Lord created” for Gen 1:1.
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan has “at the beginning [mn ’wwl’] God created” for Gen 1:1.
I don’t know what this guy is quoting, or if he’s just making this up. Not sure. But the Targums I use are the standard scholarly ones from Hebrew Union College’s Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon project. I also use the Aramaic Bible commentary series published by The Liturgical Press (M. McNamara is the project director). It’s a well-known resource for Aramaic studies.
The Aramaic OT is already known – it’s been known for millennia (literally). No one needs to reconstruct it. It already exists in a range of manuscripts. Translating the NT into Aramaic won’t get you an Aramaic NT (if that ever existed before the 2nd century AD). that Jesus would have read for a simple reason any translator of any language knows: there is more than one way to render any given word, and probably a dozen ways to render idioms. In other words, if you put 100 Aramaic experts into a room and told them to translate the NT into Aramaic, you’d get 100 different translations (that is, they would not all agree in every place, though they’d have a high degree of sameness).
I mention this because if someone comes along and tells you they are reproducing “the” Bible Jesus read in Aramaic, that’s nonsense. You’d have to be a time traveler with a photographic memory to have a chance at that.
Wow Mike, it is so neat that I have caught you at the climax of your glory,(at least in my limited guess, anyway)–very coherent and in order, your reply is.It does a couple of things for us. It reinforces the truth of not just believing every word you hear, but at the same time, lets me know that Brother Victor,does have SOME reason for saying what he does, by the second thing you wrote about the Targum Neofiti.And I do not discern that Victor, (whom I also converse with, on his site, and a very humble guy)is trying to do harm to anyone. Not saying at all that you are being mean Mike, I have learned to feel you better than that.( Just a little Theological take away, you know, ‘”Love does no harm to anyone”)–We are heading being more loving towards one another as we excel. On the point about “100 different translations” believe it or not, I had that thought, way back when I started to study all this, and if everyone could just keep that one truth in mind, we would be far along in understanding this cultural context thing. On my part, my vocabulary is limited in a great part to King James English, since I do not watch TV, and I still use words like “Glory” in everyday speech. So I hope everyone takes my use of it here in this post, seriously.
Not sure I follow completely, but just so I’m clear to readers, there is NOTHING valid about the two letters of the accusative marker pointing to Jesus. Nor is there a Targum rendering that does so (outside of the Memra idea, which is important to the discussion of Christology).
“If you want someone to lie to you in the name of Jesus, you’ll have to go somewhere else.”
That should go under your name at BrainyQuotes. 🙂
I’d say start an archive, but I’d file it under “be careful what you wish for.”
This is a son of God again—Dear Mike–Feeling that my above comment was not the best I could of done, I wanted to write again.–For one, to simply put in the URL –http://www.v-a.com/bible/aramaic_bible_video_files.html–(#15
video), to serve you and your readers, and make it quite easy for you, and also to talk about another thing in reguard to this. Victor Alexander says some of the Aramaic titles and names were “retired” after their use in the sacred scribal language “Leeshana Anteequah”– Milta is one, Eashoa Msheekha is another, and Brasheeth, since these refer to the Son. Please edit my comments here if you think it could be made simpler. Mayby post this reference just for your readers, to study up on ,if you yourself do not want to look at these. Sincerely seeking truth here, –A son of God–
How does this make the accusative marker anything more than the accusative marker?
I hope this makes you laugh, but when I read this, I thought Oh No, brother Mike is labeling me “The Accusative Marker” I had to look it up, and high five, high five, hug, hug, you were again just being faithful to the text.
It did! 🙂
It is absolutely phenomenal how people get fascinated with all secret mysteries, superstitions, codes etc…
Modern Gnosticism……
I think the world is quite prepped for the final deception.
They would believe absolutely anything without checking the facts. And it applies to every facet of life. Boggles my mind.
Thank you for debunking all that crap, or biblically speaking “heap of dung”
Janina
So, Rv 1.8; 2.13 & Is 44.6 have nothing to do with the 11,000(+/-) Aleph Tavs?
Correct — the aleph-tav in Hebrew is a preposition and / or direct object marker. I can run a concordance search, too, and show you the morphological tags for its grammar. But I doubt you’d care.
I didn’t create the Hebrew language. It is what it is.
So you are saying, when Messiah declared, “I am the Aleph and the Tav”, He was not referring to all the AT’s written in the TANAK… is that correct? It is just “coincidence”?
Yes — this is nonsense. The two letters strewn throughout the Bible (and pagan semitic texts for that matter) are (a) a preposition meaning “with”; and (b) an untranslated direct object marker. That’s Hebrew 101.
Jesus’ deity has nothing to do with these two letters.
Jesus said “alpha and omega” — that’s Greek. And the point wasn’t “I’m two letters in the alphabet that, in the case of Hebrew, mark the direct object.”
Hi I’ve discovered something amazing.
If say that word with each letter in it
EASHOA it sound very similar to
YESHUA.
Hi Michael
I do believe you have a point.
“Tell them EHYEH sent you”. Exodus 3:14.
Also if you say the Aramaic E>A>SH>O>A,
Using all letters in quick succession, his name sounds identical to YESHUA in Hebrew.