Golden Dawn Hebrew before c. 1900

Ross G Caldwell

Certainly I think you're right that 'punique' here means Phoenician, it is used in that sense for example here:

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Introduction à l'Ecriture sainte... enrichie de plusieurs figures [par M. Ogier], trad. du latin du R. Père Lamy... par le P. François Boyer, 1699

The Phoenician/Punic worm was used to make a worm-dye (a dye from some sort of insect), and the word was used synonymously for the colour (a scarlet dye, used much by the Jews.) We have the word vermillion for example - the worm (ver) colour.

In the bible it is tola'ath shani - the scarlet worm. Production of the dye was perfected by the Phoenicians (according to Pliny), hence 'the Punic worm/Vermilion'. The arabic word is kermez which means both the worm and the colour.

So I think you are probably right with your reference to the Phoenician 'purples'.

I'm still very puzzled about how the letter relates to it, though. It remains, for me, a tentative possibility, but not a great theory.

But is there anything better? Augustine apparently listed some Punic words, I haven't looked into it yet. But it would surprise me if a Rabbi would rely on Augustine as an authority for anything as important as the meaning of a Hebrew letter. I'm sure there is a biblical solution, or, that the Rabbi was himself well acquainted with sister-tongues of Hebrew to make an etymological speculation.
 

Ross G Caldwell

Some information on the Rabbis mentioned;

Thanks very much, closrapexa. Maybe you'd be able to look further? ;) It's a huge area, far beyond my competence to navigate. I'm sure most of the relevant information will be written in Hebrew. It's the sort of thing where I'd find a living expert and carefully compose a letter laying out what I know and asking politely for some guidance.

Akiva ben Joseph was instrumental during the Bar Kochba revolt against the Romans, around the early/middle second century AD. He was not only famous for his rulings as a Rabbi, but was also highly regarded as a mystic, and the Talmud mentions him 1500 times. I may be getting this one wrong, but I don't know of any Akiva ben Juda, but that doesn't mean he doesn't exist.

I wouldn't think it was someone as far back as Akiva ben Joseph; if he had written an interpretation of the alphabet, I am sure we'd know about it.

I can rule out the last person on that list, Jean Chéradame (Johannes Chaeradamus), an early 16th century Hebraist and Hellenist. His explanation of the alphabet uses the ancient traditional meanings from Jerome and Eusebius, although he knows some rabbinical writings too. But so far I haven't found anything as juicy as Duret's source.
 

kwaw

... both are in Klaproth :)

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Aperçu de l'origine des diverses écritures de l'ancien monde, by Julius von Klaproth
1832.

Note too, that he also gives terme & borne for Tau, and quadruped for cheth (as Burdet).

(I recall Klaproth being referenced in writings of English theosophists and esotericists ... and among the French I think by Papus at least.)

Also here:

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Cours de philosophie générale, ou Explication simple et graduelle de tour les faits de l'order physique. Pierre Hyacinthe Azaïs A. Boulland, 1824

...and here:

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Encyclopédie méthodique ou par ordre de matières: art, métiers et mécaniques, Volume 1 , 1782

Just noticed - all three of them have left out He!
 

Zephyros

I'm on my phone, and I will try to expand on this later, but have you looked at the lowercase letters? In many cases the original Phenecian letters look very reminiscent of the meaning of the letter.
 

Ross G Caldwell

Here is an example of the rabbinic teaching of the alphabet. I think it is the earliest known complete such exegesis (along with the Sefer Yetzira, another kind of exegesis)

Talmud Bavli (Babylonian Talmud), tractate Shabbat, 104a

(apologies for the alignment; the word order is correct)

אתו דרדקי האידנא לבי מדרשא ואמרו מילי דאפילו בימי יהושע בן נון לא איתמר כוותייהו
אל"ף בי"ת אלף בינה
גימ"ל דל"ת גמול דלים (...)
ה"ו זה שמו של הקב"ה
ז"ח ט" י" כ"ל ואם אתה עושה כן הקב"ה זן אותך וחן אותך ומטיב לך ונותן לך ירושה קושר לך כתר לעוה"ב
מ"ם פתוחה מ"ם סתומה מאמר פתוח מאמת סתום
נו"ן כפופה נו"ן פשוטה נאמן כפוף נאמן פשוט
ס"ע סמוך עניים ל"א סימנין עשה בתורה וקנה אותה
פ"י כפופה פ"י פשוטה פה פתוח פה סתום
צד"י כפופה וצד"י פשוטה צדיק כפוף צדיק פשוט (...)
קו"ף קדוש
רי"ש רשע (...)
שי"ן שקר
תי"ו אמת מאי טעמא שקר מקרבן מיליה אמת מרחקא מיליה שיקרא שכיח קושטא לא שכיח

Translation of Isidore Epstein, 1938
http://halakhah.com/
(see Shabbath under Seder Mo'ed)

The Rabbis told R. Joshua b. Levi: Children have come to the Beth Hamidrash and said
things the like of which was not said even in the days of Joshua the son of Nun.
[Thus:] alef Beth [means] ‘learn wisdom [alef Binah]; Gimmel Daleth, show kindness to the Poor [Gemol Dallim].
He, Waw, that is the Name of the Holy One, blessed be He;
Zayyin, Heth, Teth, Yod, Kaf, Lamed: [this sequence teaches,] and if thou doest thus, the Holy One, blessed be He, will sustain [Zan] thee, be gracious [Hen] unto thee, show goodness [metib] to thee, give thee a heritage [Yerushah], and bind a crown [Kether] on thee in the world to come.
The open Mem and the closed Mem [denote] open teaching [Ma'amar] and closed [esoteric] teaching.
The bent Nun and the straight Nun: the faithful [Ne'eman] if bent [humble], [will ultimately be] the faithful, straightened.
Samek, ‘ayyin: support [Semak] the poor [‘aniyyim]. Another interpretation: devise [‘aseh]
mnemonics [Simanin] in the Torah and [thus] acquire [memorize] it.
The bent pe and the straight pe [intimate] an open mouth [peh], a closed mouth.
A bent zadde and a straight zadde: the righteous [zaddik] is bent [in this world]; the righteous is straightened [in the next world].
Kuf [stands for] Kadosh [holy];
Resh [for] Rasha’ [wicked]:
SHin [stands for] SHeker [falsehood];
Taw [for] emeth [truth]: why are the letters of Sheker close together, whilst those of ‘emeth are far apart? Falsehood is frequent, truth is rare.
 

Zephyros

That doesn't seen like the definitions I know, but maybe the TB is too early. The Hebrew Wikipedia says that the letters were finalized during the Second Temple period, perhaps even as a form of propaganda against the Samaritans. Akiva, or for that matter, any of Hazal living at the time, would no doubt have been instrumental in this process. When I get home I will look into it.

Of course this is one of the most confused and tumultuous periods in history, so finding something definitive will be difficult. Party like it's 1!
 

Ross G Caldwell

That doesn't seen like the definitions I know, but maybe the TB is too early. The Hebrew Wikipedia says that the letters were finalized during the Second Temple period, perhaps even as a form of propaganda against the Samaritans. Akiva, or for that matter, any of Hazal living at the time, would no doubt have been instrumental in this process. When I get home I will look into it.

I think we might be talking about different things here closrapexa (although feel free). I'm not talking about the origin of the Hebrew alphabet. It's not the letters in the alphabet, their shape or their order, but the meanings attributed to their names, that concerns me here. The origin of the Hebrew alphabet, the adoption of Aramaic "square" script against the Old Hebrew script - and from which the Samaritan writing evolved naturally - the origin of the Phoenician alphabet, borrowing from Egyptian "Sinaitic", etc., are completely different questions. The meaning of the letter names is a distinct and separate issue.

It seems clear that the names are not Hebrew in origin (although Hebrew has many of the same words as the common semitic base from which the names come), any more than the Greek letter names are Greek. The Jewish month names also aren't Hebrew in origin, although of course, like the letters, they have been nativized and assimilated to Hebrew words as much as possible, and, more importantly, given traditional Hebrew etymologies. But their origin is much older than the Hebrew of the Bible.

I'd like to find a study of the history of the interpretation of the letter names, letter by letter, but if it exists I haven't come across it yet.

Some of them, like Bet for house, Dalet for door, Zayin as weapon, Samekh as support, Ayin as eye, Pe as mouth, Resh as head, Shin as tooth, and Tav as mark, have never been "lost" to interpretation. The others are more or less controversial, and even the apparently simple Gimel as camel doesn't appear - to my limited knowledge - until Duret's anonymous Rabbi. Maybe it was clearer to Arabic writers, so any Jews who spoke Arabic or were acquainted with Arabic texts on the meanings of the letters of the alphabet knew it, but if so, I haven't come across mention of it yet. My impression is that Muslim writers used mystical definitions as much as Jewish writers did. It was God's language, after all, not some product of evolution from other languages.

If we can find it earlier in a Christian or Jewish interpreter, that would be wonderful.

That's what I'd like to know more about, insofar as this thread has taken a parallel tangent which I fully welcome. I don't think anyone disagrees with the conclusions about Levi's Hebrew versus the Golden Dawn's that we have reached. So this seems like a natural evolution of the question, and much more intrinsically interesting.

I don't think we'll find these definitions in any ancient list of letter names. This sense comes from statements like this in an article from 1950 that discusses the alphabet (I don't know the author, I can't see the whole thing):

"Derashot based on the name of a letter in its Hebrew form - such as gimel = GML "camel", daleth = DLTh "door" etc. - do not occur in early talmudic records, although these records do interpret the letters themselves - according to their shape, their order, their commutations and combinations, their use as initials of various words, their numerical value, etc. - in countless derashoth."

(The Jewish Quarterly Review, vol. 41 (1950), p. 177)

(Note that "derashot" means homilies or exegeses.)

This has been my sense as I looked into it - early exegesis had mystical or didactic purposes - like the bShabbat passage - not what we would consider scientific etymological purposes. At some point prior to the 17th century though, somebody knew better than Aleph=learning. I'd really like to know who and when.
 

kwaw

I decided to try a search using the names in Latin. There is a partial list (in latin) that matches the first five of Burdet, on p.7 of Opera Joan. Goropii Becani, hactenus in lucem non edita, nempe Hermathena, Hieroglyphica, Vertumnus, Gallica, Francica, Hispanica, 1580:

... ut prima bovis, secunda domus, tertia cameli, quarta ostij, quinta vermis punici...


. to the first cow, to the second house, the third camel, fourth entrance, fifth worm of the Punic ...

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...YQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=aleph bos cameli&f=false

And here we have agreement with our speculations re:the punic worm:

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He = Punic worm - which provided the purple color that the Carthaginians trafficked in

Pasilogie, ou de la musique, considérée comme langue universelle Anne Pierre Jacques de Vismes Prault ; Imbault, 1806

This list (with heh as ver punica) is also given in "Syriacae linguae prima elementa". 1971 - there is only a snip view however, so I don't know the context or purpose (could there be a possible syriac explanation for the worm, I wonder.).
 

Zephyros

But Ross, I think we are talking about the same thing. The Phoenician alphabet clearly shows Aleph as being the head of an ox, long before any commentary was made or was even needed. It suggests the meanings being common knowledge, a natural development of language. Aleph was originally derived from "a Proto-Sinaitic glyph based on a hieroglyph which depicts an ox's head." 𐤀 Chet shows an enclosure, and Mem is almost identical to the sign of Scorpio, although this may be unrelated. There are, of course, some discrepancies, Tet being a wheel rather than a serpent, and I'll try to find some Hebrew sources for that. Both the shapes of the letters, and their meanings, are to me intertwined. While highly conjectural, I think a case could be made for all the letters and their meanings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_alphabet (look at the table)

Now obviously the question is if the meanings are that old, how did they survive the years? I don't know.
 

kwaw

I decided to try a search using the names in Latin. There is a partial list (in latin) that matches the first five of Burdet, on p.7 of Opera Joan. Goropii Becani, hactenus in lucem non edita, nempe Hermathena, Hieroglyphica, Vertumnus, Gallica, Francica, Hispanica, 1580:

... ut prima bovis, secunda domus, tertia cameli, quarta ostij, quinta vermis punici...


. to the first cow, to the second house, the third camel, fourth entrance, fifth worm of the Punic ...

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...YQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=aleph bos cameli&f=false

Aha, it's only a partial list on p.7 because it is given in full on the previous page (duh!)


Aleph, bos - ox
Beth, domus - house
Gimal,camelus - camel
Daleth, ostium - door
He, vermis punici - punic worm
Vau clauus aduncus - hooked nail
Zain, telum - a weapon
Heth, quadrupes - quadrupeds
Thet, involucrum - covering, envelope
Iod, manus - hand
Caph, palma - palm of hand
Mem, macula - stain, spot, blemish
Nun, piscis - fish
Samech, basis - the base
Ain, fons - fountain, source, spring
Phe, os - mouth
Sadi, hamus - hook
Coph, simius - ape
Res, caput - head
Scin, Dens - teeth
Thau, crux - cross