THE ALPHABET OF BIBLICAL HEBREW

This page is an introduction to the alphabet of Hebrew Scripture.
Hebrew is a Semitic language. The word Semitic comes from the name Shem, named in Genesis as the son of Noah, whose descendants now live in the Middle East. Phoenician, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic are examples of Semitic languages, which have several characteristics, such as a consonantal system with three-letter word roots to connote meaning.

The Aramaic and Hebrew alphabets, as Greek, were derived from the Phoenician alphabet. Phoenicia (now Lebanon) was a peaceful sea-faring nation expert in navigation and trade that developed their alphabet around 1400 BC in an effort to communicate with their diverse trading partners that encircled the Mediterranean Sea. The Phoenician alphabet was widely received, as it was only 22 letters based on sound, as opposed to the myriad of symbols in cuneiform and hieroglyphics prevalent at the time.



Biblical Hebrew contains 22 letters, as noted in Psalm 119, all of which are consonants. The alphabet and language remained pure until the Babylonian exile in 587 BC, when spoken Hebrew came under the influence of other languages, particularly Aramaic. Aramaic became the prevailing language, or "lingua franca" of the entire Middle East from about 800 BC to 400 AD. Jesus and his Apostles spoke Aramaic. Because of the Dispersion of the people of Israel to Babylon and Egypt, knowledge of pre-exilic texts was dependent on oral tradition. This occasionally gave rise to an ambiguity of interpretation for a text written purely in consonants.

The Hebrew language adopted the Imperial Aramaic alphabet.
As the Aramaic alphabet became the Hebrew alphabet, Hebrew papyri and parchments of the second and first centuries BC were written in the Aramaic alphabet. The original Hebrew alphabet persisted solely with the Samaritans. The Biblical Hebrew text available to us today is thus written in the Hebrew language with the adopted Aramaic alphabet.

While the Hebrew language is thriving today, the Aramaic language was replaced by Arabic with the rise of Islam, and has nearly disappeared. Aramaic is present today only among the Assyrians in Syria, the Chaldees in northern Iraq, and as part of the Mass of the Eastern Catholic Maronite Church of Lebanon.

The oldest surviving translation of Hebrew Scripture is the Greek Septuagint, which was undertaken in Alexandria in the third century before Christ (BC). Jesus and his Apostles read from the Greek Septuagint in their discourses on Scripture. It was not until nearly 100 AD in Jamnia that a final authoritative form of the written consonantal text was achieved in Hebrew.

Hebrew is written from right to left. There are no capital letters in Hebrew. Letters stand alone in printing or writing. Here is the Biblical Hebrew alphabet.



Note that five letters, Kaf, Mem, Nun, Peh, and Tsade, have a final form when the letter occurs at the end of a word. For example, Peh at the beginning or middle of the word has the form of פ, but at the end of a word appears as ף.

Four letters, Bet ב, Kaf כ, Peh פ, and Shin ש, vary in pronunciation depending on the presence or position of a dot. For example, Peh without the dot is pronounced as ph (or f) as in phone , whereas the Peh with the dot is hard p, as in peace. The point or dot within a letter, as seen in the above three letters Bet, Kaf, and Peh, is known as a dagesh. Note the pronunciations in the following chart:



The first ten letters of the Hebrew alphabet also signify numbers one through ten, as the Ten Commandments given to Moses on two tablets of stone.



TIME OF MANUSCRIPT
Two characteristics of ancient Hebrew (before 1000 BC) were the pure use of consonants, and the use of an epicene personal pronoun (a personal pronoun that does not distinguish for male and female - the same word is used for both "he" and "she." This use of an epicene personal pronoun
הוא
first appears in Genesis 2:11, occurs in Genesis 3:15, and appears 120 times throughout the Pentateuch of Moses in Hebrew Scripture, but not in the Prophets or Writings.

Beginning in the pre-Exilic period, from the ninth to the sixth centuries BC, the following three consonants,
ה heh, ן vav, י yod
were used at the end of a word to indicate final vowels. Beginning in the post-Exilic period, vav and yod were also used as vowel indicators within a word.

The recently discovered Dead Sea Scrolls were written purely in consonants.

During the ninth and tenth centuries AD, the Masoretes, Jewish scholars in Tiberias, Galilee, perfected a system of points or nikkud for vowel notation and added it to the received consonantal text. The vowel points were added to ensure proper interpretation and reading of Hebrew Scripture, and are known as the Masoretic or Tiberian vowel points. This point system was added without altering the spacing of the text. It is the Masoretic Hebrew text that is available to us today.

All of these considerations help biblical scholars to date a particular Hebrew text. For instance, the presence of "pointed text" allows biblical scholars to date manuscripts to at least the latter part of the first millennium AD.

VOWELS
Vowels in Masoretic Hebrew Scripture are a combination of the historically long vowels, Heh, Vav, and Yod, and the Masoretic or Tiberian Vowel Points. Vowels are long or short both in quality and quantity. Heh ה, Vav ו, and Yod י became known as "matres lectiones," or "mothers of reading," as they assisted in reading Scripture. The individual letter used as a vowel was known as a mater. Yod as a vowel was pronounced as long e or i, whereas vav was pronounced as long o or u. Heh served as a final long a.

Notice in the following chart that the majority of vowel points appear under the letter, except for long o when it occurs over and to the left of the letter. When the vowel points are combined with the matres lectiones, they occur underneath the prior letter with Heh and Yod. The Shewa sign may be vocal or silent; with the guttural letters aleph א, heh ה, het ח, and ayin ע, vocal shewa is combined with three vowel signs to produce three hurried vowels known as the hatep vowels.

The following chart summarizes the Masoretic vowel points.


This multiple form of vowel notation accounts for much of the variation in word formation in the Masoretic text. For example, Joshua, the son of Nun, in Judges 2:7, is spelled two different ways in the same sentence! The mater Sureq וּ is utilized for the vowel u in the first spelling, while the short vowel point Qibbus ֻ
is incorporated for the second spelling.




VOCABULARY
The following chart of 33 words are primarily from the Books of Genesis and Exodus. A careful study of the transliteration of the Hebrew words should give one an appreciation of the pronunciation of the Hebrew letters and vowels. Note that Yeshua, the true name of Jesus, appears throughout the Old Testament, for it means the Lord saves!



SCRIPTURE READING
The following passage is Genesis 3:15 presented in Masoretic "pointed text." Click here to see an example of Genesis 3:15 in original pure consonantal text. We have preserved the epicene personal pronoun הוא in original text, as one is not sure whether the pronoun refers to "woman" or "seed (offspring)." The Masoretic text renders this pronoun as masculine חוּא . Remember Hebrew is written from right to left, so the English translation is best understood when read in similar fashion.



References
1 Lambdin TO. Introduction to Biblical Hebrew. Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 1971.
2 Ross A. Introducing Biblical Hebrew, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2001.
3 Mansoor M. Biblical Hebrew - Step by Step. Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1980.
4 JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh. Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia, 1999.
5 Kohlenberger JR. NIV Interlinear Hebrew-English Old Testament. Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1987.
6 Pentateuch. Navarre RSV Bible. Four Courts Press, Dublin, Ireland, 1999.
7 Rendsburg GA. A New Look at Pentateuchal HW'. Biblica 63:351-369, 1982.
8 Brown F. Brown, Driver, Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, Massachusetts, March 2000.
9 Rendsburg GA. Ancient Hebrew Morphology, in Kaye AS (ed): Morphologies of Asia and Africa. Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake, Indiana, 2007.

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