The Origin of Writing: How Did the First Letters Develop?

Until now, we have discussed the origin of various spoken languages. Now, we will explore the beginnings of written language.

Scientific research generally acknowledges a development process with four basic stages in the history of writing:

Stage A – Cuneiform: An ancient script from the early third millennium BCE. It originated in Mesopotamia (the name given by the Greeks to the land of rivers, Aram-Naharaim, which is Babylon and its surroundings). By the middle of the second millennium BCE, it had become the international script of the ancient Near East.

Stage B – Hieroglyphs: An ancient Egyptian picture script from the early third millennium BCE, also known as the script of hieroglyphs.

                                                    
Stage C – Proto-Canaanite script: A script invented in Canaan in the mid-second millennium BCE, which developed from the Egyptian hieroglyphic script. This script is essentially the basis of the alphabet.

Stage D – The alphabet: This script evolved from the proto-Canaanite script and became widespread in the Levant during the period known as "Iron Age 2." It is also known as the Hebrew script or the Phoenician script, and is considered one of the most important inventions in human history to this day.

This is the commonly accepted approach in scientific research today. However, in the Zohar, it is explained that even before the world was created, the form of the letter Aleph was emanated and illuminated first, from which the letter Bet was created, and so on, until the twenty-two letters in which the Torah is written were created, forming the secret of the existence of all worlds. In the Book of Creation, it is also explained that the world was created with the twenty-two Hebrew letters, with one of the pathways for the manifestation of the letters operating according to their shape (in addition to the way of pronunciation of the letter and its numerical value, as explained in the next chapter). From this principle emphasized in many ancient Torah sources, and especially in the works of Kabbalistic study, it becomes clear that the shapes of the Hebrew letters are not the product of human reasoning but were ordained by a higher wisdom.

Indeed, those who observe various scripts discovered in different parts of the world might mistakenly believe that they preceded the Hebrew script and that the Hebrew script developed from them—as many researchers believe. However, a thorough and precise examination of those scripts reveals that it is evident even in them that, similar to spoken languages, the opposite is true: the Hebrew script preceded the scripts from which researchers claim it developed. On the contrary, they are merely his changes and are based on it, as we will see together.

Let us begin by reviewing the findings discovered:

The oldest script discovered in archaeological excavations is the Sumerian cuneiform script, found in ancient Sumer. Researchers estimate that this script is approximately five thousand years old. Slightly more recent scripts have been discovered in Egypt and the Indus Valley in India. Many later scripts were discovered in different parts of the world.

The Sumerian cuneiform and the later scripts: hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic, in which ancient Egyptian was written, were written in a form of writing known as "symbolic script," a simple script composed of pictures representing different objects or concepts. Also, the scripts of Akkad, Elam, the Hittite Kingdom, and the scripts of the Maya and Aztec tribes are written in symbolic script.

Today, one-fifth of the world's population—the Chinese nation—still uses symbolic script. However, all other nations use phonetic scripts, where the graphic symbols do not represent objects or concepts but rather each graphic symbol represents a certain phoneme (a way of pronunciation), and the combination of symbols according to their written order and pronunciation creates a word.

Researchers believe that phonetic scripts developed from symbolic scripts. For example, they believe that the symbol representing the word "house" as a picture in the symbolic script eventually became the symbol representing the first phoneme in the word 'house,' which is the letter Bet in the phonetic script. The symbol representing the word "eye" as a picture in the symbolic script became the letter Ayin, and so on.

This secular approach, based purely on hypotheses, is completely foreign to Judaism and refuted by factual truth. We know from the Torah—what is also provable to anyone who doubts—that the exact opposite is true.

The Original Script – The Sacred Hebrew Letters

According to Jewish tradition, the original script is the Hebrew alphabet (also known as "Assyrian"), through which the lights and spiritual forces contained in it (in the pronunciation of the letter, its numerical value, and its form) the world was created. As explained in the first Mishna of the Book of Creation. Yet, in the early generations, the various shapes of the sublime scripts' letters with all their secret powers were passed down in secrecy from generation to generation only to those individuals who could be trusted to preserve the sanctity of the letters with which the world was created and not to use their powers for negative purposes. This is how we have the tradition that Avraham transmitted to his son Yitzchak around four thousand years ago the secrets of the letters that he received from his grandfather who was also his teacher, Ever son of Shelach, who received them from his teacher Shem son of Noah (incidentally, this is the origin of the names thousands of years old: Shemitic script and Hebrew script). This valuable information, containing all the forces active in creation, was passed on from Yitzchak to Yaakov. Yaakov passed it on to his sons, who used it in practical Kabbalah according to the secret of the letters. Yaakov's sons transmitted these secrets to their sons, who passed them on further. Thus, the sacred original script with its secrets, which was passed orally from generation to generation in secrecy, until its form was revealed to the people of Israel at large, and its secrets were written down by the sages of the Mishna in cryptic and concealed language in the Book of Creation, in the generation when the entire Oral Torah was written down.

However, among the other nations, with the distortion of the original language during the construction of the Tower of Babel, the original script was also distorted, and a pictorial symbolic script was created based on the original alphabet, but it lacked the interior and spiritual powers and was intended purely for communication between people. As explained in the Pirkei d'Rabbi Eliezer, when Hashem confused the language of the builders of the Tower of Babel, the script also changed: "Hashem descended with the seventy angels surrounding His throne and mixed their language into seventy nations with seventy languages, each nation with its writing and language."

This is the origin of Sumerian cuneiform and other symbolic scripts, such as the Canaanite script in which the form 'house' (a word in Hebrew!) was drawn instead of the original Bet letter that predated it, containing the creative and combinatory power of the world, and the form 'eye' (a word in Hebrew!) instead of the letter Ayin, containing the visual power of the world, and similarly with other letters as we will detail further.

This means that the symbolic script is based on the original alphabet, not the other way around. The mistake of these researchers stems from ignoring the spiritual origin of writing and believing that all forms of writing are merely the product of human reasoning. Therefore, when they see a sophisticated alphabetic script and a cumbersome symbolic script, they imagine that the sophisticated one is newer and the cumbersome one preceded it, not considering the possibility that the opposite might be true: that the very writing and shapes of the letters are not human invention but, as explained in the Mishna, they are among the ten miraculous things created at the twilight of the sixth day of creation. Since a supreme, intricate, and deep wisdom is embedded within the original letters, they are the most sophisticated in form. In contrast, the script considered primitive is indeed recent, after the wilting and distortion of the original, to hide from humanity the ability to use the power within the letters and to preserve this significant knowledge only for people who would not misuse it.

Source of the Shapes of Various Phonetic Script Letters

In truth, even in the ancient Canaanite symbolic script and the various alphabetic scripts (phonetic scripts) that appeared later one after the other: the Phoenician, Greek, Latin, English, and other European languages, one can clearly identify the sublime Hebrew origin in which to this day Torah scrolls are written for the people of Israel.

Let us begin with the letters of the most widespread script today in the Western world, the English alphabet. Upon closer examination, one will discover to their amazement that not only are many words in English and other languages actually Hebrew words that have changed, as we noted above, but also that the forms of English letters originate from the Hebrew letter shapes, after several transformations throughout the history of writing, and even the order in which the English letters are arranged corresponds to the order of the Hebrew letters.

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