DOCSLIB.ORG

Further Notes on Samaritan Typography

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Further Notes on Samaritan Typography FURTHER NOTES ON SAMARITAN TYPOGRAPHY ALAN D. CROWN IN my recent study of Samaritan typefaces^ I was able to trace the history and development of some of the more important of these on the basis of the evidence then available to me. That study stimulated some interest among both historians of typography and librarians. Through the kindness of Brad Sabin Hill of the British Library, who has drawn my attention to specimens which I would not otherwise have seen, including examples from both the British Library and the Tychsen collection in the University Library at Rostock, and of Nigel Roach of the St Bride Printing Library, London, I have been able to refine some of the ideas about the history of the Samaritan typefaces which were developed in the original work and make corrections to opinions then offered. I have also been made aware that one of the allegedly lost English faces, the first Enghsh Samaritan types to be cut, found its way to Sheffield where it now remains.^ Additionally, it is now possible to draw attention to a number of other Samaritan typefaces of which I was not previously aware. Both the British Library and the St Bride Printing Library have several examples of the foho texts produced in Italy for the celebration of special occasions such as weddings, anniversaries and accessions to the throne and promotions within the Church, and of the types that were prepared for these occasions.^ It was the custom on these occasions to demonstrate the glories of Italian typography by the printing of folio presentation volumes as pohshed examples of the printer's art. From time to time, we find that the type was either a copper engraving, a woodcut block or even moveable wooden type cut specially for the volume. Such seems to have been the case with the type set by G. B. De Rossi* who, in 1768, apparently used moveable wood type for both his Arabic and his Samaritan poems in praise of the new Archbishop of Turin. The Samaritan poem mixes both Aramaic and Hebrew in true Samaritan style with a less than elegant result. The St Bride Printing Library and the British Library provide examples of the fonts cut by the eighteenth-century type-founder, Giambattista Bodoni, which escaped our attention in the earlier study. ^ In a brief disquisition on the Samaritan typefaces used in other books,^ Bodoni says that we have three types of Samaritan type faces. The first of these is that used for the printing of Scaliger's De Emendatwne Temporum;'^ the second was cut by the Propaganda Fide;^ the third is the face used for the Walton Polyglot.^ SAMAUITANO • > -5:^2 I. Sul Silvio, a. Sul Soprasilvio. Fig. I. The Lord's Prayer in two Samaritan fonts cut by Bodoni, in his Manuale Tipoprafico vol ii (Parma, 1818). 59.C.19 Bodoni continues that he cut two Samaritan typefaces. We can see these presented in his Manuale (see fig. i).^** The first, which he calls Sul Silvio, is quite evidently none of the faces discussed in his text but is a paradigm of the Dutch-German faces, which could scarcely be confused with the English faces by a skilled punch-cutter like Bodoni. It is readily recognizable as a new font for it is lighter in style than the fonts of which it is a caique, and seems to echo the lightness of the remainder of Bodoni's fonts in the nevi^ Italianate style of his era.^^ It is on a wider body than any of the other Dutch-German fonts, so that when compared with the same text in a face of the same size (for example the John Chamberlayne version of the Lord's Prayer which is printed in a twelve point Samaritan font) the first two words are spread over if inches instead of the i\ inches in Chamberlayne's text. The face would appear to be that of a twelve point font on a fourteen point body.^^ Word-dividing dots and full stops are remote from the preceding words and may be separated by en quadrats. The letters qiiph and dalet are both so different from any other Dutch-German version that they provide a ready means of identification. The quph has a stylization of the fulcrum point to the left of the stem that is normally found in the Samaritan script-form of quph and which is invariably omitted in other versions of the face. While it could be argued that Bodoni had either taken advice about the manuscript form of the letter or else had consulted a manuscript, there are good reasons for suggesting that he was influenced by the Propaganda Fide font and its quph form. The head of the dalet to the right of the stem appears to be an extension of the vertical rather than the head stroke. Other aspects of the script, such as the Gothic diamond on mem and kaph, indicate clearly the model used. In every case the changes made to the characters are towards stylization and away from manuscript reality, which is in clear contradiction of the import of the recutting of the quph form (on which, see below). This may well have been in keeping with the move away from the influence of manuscripts, noted for the period, in the cutting of type faces.^^ This cannot have been Bodoni's only attempt at cutting this Dutch-German style face. While Bodoni was court printer for the Duke of Parma, G. B. De Rossi published his remarkable Variae Lectiones Veteris Testamenti,^^ in which there were several sections in Samaritan. The Samaritan face in this work is readily identifiable as being in the style of Bodoni except that it is on a narrower body and there are some subtle differences. Since this style appears at this period in Parma and nowhere else, we connect this font directly with Bodoni and argue that he cut the face twice. The changes in some characters indicate that for his own specimen Bodoni recut the punches and left the older punches in the royal printing shop when he moved away. In recutting he was able to improve the font. The differences are the distinctive quph noted above, the neck of samekh which, in the Bodoni specimen is more elegant than in the De Rossi face, and the lower junction of mem and its footstroke which is more cleanly managed in the Bodoni specimen than the De Rossi version. Bodoni has utilized the same forms for the remainder of his letters, but the face in his specimen is neater and more elegant than the face he cut for his royal master, with a better distinction between hairline and stem strokes especially noticeable in nun and dalet. If one does not accept Bodoni as the cutter of both faces then one has to consider him a plagiarist and identify a punch-cutter of the same period and the same places, working with orientals. There is no indication that such a person exists. The second font, identified in the Manuale as Sul Soprasilvio, is obviously inspired by and imitates the 'detto Testo' Propaganda Fide face.^^ It is far more elegant than the Propaganda face but, like the Sul Silvio font, moves in the direction of stylization and away from the manuscript hand on which the model was based. This can be seen especially in the enlargement of the counters in the fulcrum knots of het, tsade and, presumably, samekh (of which we have no sample on the specimen) away from their manuscript form in which the fulcrum is solid ink. In virtually every character there is a refinement of the face in the Italianate style that sees the stem strokes lightened and provided with a mixture of thick and hair line strokes, apparently imitating the ductus of European hands rather than Samaritan scribal practice. The fulcrum knot of quph appears again, but in this case its source is clear as it is a stylization of the Propaganda quph so that a counter appears in the centre of the fulcrum, and we can see here the source of the anomaly in his Dutch-German paradigm. Also from an Italian press is Athanasius Kircher's Oedipus Aegyptiacus (Rome, 1652). Kircher's earlier work, Prodromus Coptus (Rome, 1636), was printed with Propaganda Fide fonts. Although the later work seems to make use of the Propaganda 'detto Testo' Samaritan, though the text is not printed by the Propaganda Fide but by the house of Vitalis Mascardi, apparently with permission from the Vatican, it is not the Propaganda font but a close caique of it. This later printing reopens the question of the Voskens (18 point) 'Text Samaritaans' on the specimens issued by his widow in Amsterdam between 1695 and 1710/^ The work by Kircher and the brief Voskens specimen seem to show the same face, that is essentially the Propaganda Fide face with some of the punches recut. However, the time difference between the works suggests that it was not Vgskens who cut the 'Text Samaritaans' as I have argued elsewhere,^^ but rather that the recutting was done in Rome for the publication of the work by Kircher, and that this was the font that later found its way to Holland for the use of the Voskens foundry. We can see that the font used for the printing of the Samaritan in Kircher's later work (fig. 2) has recut versions of two characters of the Propaganda Fide Samaritan. These were the aleph and the tav, the latter being unsuccessful in the Propaganda specimens.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Wallace Berman Aleph
    “Art is Love is God”: Wallace Berman and the Transmission of Aleph, 1956-66 by Chelsea Ryanne Behle B.A. Art History, Emphasis in Public Art and Architecture University of San Diego, 2006 SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE IN ARCHITECTURE STUDIES AT THE MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY JUNE 2012 ©2012 Chelsea Ryanne Behle. All rights reserved. The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created. Signature of Author: __________________________________________________ Department of Architecture May 24, 2012 Certified by: __________________________________________________________ Caroline Jones, PhD Professor of the History of Art Thesis Supervisor Accepted by:__________________________________________________________ Takehiko Nagakura Associate Professor of Design and Computation Chair of the Department Committee on Graduate Students Thesis Supervisor: Caroline Jones, PhD Title: Professor of the History of Art Thesis Reader 1: Kristel Smentek, PhD Title: Class of 1958 Career Development Assistant Professor of the History of Art Thesis Reader 2: Rebecca Sheehan, PhD Title: College Fellow in Visual and Environmental Studies, Harvard University 2 “Art is Love is God”: Wallace Berman and the Transmission of Aleph, 1956-66 by Chelsea Ryanne Behle Submitted to the Department of Architecture on May 24, 2012 in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Architecture Studies ABSTRACT In 1956 in Los Angeles, California, Wallace Berman, a Beat assemblage artist, poet and founder of Semina magazine, began to make a film.
    [Show full text]
  • The Mystery of the Hebrew Language the Symbolism of the Hebrew
    Apocalypse Prophesied From Eden to the New Jerusalem: God’s Plan for Humanity The Mystery of the Hebrew Language Appendix The beginning of language on earth can be traced back to John 1:1, which states: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (NRSV) When Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden, God revealed to them the basic structure of the original language. At that time man lacked direct experience so he needed to be taught how to think and function in order to deal with his environment. His mind was in some ways like that of a newborn baby. The creative process of developing the human mind was not finalized in the Garden. It will continue throughout the cycles of human habitation of the earth. The finished product (a human being from God's perspective) can only come to his full potential by being born on the other side of reality after his earthly life is through. After programming, for example, a computer usually must be shut down and restarted. Similarly, people must die and then be resurrected in order to become a finished product in accordance with God's full pleasure and intent. However, because God does not want preprogrammed robots, He gave us free will. Many human beings will reject eternal life by rejecting God. Since they do not choose to conform to His image, they will remain dead and eventually be eliminated in the lake of fire. Only those made holy and clean by the blood of Jesus Christ will remain to live forever.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction to Using Hebrew Language Tools Syllabus Institute
    Introduction to Using Hebrew Language Tools Syllabus 15 March to 10 May 2016 Whitney Oxford Institute of Grace Grace Immanuel Bible Church Jupiter, Florida I. Course Description and Objectives Jesus came—and will come again—to fulfill the Law and the Prophets (Matt 5:17). How, then, can we understand Him or His task if we do not know the contents of the Law and the Prophets? The better we understand “whatever was written in earlier times” (Rom 15:4), the more intimately we can know our God and Savior. Indeed, the apostle Paul testified that he stated “nothing but what the Prophets and Moses said was going to take place; that the Christ was to suffer, and that by reason of His resurrection from the dead He would be the first to proclaim light both to the Jewish people and to the Gentiles” (Acts 26:22-23). Introduction to Using Hebrew Language Tools seeks to introduce believers to biblical Hebrew and the language tools that facilitate its proper understanding. This introduction seeks to help believers: become acquainted with the Hebrew aleph beth become acquainted with frequently-occurring words in the Hebrew Scriptures become acquainted with the categories and use of Hebrew language tools recognize key terms and abbreviations used in Hebrew language tools better understand the author’s intended meaning better understand the New Testament, since its the foundation is the Old Testament recognize deviant teaching II. Course Requirements Participate in class activities and take a final assessment. 1 WEEK TOPIC 15 Introduction to course
    [Show full text]
  • Grammar Chapter 1.Pdf
    4 A Modern Grammar for Biblical Hebrew CHAPTER 1 THE HEBREW ALPHABET AND VOWELS Aleph) and the last) א The Hebrew alphabet consists entirely of consonants, the first being -Shin) were originally counted as one let) שׁ Sin) and) שׂ Taw). It has 23 letters, but) ת being ter, and thus it is sometimes said to have 22 letters. It is written from right to left, so that in -is last. The standard script for bibli שׁ is first and the letter א the letter ,אשׁ the word written cal Hebrew is called the square or Aramaic script. A. The Consonants 1. The Letters of the Alphabet Table 1.1. The Hebrew Alphabet Qoph ק Mem 19 מ Zayin 13 ז Aleph 7 א 1 Resh ר Nun 20 נ Heth 14 ח Beth 8 ב 2 Sin שׂ Samek 21 ס Teth 15 ט Gimel 9 ג 3 Shin שׁ Ayin 22 ע Yod 16 י Daleth 10 ד 4 Taw ת Pe 23 פ Kaph 17 כ Hey 11 ה 5 Tsade צ Lamed 18 ל Waw 12 ו 6 To master the Hebrew alphabet, first learn the signs, their names, and their alphabetical or- der. Do not be concerned with the phonetic values of the letters at this time. 2. Letters with Final Forms Five letters have final forms. Whenever one of these letters is the last letter in a word, it is written in its final form rather than its normal form. For example, the final form of Tsade is It is important to realize that the letter itself is the same; it is simply written .(צ contrast) ץ differently if it is the last letter in the word.
    [Show full text]
  • Old Phrygian Inscriptions from Gordion: Toward A
    OLD PHRYGIAN INSCRIPTIONSFROM GORDION: TOWARD A HISTORY OF THE PHRYGIAN ALPHABET1 (PLATES 67-74) JR HRYYSCarpenter's discussion in 1933 of the date of the Greektakeover of the Phoenician alphabet 2 stimulated a good deal of comment at the time, most of it attacking his late dating of the event.3 Some of the attacks were ill-founded and have been refuted.4 But with the passage of time Carpenter's modification of his original thesis, putting back the date of the takeover from the last quarter to the middle of the eighth century, has quietly gained wide acceptance.5 The excavations of Sir Leonard Woolley in 1936-37 at Al Mina by the mouth of the Orontes River have turned up evidence for a permanent Greek trading settle- ment of the eighth century before Christ, situated in a Semitic-speaking and a Semitic- writing land-a bilingual environment which Carpenter considered essential for the transmission of alphabetic writing from a Semitic- to a Greek-speakingpeople. Thus to Carpenter's date of ca. 750 B.C. there has been added a place which would seem to fulfill the conditions necessary for such a takeover, perhaps only one of a series of Greek settlements on the Levantine coast.6 The time, around 750 B.C., the required 1The fifty-one inscriptions presented here include eight which have appeared in Gordion preliminary reports. It is perhaps well (though repetitive) that all the Phrygian texts appear together in one place so that they may be conveniently available to those interested. A few brief Phrygian inscriptions which add little or nothing to the corpus are omitted here.
    [Show full text]
  • Preliminary Proposal to Encode the Elymaic Script in Unicode
    L2/17-055 2017-02-01 Preliminary proposal to encode the Elymaic script in Unicode Anshuman Pandey [email protected] February 1, 2017 1 Introduction The Elymaic script was identified by Michael Everson in 2001 in “Roadmapping early Semitic scripts” (N2311) as a suitable candidate for encoding in Unicode. It was allocated to the Roadmap to the Supple- mentary Multilingual Plane (SMP) in the same year.1 Yet, to date, no additional information for the script has been submitted. Currently, it rests in scarlet on the Roadmap as ¿Elymaic? at the range U+10EE0..10EFF; the Spanish question marks indicating its status as a script “for which detailed proposals have not yet been written”, and for which “[t]here may be a link to an exploratory code table”. In the sixteen years that have passed since Elymaic was first allocated to the Roadmap, no additional information on the script has been submitted to the Unicode Technical Committee, not even ‘an exploratory code table”. This preliminary pro- posal aims to give some digital dignity to Elymaic and to build a foundation for a future encoding for the script. It provides a tentative character repertoire and code chart, a brief description of the script, and a few specimens illustrating usage of the script. Research is ongoing and a formal proposal is forthcoming. 2 Description Elymaic is a historical right-to-left script derived from Imperial Aramaic. Also known as ‘Elymaean’ in English scholarly literature, the name ‘Elymaic’ refers to Elymais, a state within the Parthian empire (247 – 224 ) that is situated in the present-day region of Khuzestan in Iran.
    [Show full text]
  • The Creation of the World in the Sefer Yetzirah
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by PORTO Publications Open Repository TOrino Politecnico di Torino Porto Institutional Repository [Article] The Creation of the World in the Sefer Yetzirah Original Citation: A.C. Sparavigna (2014). The Creation of the World in the Sefer Yetzirah. In: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENCES, vol. 3 n. 5, pp. 11-17. - ISSN 2305-3925 Availability: This version is available at : http://porto.polito.it/2543427/ since: May 2014 Publisher: England: Alkhaer Publications Published version: DOI:10.18483/ijSci.498 Terms of use: This article is made available under terms and conditions applicable to Open Access Policy Arti- cle ("Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0") , as described at http://porto.polito.it/terms_and_ conditions.html Porto, the institutional repository of the Politecnico di Torino, is provided by the University Library and the IT-Services. The aim is to enable open access to all the world. Please share with us how this access benefits you. Your story matters. Publisher copyright claim: This is the publisher version of an article published on INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENCES, Publisher [pin missing: publisher], Vol 3 , Number 5 Year 2014 (ISSN [pin missing: issn] )The present version is accessible on PORTO, the Open Access Repository of the Politecnico of Torino (Article begins on next page) 1Department of Applied Science and Technology, Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy Abstract: The Sefer Yetzirah is the "Book of Creation", one of the earliest extant texts about the creation of the world of the Jewish tradition, a book that some scholars are supposing of an early Medieval origin.
    [Show full text]
  • Hebrew Grammar: an Excerpt
    A MODERN GRAMMAR FOR BIBLICAL HEBREW DUANE A. GARRETT AND JASON S. DeROUCHIE A Modern Grammar for Biblical Hebrew © Copyright 2009 by Duane A. Garrett and Jason S. DeRouchie All rights reserved. Published by B&H Publishing Group Nashville, Tennessee ISBN: 978-0-8054-4962-4 Dewey decimal classification: 492.4 Subject heading: HEBREW LANGUAGE—GRAMMAR Hebrew Scripture quotations are from Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, edited by Karl Elliger and Wilhelm Rudolph, Fourth Revised Edition, edited by Hans Peter Rüger, © 1977 and 1990 Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart. Used by permission. Printed in the United States of America 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 . 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 BP iii T C A. Orthography and Phonology 1. The Hebrew Alphabet and Vowels.....................................................................................1 2. Pointed Vowel Letters and the Silent Shewa....................................................................12 3. Daghesh Forte, Mappiq, Metheg, and Rules for Gutturals...............................................18 4. Accent Shift and Vowel Changes .....................................................................................23 B. Basic Morphology and Syntax 5. Gender and Number in Nouns ..........................................................................................28 6. Hebrew Verbs ...................................................................................................................33 42.......................................................... ה and Interrogative ,לֹא Negative
    [Show full text]
  • Note on Transliteration and Some Forms of Expression
    Note on Transliteration and some Forms of Expression A simplified system is used for Hebrew and Aramaic, on the grounds that those who read these languages do not need compli- cated transliteration, while those who do not will only be mystified by it. The only diacritical signs used are: Consonants'. ' (aleph), h (heth), t (teth)c (ayin), § (§ade), s' (sin), § (shin). Vowels', no signs are used except w to denote shewa and the other half-vowels, e a o. Bgdkpt Letters', the aspirated forms are not distinguished in transliteration. Admittedly this makes some words look strange, and consequently I have allowed some irregularities, e.g. nefes. Some familiar forms of names etc. are left, e.g. 'Achor', and sometimes the context of a discussion may make it appropriate to follow Jewish habits of transliteration, e.g. tzaddik instead of saddiq. When 'adam is used it is intended to signify that the word is being considered in its generic or indefinite sense. In Genesis this sense is clear in r.26ff.; the word is not used definitely as a personal name, without an article, till 3:17. In that sense I use 'Adam' as usual. 'Hebrew Bible'I'Old Testament'. This has become an ecumenically sensitive issue, and I have kept it in mind; but it is important to be accurate. The two terms are not identical either in denotation or in connotation. On the whole I prefer (with the early Church) to say 'the scriptures', though this may not be precise enough. Often (but not always) it is accurate to say 'the Hebrew Bible'; sometimes it simply is not applicable to the 'scripture' which is being referred to.
    [Show full text]
  • Revised Proposal to Encode the Sogdian Script in Unicode
    L2/16-371 2016-10-20 Revised proposal to encode the Sogdian script in Unicode Anshuman Pandey [email protected] October 20, 2016 1 Introduction This is a proposal to encode the Sogdian script in Unicode. It replaces the following document: • L2/16-158 “Proposal to encode Sogdian in Unicode” It incorporates comments regarding previous proposals made in: • L2/16-216 “Recommendations to UTC #148 August 2016 on Script Proposals” Previous versions of this proposal have been reviewed by Nicholas Sims-Williams and Yutaka Yoshida, who are leading scholars of Sogdian studies. 2 Background The proposed Unicode encoding for ‘Sogdian’ encompasses a group of related script styles used for repre- senting Sogdian (ISO 639: sog), an ancient Eastern Iranian language. The Sogdian script is derived from ‘Old Sogdian’ (see L2/16-312). There are two major styles of Sogdian: formal and cursive. These devel- oped separately from Old Sogdian, with the cursive style likely emerging first. It is difficult to specify a clear division between the ‘formal’ and ‘cursive’ styles. It is appropriate to consider the Sogdian varieties as belonging to a continuum, with the most formal styles and the simplified, ambiguous cursive styles as the two terminals. Manuscript folios written in the various styles are shown in figures 21–30. The styles possess the same character repertoire and structural features: • Repertoire Of the 20 letters of the Old Sogdian alphabet, 19 were retained in Sogdian (see com- parison in table 1). The letter daleth is no longer represented. Additional letters were introduced, such as feth and lesh (‘hooked resh’).
    [Show full text]
  • PSALM 119 the Text Below Represents a Transliteration of the Hebrew Text in the Left Column, and the 1917 Jewish Publication
    PSALM 119 The text below represents a transliteration of the Hebrew text in the left column, and the 1917 Jewish Publication Society translation in the right column. The transliterated text comes from the Bible Works 8 BHT database, copyright © 2001 by Matthew Anstey. Note in particular that it preserves: ;the metheg (e.g. ֽ) which constrains certain vowels - - a stress mark where the emphasis does not fall on the final syllable (e.g., last word of v. 1a); - the reading ‘ ´ädönäy ’ (‘Lord’) for the Hebrew Tetragrammaton; - Ketiv (‘what is written’) and Qere (‘what is spoken’) variants; - the petuḥot , marked as {P}, ancient ‘paragraph’ divisions in the MT. There are some online resources for the transliterated Hebrew Bible: http://interlinearbible.org/psalms/119.htm = interlinear http://www.scripture4all.org/OnlineInterlinear/Hebrew_Index.htm = reverse interlinear (link to PDF file) [ א ] .ALEPH´ 1 ´ašrê tümî|mê-däºrek Happy are they that are upright in the way, ha|hölkîm Bütôrat yhwh(´ädönäy) who walk in the law of the LORD. 2 ´ašrê nöcrê `ëdötäyw Happy are they that keep His testimonies, Bükol-lëb yidrüšûºhû that seek Him with the whole heart. 3 ´ap lö|´-pä`álû `awlâ Yea, they do no unrighteousness; Bidräkäyw häläºkû they walk in His ways. 4 ´aTTâ ciwwîºtâ piqqùdʺkä Thou hast ordained Thy precepts, lišmör mü´öd that we should observe them diligently. 5 ´aHálay yiKKöºnû düräkäy Oh that my ways were directed lišmör Huqqʺkä to observe Thy statutes! 6 ´äz lö´-´ëbôš Then should I not be ashamed, BühaBBî†î ´el-Kol-micwötʺkä when I have regard unto all Thy commandments.
    [Show full text]
  • Intro to the Zohar with Rabbi Roller Session 3: an Alphabet of Creation
    Intro to the Zohar with Rabbi Roller Session 3: An Alphabet of Creation Zohar 1:2b-3b Rabbi Hamnuna-Saba said: “We find the letters backwards: In the first four words of the Torah, Beresheet Barah EloGod Et, the first two words begin with the letter Bet, and the following two begin with Aleph". It is said that, “When the Creator thought to create the world, all of the letters were still concealed, and even 2,000 years before the creation of the world, the Creator gazed into the letters and played with them. When the Creator thought to create the world, all the letters of the alphabet came to God in reverse order from last to first. The letter Tav entered first and said, “Master of the world! It is good, and also seemly of You, to create the world with me, with my properties. For I am the seal on Your ring, called Truth, that ends with the letter Tav. And that is why You are called Truth, and why it would befit the King to begin the universe with the letter Tav, and to create the world by her, by her properties. The Creator answered: "You are beautiful and sincere, but do not merit the world that I conceived to be created by your properties. You are destined to serve as a mark on the foreheads of the faithful, who have kept the Law of the Torah from Aleph to Tav. When you appear, they shall die. Not only that, but you are also the seal of the word Death, and because of this, you are not suitable for Me to create the world with you." The letter Tav then immediately left.
    [Show full text]