Alpha and omega (Hastings' Dictionary)

This phrase is found in Rev 1* 21' 22". In the first passage it is used of God the Father, in the other two of the Son. In the TR it wrongly appears in Rev 1". This phrase calls for treatment in two respects : (1) as to Its form, (2) as to its meaning. 1. That the form of the phrase was familiar, or, at all events, easily intelligible from the outset, is clear from later Heb. analogies.

But before we touch on these it is worth observing that a kindred idiom is found in contemporary Latin literature. Thus in Martial v. 26 we find : Quod alpha dixi, Codre, pasnulatorum Te nuper, aliqua cum jocarer in charta ; Si forte bilem movit hic tibi versus, Dicas licebit beta me togatorum. Cf. also ii. 57, and Theodoret, HE iv. 8, iiiich ftiy ixpria6.ii.i6a.

t<} 2X0a ^XP' '''»" "• Amongst the later Jews the whole extent of a thing was often ex- pressed by the first and last letters of the alphabet. Thus (Schoettgen, Ifor. Heb. in loc.) nx was a name of the Shechmah, because it embraced all the letters. Ace. to the Jalkut Hub. fol. 17. 4 Adam transgressed the whole law n nyi 'xa from aleph to tail : ace. to fol. 48. 4 Abraham observed the whole law from aleph to tau ; and, fol. 128. 3, when God blesses Israel He does it from aleph to tau (i.e.

the initial and closing letters of Lv 26'"'", in which the blessings on Israel are pronounced), but when He curses Israel He does so from vav to mem (see Lv 20"""). ^Ve may therefore reason- ably infer that the title 'Alpha and Omega' is a Gr. rendering of a corresponding Heb. expression. 2. The thought conveyed in this title is essenti- ally that of Is 44', pnnN '3ki \-ctr\ •:« ' I am the first and I ira the last' (cf. i\* 43'°). The phrase thus dgniCes ' the Eternal One.'

It is thus expounded by Aretas (see Cramer's Catena Grcecx in AT on Rev 1* : 'A\0a 5id t4 ipxh' fZ"'", 5ti nal tA 6,\<pa ^PXV '■(Sv iv ypdfifjULTt OTOtx^lwv w dia t6 riXos rCiv aifTuiv. ipx^'' ^i Kal rfKos tU ovk &v ivvoiiaoi t6 Trpuiros arjfiaivta&cu Kal rd foxoT'oy ; ^ta tov vpurros Se, t6 Apapxoi ivvourat, wf Kal iii, tov ia^drov t6 &Tf\€v- T77TOS. In Tertullian, Monog.

5, there is the follow- ing interesting exposition : Sic et duas Gra^ciie litteras, summam et ultimam, sibi induit dominus, initii et finis concurrentium in se figuras, uti, quemadmoilum A ad f) usque volvitur et rursus n ad A replicatur, ita ostenderet in se esse et initii decursura ad finem et finis recursum ad initium, ut omnis dispositio in eum desinens per quern coepta est. per sermonem scilicet dei qui caro factus est, proinde dusinat quemadmodum et coepit. Cf. also Cyprian, Testim. ii.

1, 6, 22 ; iii. 100 ; Paulinus of !Sola, Cam. 19. 645 ; 30. 89 ; Pruden- tins, Catliem. ix. 10-12. Corde natus ex Parentis, ante mundi exordium Alpha et CI cognominatus, Ipse fons et clausula Omnium quae sunt fueruut qua;que post futura sunt. Although in R«v 1* this title is used of God the them Father, it seems to be confined to the Son in I'atristic and subsequent literature. R. H. Charles.

ALPHABET is a word derived from alphtx ai\d beta, the names of the first two letters in Greek, in which thej' are meaningless, being adaptations of the corresponding Sem. letter-names aleph, an ox, and bcth, a house. This etymology discloses much of the history of the A., which originated among a Sem. people, by whom it was transmitted to the Greeks and by them to the Romans, wnose A., with a few tritfing modifications, we still use.

It is now known that all the alphabets in the world, some 2U0 in number, are descended from a primitive Sem. A., usually styled the Phoen. A., or the A. of Israel. The universal belief, or possibly the tradition of the ancient world, as reported by Plato, Tacitus, Plutarch, and other writers, was that the Plia^ni- cians had obtained the A. from Egypt.

This seemed so probable that after the hieroglyphic writing had been recovered and deciphered, repeated attempts were made to show how the transmis.'^ion might have been efl'ected. This, however, proved to be no easy task. At the time of the Heb. Exodus, the hieroglyphic picture, writing was already a venerable system of vast anticjuity.

Existing inscriptions make it possible to tra<e it back to the time of the 2nd dynasty, some 6000 years ago, when it already appears in great perfection, arguing a prolonged period of ante- cedent development.

Setting aside a multitude of ideographic picture, signs, there are about 400 pictorial phonograms, of which 45 had emerged out of the syllabic stage, and had attained a sort of alphabetic character ; that is, they either denoted vowels, or were capable of being associated with more tlian one vowel sound. Of these, 25 were in more universal use than the rest, and it was maiidy out of these, as we shall see, that the letters of the A. were developed.

To a French Egyptologist, Emanuel de Rougi, belongs the honour of having discovered the prob- able metliod bj' which the Sem. A. was evolved out of the Egyp. writing. De Rouge pointed out tliat the immediate prototypes of the Phoen.

letters were not to be found, as had been supposed, in the pictorial Hieroglyphs of the monuments, or in the well-known cursive Hieratic of tlie Middle Empire, but in an older and more deformed Hieratic script which prevailed in the time of the Early Empire, — a form of writing so ancient that it had alieaily fallen into disuse before the Heb. Exodus. This obscure and difficult script is chiefly known to us from a single MS., now in the National Library at Paris.

It goes by the name of the Papyrus Pnsse, having been presented to the Library liy M. Prisse d'A venues, who obtained it at Thebes, where it was found in a tomb as old as the 11th dynasty. It is therefore older by many centuries than the time of Moses, older than the invasion of the Shep- herd kings, and older probably than the date usually assigned to Abraliam. Forty-fi\e of the Egyp.

Hieroglyphics had acquired, as we have seen, a semi-alphabetic char acter, and Ue Roug6 contended that the Hieratic representatives of 21 of the most suitable of tlie>e Hieroglyphs were selected, and employed by some Sem. people as the prototypes of tlie .-V. they constructed, only one of the 22 letters being due to a non-Egyptian source. These Hieratic characters, traced from the Papj'rus Prisse, are given in col.

2 of the table, and the corresponding Hieroglyphs, which face the other way, will be found in col. 1. The oldest Sem. forms witli which we are acquainted are shown in col. S. In comparing them witli theii assumed Hieratic proto'iyjies ;t must be remembered that they are not coi-.tem- EVOLUTION OP THE HEBREW ALPHABETS. EGYPTIAN. ISRAELITIC. ARAM/iAN. HEBREW. Namee.

Valuet, 1 ^ ^ A ^ f^ /^ x< X iC 'Alepla 'a 2 ^ :^ ^ i^ ^ i> :3 n n Belh b 3 a 2r > K X X :i \ Gimel 9 ^ ^ ^ A ^ V ^ •1 *t ^ Dalelh d 5 ra m -^ 1 -^ n TS n h He h 6 Vr^. ^ V 1 1 ^ ) \ Vau V 7 fe t :r T T t 1 t Zayin z 8 o k£> H A/ w n Jt rt n Heth h 9 c=:^ ^ e ^ x> v> U u Telh t 10 w Y ^ \ A JJ ' ^ ^ Yod y 11 v_:a n i 7 "3 :> ^1 51 Kaph k 12 ?tft ^ L 4 Lr 5, h v Lamed I 13 k :> > y ^ 0^ !

^h 5t) an Mem m 14 JM^AA ^ 'z J ) tf Ji n Nun n it -# f ^fi "7 V t7 D Samekh 9 16 o V y b> 1 y J> 'Ayin 'a 1? e ^ 9 -) "J o i) ;^n Pc P IB n / r rr ^ y Y :^r Z.i.ie J to /} ^ T ■^ ^ ^ 7 V ? Knph /; 20 <:. > ^ ^ y ^ 1 -J ^ 1 K.'sh 7- 2! J,U s^ w >o ^ t^ v^ i:7\i' Shin sA 22 ] 1 1 1 1 1 IV V VI. VII. VIII. Tau c EXPLANATION OF THE TABLE. Cn\. I. EovFTiAS IIir.iiooMrmcs. (aiinf to the litt. ("1. II. IIikhatio Ciiaractsiih, (mine to tho rialit Col. IH. OLntsT IftRAKLiTKofiriKKMi-lAN LKfTKK.

H, (roin tliu Mfiut Lftuiiion ftli<l Moftliitu iilswjrij)tioii8 (tfco. XI. to I,\. II. c). Col. IV. AllAM.KAN, ri^'lifr to Iflt, from the coiim o( tlic Sntropii » iiiiil Ei{v|>. iiiiwriplioiiD and papyri (sec. V. to I. li.c). I'ol. V. Oldkut S«i akb HEmmw, frinn inncriptions m-nr JiTUHalcni (llcroilian period). Col. VI. S«iaiiI! IIkuubw, from Bahyloniuu Ijowls (sec. IV. to VII. A.D.) Col. VII. im.iRi! UtiiREW, (rum Codes Babjlouicus at St. Petcrabur^t (IIIU A.li.) Col. VIII.

Moiikrn Suuark IIkurbw. 12 ALPHABET ALPHaBEI' porary forms, but are separated by at least ten, or more probably by twelve centuries, a period durinj; which considerable ditierences of form must almost necessarily have arisen, in addition to which the Hieratic forms are cursive, freely traced on papjTus with a brush, while the Sem.

letters are lapidary types, engraved with a chisel upon stone or bronze, which would entail ditierences of form similar to those which exist between our printed capitals A, i>, E and the script forms a, b, e of our modern handwriting.

This alone would account for the alterations in the shapes of such letters as dalcth, UetU, resh, or mem, the change from a cursive to a lapidary type causing the characters to become more regular in size and inclination, bold curves being simplified, closed ovals becoming triangles or squares, and the curved sweeping tails becom- ing straight and ri"id lines. For 21 of the 22 letters of the Sem. alphabet De Rouge ha£ found a prob. Hieratic prototype, in 18 cases taking the normal Egyp.

equivalent of the Sem. sound, and in 3 instances only, alcph, beth, and zayin, having recourse to a less usual homo- phone. In one case he fails. The peculiar guttural breathing denoted by the Sem. letter 'ayin did not exist in Egyp. speech. For this letter no Egyp. prototype has been discovered, and it is supposed that it was an invention of the Semites, the sjTubol 0 being regarded, as the name suggests, as the picture of an 'eye.' (See No. 16, col. 3.) How, when, or by whom the Sem. A.

was thus evolved from the Egyp. Hieratic it is im- possible to say with precision. The possible limits of date are believed to lie between the 23rd and ■;he 17th centuries B.C. It seems probable that the development was efl'ected by some Sem. people who were in commercial intercourse with the Egyptians, — possibly, it has been conjectured, the Semites of S.

Arabia, possibly the Hyksos, if these Shepherd kings were Semites, and not, as IS now supposed, of Mongolian race, hardly the Hebrews, who seem to be excluded by the limits of date, but most probably a Phccn. trading colony settled on the shores of Lake Menzaleh in the Delta. On the Egyp. monuments they are called Fenekh (Phoenicians), and also Char or dial, a name used to designate the coast tribes of Syria.

The native land of the Char was called Kaft, whence part of the Delta was called Caphtor, or the 'greater Kaft.' If the A. arose in Caphtor it would easily spread to Phoenicia, and then to the kindred and neighbouring races. The art of writing must, however, have been known to the Hebrews at an early period of their history. Hiram, we are told, wrote a letter to Solomon, and David wrote a letter to Joab.

From the lists of the kings and dukes of Edom, preserved in Gn 36 and 1 Ch 1, we gather that the Edomites, at the time when their capital was taken by Joab in the reign of David, possessed state annals, going back to a remote period. The list of the encamp- jients of the Israelites in the Desert, given in Nu 33, cannot have been handed down by oral tradition ; while it is the only incorporated docu- ment in the Pent, which we are expressly told was written down by Moses, and its geogr.

correctness !.as been curiously contirmed by recent researches. 1 he census of the congregation preserved in Nu 1-4 and 26 is also manifestly a very ancient written record which has been incorporated in the text. All these documents were presumably written in the primitive Sem. A. But the discoveries of the la.st few years have led scholars to believe that non-alphabetic writing of another kind was used in Pal.

long before the Exodus, as early as the reign of Khu-n-Aten, the recent excavations at Lachish and the discoveries at Tel el-Aniariia l>roving that the governors of the Syrian cities corresponded with the Ecyj' kings in a cursive form of the Babylonian cuneiform. The oldest known forms of the Sem. letters are shown in col. 3 of the table, where their names and their approximate phonetic values may also be found. Thirteen may be represented by letters in our own Alphabet.

These are beth, gimel, daleth, he, zayin, kaph, lamed, mem, nun, samekh, pe, resh, and tau, which correspond to our letters b, g, d, h, z, k, I, m, n, s, p, r, and t. The other nine letters repre- sent sounds which we do not exactly possess. Of these, two are called 'Unguals,' or 'emphatics,' namelj', teth, a gutturalised t, which is called the emphatic dental, and zade, a gutturalised s, called the emphatic sibilant.

The Tetter koph was not our q, but a k formed farther back in the throat, and here represented by k. There are also four 'faucal breaths,' 'aleph, he, heth, and 'ayin, of which 'aleph, the lightest, was a slightly explosive consonant, heard in English after the word No !

when uttered abruptly, and nearly equivalent to the spirit us lenis of the Greeks ; 'ayin was a sound of the same kind, but harder th&n' aleph, approach- ing a g rolled in the throat ; heth, called the ' fricative faucal,' was a continuous guttural, resembling the ch in the Scotch lock ; and he was a fainter sound of the same kind, approaching our A. The primitive sound of shin was probably that of our sh, but was subject to dialectic variation.

Yod and vau were semi-consonants, or rather consonantal vowels, usually equivalent to y and v, but passing readily into t and u. None of the Sem. A.s have possessed symbols for the true vowels, which are now denoted, not by letters, but by diacritical points, a notation essentially non-alphabetic, and not of any great antiquity. The vowels in non-Semitic A.s, such as Greek, Zend, Armenian, Georgian, Sanskrit, and Mongolian, have been developed out of char- acters representing the Sem.

breaths and semi- consonants. Thus the Gr. alpha, whence our A, was obtained from 'aleph, the spiritus lenit ; epsilon, whence our E, is from he, an aspirate ; eta and our H from heth, the fricative faucal ; iota and our I and J from yod, a semi-consonant ; omicron and omega, and our O, from 'ayin, the spiritus asper ; while ups-Uun and our U, V, W, Y, and F, came from vau, a semi-consonant. Besides the absence of symbols for the vowels, most of the Sem. scripts, Heb., Syr., and Arab.

, agree in being written from right to left, the direction following the example of the prototype, the Hieratic of the Papyrus Prisse, whereas in the non, Sem. scripts tue direction has mostly been changed. The Sem. A.

s have also adhered to the primitive 22 letters, none of which have fallen into disuse, any additional notation required being etiected by diacritical points, whereas in other scripts new forms have been evolved by difl'erentia- tion, as in the case of our own letters V, U, W, Y, and F, which are all diU'erentiated forms of the same symbol.

The pictorial character of the Hieroglyphs had disappeared in the Hieratic of the Papyrus Prisse, and hence it is no matter for surprise to find that the Egyp. symbols were renamed by the Semites, on the acrologic principle, by words significant in Sem.

speech, the new names being due to a resem- blance, real or fanciful, between the form assumed by the letter and some object whose name began with the letter in question, as in our nursery picture-books, in which O is an orange, S a swan, and B a butterfly. Thus the first symbol was no longer ahum, the 'eagle,' as in Egyp.

, but became 'alcph, the 'ox,' from the resemblance to the front view of the head and horns of that animal ; and the 13lh, insteadof beinu' mulak, the 'owl,' became»i«»7i, the ' waters,' what liad been the ears and beak of ALPHABET ALPHABET 73 the owl coming to resemble the undulations of waves (see col. 2 and 3). Tlie Sem. names are iiometimes more easily exjilained by the Egyp. forms of the Papyrus rrisse than by those in the oldest Sem. inscriptions. The Sem.

names are usually interpreted as follows: "a/e/y/i means an 'ox'; beth signifies a ' house' ; and gimcl, a 'camel,' the Hieratic form resembling a recumbent camel, with the head, neck, body, tail, and saddle, of which only the head and neck are preserved in the oldest Sem.

letter ; duleth means a ' door,' not a house door, but the curtain forming the entrance to an Eaotem tent ; he signifies a ' window ' ; vau is a nail, Seg, or hook for hanging things on ; zayin probably enotes ' weapons ' ; heth, a fence or ' palisade ' ; Uth, from a root meaning curvature, is supposed to have been a picture of a coiled snake ; yod is the ' hand ' ; ka/ih the ' palm ' of the hand, or the bent hand; lamed is an 'ox -goad'; mem, the 'waters'; nun, a 'fish'; samekh is probably a prop or supi)ort ; 'ayin is the 'eye ; pe, the ' mouth ' ; zade is probably a ' javelin,' or perhaps a liook ; koph is usually supposed to mean a ' knot' ; resh is the ' head ' ; shin, the ' teeth ' ; tau, a ' cross,' or sign for marking beasts.

It will be noticed that six of these names, gimel, he, yod, nun, pe, and samel.h, must be very ancient, being most easily exiJiiiicil by reference to the Hieratic forms. The early history of the A. has to be recon- structed from inscriptions, many of which have only been discovered in recent years. Among the monuments of the older stage of the Ph(i;n. A. the great inscrimion of Meslia, king of Moab, ranks lirst in inii ortance. In 1808 Air. Klein, of the C. M. S.

, visited the site of Dibon, the ancient capital of the kingdom of Moab. Here he was shown a block of basalt, with an inscription in 34 lines of wr ing. Tlie interest excited by this discovery, and the rival efl'orts of the European consuls to secure the treasure, un fortunately aroused the jealou.sy of the Arabs, by whom the stone was broken into fragments, some forty of which have been recovered, enough to lay the foundation of early Sera, pala-ography.

In this inscription, which must be referred to the middle of the 9th cent. B.C., Mesha, in language clo.sely akin to IJibl. Hebrew, gives an account of the wars between Israel and Moau, narrating more esp. those events in his own reign which took place after the death of Ahab in 853 B.C. The year 850 B.C. has been generally accepted by scholars as an approximate date for the record.

Somewhat earlier, though of less historical importance, are some inscribed fragments of bronze vessels, obtained from Cyprus in 1876, which proved to be portions of two bowls containing dedi- cations to liaal Lebanon. They must have been carried oil' to Cyprus as a part of the spoils from a temple on Lebanon.

The writing on one of the bowls proves on palaiographical grounds to be nearly of the same date as the Moabite inscrip- tion, while that on the other bowl exhibits more archaic forms of several letters, and may probably be older by a century, belonging to the close of the 10th or the beginning of the Uth cent. B.C. It is from these bowls, supplemented by the evidence of the Moabite Stone, tliat the A. in col. 3 has been constructed. It is called the Isra«litic A.

in older to avoid confusion with a much later A., which, having been lirst known to scholars, u.Hur]icd the name of the lleb. A. It cannot be too carefully remembered that at successive periods in their liisloi-y the Hebrews emjjloyed two A.h, identical in all es.sential particulars, but wholly unlike in the external appearance of the letters. Krom the earliest period of which we |)Os.scss any knowledge, down to the captivity in liabylon, this I'Iki'U. A.

, of which the oldest monuments are the Moabite Stone and the Baal Lebanon bowls, must also have been the contemporary A. of the Hebrews. This was ingeniously proved by Ueseuius, long before these monuments were discovered. He contended that the earlier books of the OT could not have been written, as was formerly supposed, in what is now known as the Heb. A.

, since many obvious corruptions in the text could onlj' have arisen from the errors of copyists, who confounded letters which are much alike in the old Fhcen., but are quite dis- similar in the square Hebrew. For example, in tlie list of David's mighty men, recorded in 2 S 23-'", we have the name Ueleb, which in the parallel passage in 1 Ch 11** appears as Heled.

One of these readings is obviously corrupt, and the corrujj tion can only be due to the original record having been written in the older or I'liien. A., in which the letters hcth and daUlh dilier so slightly as often to be hardly distinguishable, whereas in the later or square Heb. A. the letters 3 and i are unmistakably distinct. Hence, he argued, the record must be prior to the Captivity, when, according to the Rabbinic tradition, the new A. was introduced.

When Gesenius wiote, the evi- dence as to the nature of the older Heb. A. was scanty in the extreme, being limited to a few engraved gems in the Phcen. A., sujjposed to be Heb. because of their bearing names apparently Jewish. Now, however, all doubts have been set at rest by the accidental discovery in 1880 of the famous Siloam inscription, engraved in a recess of the tunnel which pierces the ridge of Uphel, and brings water from the Pool of the Virgin to the Pool of Siloam.

The inscrijition which records the construction of the tunnel is in six liiiesof writing, manifestly later in date than the Moabite inscrip- tion, though of .he same type. On palivographical grounds it has been assigned to the reign of Manasseh, B.C. 685-6-11, though it isjiossible that it may be as early as the reign of Hezekiah, and may refer to the conduit constructed by him at the end of the 8th cent., as recorded in 2 K 20** and 2 Ch 32™. This A.

is of sjiecial interest, as in it most of the writings of the Jewish prophets must have been compo.sed. This older A. lingered long, being employed on the coins of the Maccabees and on those of the Hiusmonoean jirinces. It survives as the sacred sciijit of the few Samaritan families at Nablfls, who still worship in their temple on Mt. Gerizim, and keep the 1 a-ssover with the ancient rites. With this exception, the old Plncn. A., the parent of all existing A.s, has become extinct.

This earliest type of the Sem. A. gradually passes into another, somewhat more cursive, which goes by the name of the Sidonian, its chief repre- sentative being the great inscription on the magni- ficent ba.salt sarcophagus of Eshmunazar, king of Sidon, now in the Louvre, which is a.ssigned to the end cf the 5th cent. B.C. Out of this Sidonian type was evolved the Arama-nn A., which was destined to rejilace the Pluen. after the ileca<lence of the Ph<cn. power.

The great tra<le route from the Ked Sea and Egypt to Babylon pas.sed tliroiigh Damu.scus, llamath, and Carcheiiiish, and the trade fell into the hands of the Aranncans, the pconle of N. Syria. Hence, on the iiolitiial decline of tlie Phcen. cities, the Aramu'au language ami A. became the medium of commercial intercourse throughout W. Asia. At Nineveh in the Tlh cent. B.C.

, and at liabylon in the Gth, the Sidonian type begins to he replaced by the Araniican, whose continuous development may be traced from the 5th to the Ist cent. H.C., lirst on the coins struck by Persian satraps of Asia Minor, and then by the aid of mortuary inscriptions and papyri from Egypt, which carry on the record after the con- (lUfsts of Alexander had put an end to the Persian satrapies. An inspection of col. 4 in the table will 74 ALPHABET ALPH.

i;US show that the chief characteristics of the Aramaean A. — due evidently to the free use of the reed pen and papyrus — are a progressive opening of the closed loops of the letters beth, daleth, teth, 'ayin, koph, and resh ; while he, vau, zayin, heth, and tau tend to lose their distinctive bars.

At the same time the script continually becomes more cursive in character, the tails of the letters curving more and more to the left, whUe the introduction of ligatures led to a distinction between the final and the medial or initial forma of certain letters. These changes, whUe they made writing easier and more rapid, at the same time made it less legible. On the return of the Jews from the Bab. exile, the ancient A.

of Israel, though retained on the Maccabaean coins, and possibly in copies of the law, was gradually abandoned for the more cursive but far inferior Aramaean, which had become the mercantile script of the W. provinces of Persia. A Jewish tradition, preserved in the Talm., attributed this change to Ezra ; but there can be no doubt that both scripts were for a time employed concurrently — the Aramaean by the mercantile classes and the returning exiles, and the older A.

by those who, like the Samaritans, bad been left behind in the land. The older Phoen. style had fortunately been transmitted to the GreeKs before the Aramaean de- formation had taken place. Consequently the Rom. A. which we have inherited, being a Western form of the Greek A., has retained in such letters as B, D, O, Q, R, E, F, H those loops and bars whose disappearance in the Heb., Syr., Arab., and other A. 8 descended from the Ar&msean, has contributed to make them so illegible.

Our own capitals are, in fact, much nearer to the primitive Phien. or Isr. A. than any of the existing Sem. A.s, and it is to this retention of the archaic forms that they owe their excellence and general superiority. The closed loop of D and R and the upper loop of B repro- duce the closed triangles of the earlier bem. script, which were lost by the Aramaean deformation, and are consequently much superior to the formless shapes t t 3 which we have in modem Hebrew.

When the Seleucidan empire had come to a close, the Aramffan broke up into national scripts, the A. of Eastern Sjria developing at Bozra, Petra, and the Hauran into the Nabataean, which was the parent of Arabic, whUe the Aramjean of N. Syria developed at Edessa into Syriac, and that of S. Syria, at Jerus. and Bab., into what is called Hebrew. The early form of square Heb. used at Jerus.

in the time of our Lord, with which He must Himself have been familiar, and in which probably the roll was written which He read in the synagogue (Lk 4"), is given in col. 5 of the table. This A. has been obtained from monuments of the Herodian period found in Galilee or at Jerus., all of which must be anterior to the siege by Titus.

These inscriptions are chiefly from lombs ; but one of them, of special interest, is a fragment of one of the notices, enjoining silence and reverent be- haviour, set up, as we learn from Josephus, when the temple was rebuilt by Herod. The materials for the history of the Heb. A. during the period of the dispersion, from the 1st cent, to the 10th, when it practically assumed its present form, have been gathered from regions curiously remote.

Some are from the Jewish Catacombs at Rome, many from the Crimea, others from the Jewish cemeteries at Vienne, Aries, and Narbonne in Gaul, at Tortosa in Spain, Venosa in Italy, from Prag, Aden, Tillis, and Derbend, and, not least in importance, the writing on some cabal- istic bowls found at Babj-lon, dating from the 4th to the 7th cent. A.D. (see col. 6). The earliest exist- ing codex, the A. of which is given in col. 7, dates from the beginning of the 10th cent.

, when the letters had practically «issumed their modem forms though not their modern aspect, the useless ornamental apices in our printed books (col. 8) being due to the schools of Heb. caligiaphy which arose in the 12th cent. The square Heb. of our printed Bibles is thus one of the most modern of existing A.s, and was not, as was formerly be- lieved, the most ancient of all. The forms of these letters are thus neither legible nor venerable. Their adoption was almost a matter of accident.

Tliere were two styles, the Spanish and the German, and the latter was used in the Miinster printed Bible, the types being imitated from those in MSS. then in fashion. The result is that our eyes are fatigued with the fantastic and vicious caligraphy of the 14th cent., a period when the odious black letter was developed out of the beautiful Caroline minuscule, to which in our printed books we have now fortunately reverted. So in Heb.

it would have been much better to have reverted to the far superior forms of earlier times, such, for instance, as those in use in the 8th cent. The earlier forms are better, because the letters are free from useless ornamental flourishes which are so trying to the eyes of students and compositors, and are more legible and more distinct.

As in the case of our own vicious black letter, some characters are assimilated so as to be difficult to distinguish — in particular 3 beth, 3 kaph ; j nun, i giinel ; i daleth, -I resh ; T kaph final, ] nun final ; i vau, i zayin ; or of D samekh, and a mem final ; while n n and n stand for h, h, and t. Six of the Heb.

letters gradually acquired an alternative softer aspirated sound, and the harder primitive sounds are now denoted by an internal point (Dagesh lene) 3 3 i 3 s n, representing the sounds b, g, d, k, p, t, the same forms without the Dagesh, or with a superscript line called liaphe, standing for bh, gh, dh, kh, ph, th. The letter shin also split up into two sounds, distinguished by diacritical points, o approaching the sound of our a, and a that of our sh.

The vowel points are late and of little authority. The Greek transliterations of Heb. names in the Sept. and in Josephus suffice to prove that tliere were no vowel points in the copies of the Heb. Scrip- tures then in use, and as late as the time of St. Jerome the Heb. vocalisation was only kno\vn by oral teaching. The Heb. points were suggested by those which liad been introduced into Sj'riac in the 5th and 6th cent. A.D.

They merely represent the traditional pronunciation used in the syna- gogues of Tiberias in the 7th cent. A.D. (See art. Language of OT.) Isaac Taylor. ALPH^US, 'A\0oios (Westcott and Hort, Introd. % 408, assuming that tlie name is a transliteration of the Aramaic 'S^n, write it \vitli tlie rough breath- ing, 'AX<^aio!), occurs four times in the (iospels and once in Acts. As thus used it is the name of two dififerent men. 1.

The father of the Apostle Matthew or Levi (Mk 2"), not elsewhere named or othenvise known. 2. All the other references are evidently to another man (Mt 10", Mk 3>*, Lk 6'», Ac 1"), whc is represented as father of James the apostle, second of that name in tlie list. A considerable controversy has long been carried on as to whether this A. may be identified with the Clopas of Jn 19^ and the Cleopas of Lk 24i».

This question has been of special interest as involved in the discussion regarding James and the Brethren of the Lord (wh. see;. Ewald b<ildly assumes that tlie Clopas of John and the Cleopas of Luke are one, but maintains that the identification with Alplueus is an unrea-souable confounding of a purely Greek with a purely Hebrew name {Hist, of Israel, vi 305, note 4). Meyer affirms the identity of the ALTAR ALTAK 70 Clopas of John with the Aramaic '5'—, the Alph.rus of tlie Synoptics.

Ami Allord (on Mt lu") re^';inis the two Greek names as simply two dillerent ways of expressing the Hehrew name 'S^n. It seems better to distin^ish the Cleopas of Luke from the Clopas of John. It is quite e\-ident that Cleopas is simply a shortened form of Cleopater (KX(oirarpos), like Antipas for Antipater. Lightfoot, indeed, wliile admitting this, still favours tlie identification of the two names.

On tlie other hand, Clopas may with the highest probability be regarded as a simple transliteration of the Aramaic ^lalphaL Clopas (as in tlie Greek text and KV, not Cleopas as in the AV) is represented in Jn Iff* as the husband of one of the Marys who stood beside the cross. If we assume that four women are there referred to, there is no indication of any relationship between the wife of Clopas and the mother of Jesus.

The synoptic passages, however, all mention among the women at the cross this same Marj- as the mother of James. There is no reason for sui>posing that this James, son of Mary, is any other than James tlie son of Alpha>us. But the assumption that Clopas was husband of Mary and brotlier of Joseph, and the usual assumption that Mary was the sister of our Lord's mother, are equally groundless, and have no support whatever fix>m any statement in our Gospels.

There seems no reason for supposing that James the little and James the brother of the Lord are one and the same person. Euscbius, indeed, mentions, on the autho- rity of He''esippus, that Sjniieon, who succeeded James in tiie lushopric of Jerusalem, was son of Clopas the brother of Joseph ; but Symeon is evidently re''arded, not as a brother, but only as a relative, probably a cousin, of his predecessor James. LlTERATtmB.

— Besides the works referred to in the text, see Lit^htluot, Gttluians, lOtlied. Loudon, ISIK), p. 267; Mayor, The BfHUt «'/ St. Jiivita, 18i2, p. xvif. See also an intert-sting and clever bat perverse not« In Kelm, Jtsus of Xasara, iii, 276. J. Macpherson.