Read Hebrew and Aramaic

8.5. Read Hebrew and Aramaic
The characters may have appeared very strange to you. In this section, we will take a closer look at them, and you will realise that our alphabet is a grandchild of the Hebrew alphabet. In order to understand that, we have to go back to the old Hebrew alphabet, written with Phoenician scripts.
[See image 12]
file:///C:\e-sword\intro_biblical_languages\image12.png("file:///C:\\e-sword\\intro_biblical_languages\\image12.png")
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Ζ, ζ||Η, η|Δ, δ|Γ, γ|Β, β|Α, α|
ז|ו|ה|ד|ג|ב|א|
As you can see, the old Phoenician alphabet that was used in Old Hebrew was very close to the Greek alphabet. This is what happened. The Greeks took their alphabet from the Phoenicians. Because Greek is written from left to right, the Greeks turned the Phoenician letters around. You can see that the Alef was turned 45 degrees to the left! Take a look at all the letters. Can you see what the Greeks did with them? In order to help you understand the new Hebrew forms, you should also look at the meaning of the letters.
[See image 13]
file:///C:\e-sword\intro_biblical_languages\image13.png("file:///C:\\e-sword\\intro_biblical_languages\\image13.png")
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Ν, ν|Μ, μ|Λ, λ|Κ, κ|Ι, ι|Θθ||
נ|מ|ל|כ|י|ט|ח|
The same technique that was used for the previous letters was also used for the rest of the alphabet. The similarity between Greek and Old Hebrew is clearer than with the modern Hebrew characters. Here is the final batch of letters.
[See image 14]
file:///C:\e-sword\intro_biblical_languages\image14.png("file:///C:\\e-sword\\intro_biblical_languages\\image14.png")
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Τ, τ|Ω, ω|Ρ, ρ||Σ, ς|Π, π|Ο, ο|Ξ, ξ|
ת|ש|ר|ק|צ|פ|ע|ס|
You will realise that some characters do not have equivalents in Greek. The Ancient Hebrew Lexicon of the Bible (AHLB) has a description of the reconstruction of the Hebrew alphabet. This dictionary is available to TW and ES.