The Origins of Writing Systems

*** The Beresheit/Genesis account shows that Elohim gave the first humans a language. At the Tower of Babel, all were still of “one language and one speech” [Gen. 11:1], but it was scrambled so that each of the 70 families had its own language. Thus, they had to disperse into the earth.

· For each to have a separate linguistic form, only 69 new ones had to be produced; pure logic, coupled with Biblical evidence, makes the case that the family of Eber—the “Hebrew”—kept the original speech.

*** The 22 letters of the original language express the basic thought processes of God by which He formed the whole universe. Scientists have come to understand that there are about 20 or a few more “control knobs” or “algorithms” by which the physical universe operates:

Heb 1:2 in these last days He spoke to us in the Son, whom He appointed heir of all; through whom He indeed made the ages;

Heb 1:3 who being the shining splendor of His glory, and the express image of His essence, and upholding all things by the Word [the Alef-Tav] of His power....

Heb 11:3 By faith we understand the ages to have been framed by the Word of God, so that the things seen should not come into being out of things that appear. [LITV]

· Thus, Hebrew writing is both phonetic and pictorial. Each letter in a word gives a picture or concept, and all of them together create a word picture. For instance, take the word for elephant: lyp [peel]

*** Word picture: “An elephant has a mouth that extends out like a rod and can be used like a hand to pick up something.”

*** Word picture: “That old Serpent who surrounds life so as to devour and destroy it!”

* The letter sheen/seen (X) in many instances lifts to a higher level, “The Destroyer of the Door”—El Shaddai—God Almighty, who can knock down any door or gate and go in. So let’s look at the word Shabbat [Sabbath]: tbX

*** Word picture: “The Almighty God has given an eternal covenant sign to His chosen family.”

Exo 31:16 Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant.

*** By the time of Solomon, a new type of writing had been developed [some say that Solomon himself, understanding how the western sort of mind operates, invented it for his good friend and associate, King Hiram of Tyre]. This Phoenician system was written left-to-right, the opposite of Hebrew. It was totally phonetic [phonic and phonetic come from Phoenician], and had written vowels. The letters, however, were patterned after those of Hebrew. The Greek alphabet was patterned after the Phoenician; and our Roman, after the Greek.

But the key oriental languages like Chinese, Korean, and Japanese developed a complex system of ideograms—words and concepts expressed pictorially by combinations of component symbols, somewhat on the order of the Hebrew. These systems are non-phonetic; the content can be expressed in whatever language or dialect the reader knows.

*** Strangely (or maybe not!), Chinese ideograms for some basic words uphold the validity of the early chapters of Genesis down through the Tower of Babel account. Let’s look at some of them:

· Note that the symbol for garden has four “irrigation canals” flowing out from its center.

Gen 2:10 Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it divided and became four rivers. [NASB]

*** Note that the Chinese symbol for Fruit is the combination of the symbols for tree and garden:


Fruit	= Tree	+ Garden

*** While Adam and Eve were in the garden, the devil decided to implement his plan to alienate humans from God. His plan was to suggest that God withheld secret information for the humans in the garden.

Gen 3:2 The woman said to the serpent, "From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat;

Gen 3:3 but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.'"

*** The Chinese ideogram for greed; desire reflects Eve’s experience with the two trees of the Garden of Eden:

Gen 2:9 Out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

líng

Desire,
Greed

= Woman

+ Trees

Gen 3:7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.

* The word for naked indicates clothing, the one tree they wrongly chose, and the garden with four rivers:


Naked	= Clothing	+ Tree	+ Garden

Gen 4:4 Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and for his offering;

Mat 23:35 so that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.


Righteous(ness)	= Sheep	+ Hand	+ Lance

*** This ideogram foreshadowed the sacrifice of the Lamb of God. Through faith in and acceptance of that shed blood, righteousness is imputed to us.

*** The combination of the lance and hand means “us”. Thus, the same word can be looked at as saying that the Lamb was slain for us:


Righteous(ness)	= Sheep	+ I, Us

*** The Chinese, like peoples all over the earth, preserved the tradition of a great flood. We know that eight persons rode it out on the ark:

Gen 7:1 Then the LORD said to Noah, "Enter the ark, you and all your household, for you alone I have seen to be righteous before Me in this time.

1Pe 3:20 ....the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water.


Boat	= 8	+ Mouth	+ Little Boat, Vessel

*** The descendants of the 8 persons on the ark stayed together, speaking the same language, until the first would-be world tyrant, Nimrod [Gen. 10:8-12], organized them to implement a great project:

Gen 11:2 It came about as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.

Gen 11:3 They said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly." And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar.

Gen 11:4 They said, "Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth."

* In ancient times people made bricks of mud reinforced with straw—dried grass:

“…the ancient Chinese people were quite familiar with the same record which the Hebrew Moses is popularly given credit for writing some 700 to 1,000 years later. Imagine this information being stored in special characters that were in use hundreds of years before the first page of the Bible was written!” (Kang C.H., Nelson E.R. The Discovery of Genesis: How the Truths of Genesis Were Found Hidden in the Chinese Language. Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis, 1979, p. 5)

· So, the Chinese writing system, far pre-dating the Bible, gives testimony to the basic story of chapters 1 – 11 of Genesis/Beresheit. The confusing of the language possibly occurred in the year we know as 2254 B.C. or slightly before, since this is the year the Chinese calendar starts with.

· The ancient Gilgamesh Epic states that Nimrod was known by 50 different names. He was the son of Cush, which is Hebrew for “black”. The Chinese called him Shun, and the Chinese king list begins with Shun, called a black man. His eyes shown with “double brightness”. That is, theologically, “demon possessed”, and his father’s name was Chusou or Kusou—that is, Cush. In his days lived a very famous woman whose name may be translated as either “the mother of the king of the west” or “the queen mother of the west”. [See the “Annals of the Bamboo Books,” “The Chinese Classics”, by James Legge, vol. III, part I, pp. 114-115]


Devil	= Secret	+ Person	+ Garden


Tower	= Grass	+ Clay	+ Mankind	+ 1	+ Mouth