Literally Not Literal!
Data Over Dogma
Acrophonic Alphabet and Letter Origins
Dan McClellan traces letters like aleph and bet back to pictographs and their phonetic repurposing.
This week we're diving in to some deep controversy, and we gotta say: come on in, the water's fine.
First, we're looking at biblical literalism. There are a lot of Christians out there these days who claim that they believe that the Bible is to be taken exactly at face value. It's literally true exactly as it is, no interpretation needed. Well, if you've been with us for any amount of time, you already know that's a position that's not going to work around here.
But what is biblical literalism really? When you boil it down, what are the literalists really saying? Is literalism a dogma that goes back to beginning of Christianity, or is it relatively new?
Then, we're going crazy with orthography! Or maybe scriptology? Or maybe even grammatology? Whatever it is, we're looking at Hebrew letters.
What could be so interesting about letters, you might ask? Well, according to an onslaught of online Christian influencers, the Hebrew letters in the Bible have coded messages that all point to (brace for the shock): Jesus!
Does the Hebrew Bible have a whole second level of meaning to decode when you look not at the words, but at the letters? Well, no. But the topic of how Hebrew (and English) got its letters is fascinating, so we're going to talk about it!
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