About the Mystery of the Letters
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

''About the Mystery of the Letters'' (, ''Peri tou mystēriou tōn grammatōn'') is an anonymous Christian
treatise A treatise is a formal and systematic written discourse on some subject, generally longer and treating it in greater depth than an essay, and more concerned with investigating or exposing the principles of the subject and its conclusions."Treat ...
containing a mystical doctrine about the names and forms of the Greek and
Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
letters. It was probably written in the 6th century in Byzantine Palaestina Prima.


Textual tradition

The text is known from three Greek manuscript copies written between the 14th and 16th centuries, and one
Coptic Coptic may refer to: Afro-Asia * Copts, an ethnoreligious group mainly in the area of modern Egypt but also in Sudan and Libya * Coptic language, a Northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century * Coptic alphabet ...
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
bilingual translation from the late 14th century. The first modern edition of the Coptic text was published in 1900/1901. The Greek text was first described in 1931, but published for the first time only in 2007.


Origin and authorship

The text was originally written in Palaestina Prima and in the Greek language. The Coptic manuscripts names its author as ''Apa Seba'' (Arabic: ''Saba''), referring to Saint
Sabas of Palestine SabasPatrich (1995). (439–532), in Church parlance Saint Sabas or Sabbas the Sanctified ( el, Σάββας ο Ηγιασμένος), was a Cappadocian Greek monk, priest and saint, who was born in Cappadocia and lived mainly in Palaestina Prima. ...
(439–532). Internal evidence, however, leads to a somewhat later dating of the text, in the second half of the 6th century. It has been hypothesized that it was written by a follower of Sabas, possibly a monk in the monastery of
Mar Saba The Holy Lavra of Saint Sabbas, known in Arabic and Syriac as Mar Saba ( syr, ܕܝܪܐ ܕܡܪܝ ܣܒܐ, ar, دير مار سابا; he, מנזר מר סבא; el, Ἱερὰ Λαύρα τοῦ Ὁσίου Σάββα τοῦ Ἡγιασμέ ...
, which had been founded by Sabas. A certain anti-philosophical polemic tendency expressed by the text can be related to the
Origen Origen of Alexandria, ''Ōrigénēs''; Origen's Greek name ''Ōrigénēs'' () probably means "child of Horus" (from , "Horus", and , "born"). ( 185 – 253), also known as Origen Adamantius, was an Early Christianity, early Christian scholar, ...
ist controversies of the mid-6th century, in which Mar Saba had played an important role.


Contents

The anonymous author of the treatise declares he was prompted to the study of the secret meanings of the letters by the words of the
Apocalypse Apocalypse () is a literary genre in which a supernatural being reveals cosmic mysteries or the future to a human intermediary. The means of mediation include dreams, visions and heavenly journeys, and they typically feature symbolic imager ...
, '' I am the Alpha and Omega'', and that he subsequently received a vision about them on
Mount Sinai Mount Sinai ( he , הר סיני ''Har Sinai''; Aramaic: ܛܘܪܐ ܕܣܝܢܝ ''Ṭūrāʾ Dsyny''), traditionally known as Jabal Musa ( ar, جَبَل مُوسَىٰ, translation: Mount Moses), is a mountain on the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt. It is ...
. The author proposes a re-modelled Greek alphabet reduced to 22 letters on the model of the 22 letters of Hebrew (discounting Xi Ξ and
Psi Psi, PSI or Ψ may refer to: Alphabetic letters * Psi (Greek) (Ψ, ψ), the 23rd letter of the Greek alphabet * Psi (Cyrillic) (Ѱ, ѱ), letter of the early Cyrillic alphabet, adopted from Greek Arts and entertainment * "Psi" as an abbreviation ...
Ψ), and with the Hebrew letter names. He then interprets these letters as symbolic figures of 22 works of divine creation in the biblical
Creation according to Genesis The Genesis creation narrative is the creation myth A creation myth (or cosmogonic myth) is a symbolic narrative of how the world began and how people first came to inhabit it., "Creation myths are symbolic stories describing how the univer ...
, and of 22 corresponding works of salvation by
Christ Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other Names and titles of Jesus in the New Testament, names and titles), was ...
, elaborating this theory through descriptions of the various letters and interpretations of their shapes. This is followed by an account of the history of the alphabet, which weaves together elements of Greek mythology and the Hebrew Bible as well as several Jewish and pagan texts: according to this account, the Hebrew alphabet was first handed down to mankind by divine inspiration during the generation of Enoch, but was lost during the Confusion of Tongues. God subsequently revealed the Greek alphabet on a tablet of stone, which, after the Deluge, was brought to
Phoenicia Phoenicia () was an ancient thalassocratic civilization originating in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily located in modern Lebanon. The territory of the Phoenician city-states extended and shrank throughout their histor ...
and
Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders with ...
by
Cadmos CADMOS is a submarine telecommunications cable system in the Mediterranean Sea linking Cyprus and the Lebanon. It has landing points in: * Pentaskhinos, Cyprus * Beirut, Lebanon Lebanon ( , ar, لُبْنَان, translit=lubnān, ), offici ...
. A long section of the text is devoted especially to the letter
Waw Waw or WAW may refer to: * Waw (letter), a letter in many Semitic abjads * Waw, the velomobile * Another spelling for the town Wau, South Sudan * Waw Township, Burma *Warsaw Chopin Airport, an international airport serving Warsaw, Poland (IATA ai ...
and its Greek equivalent,
Digamma Digamma or wau (uppercase: Ϝ, lowercase: ϝ, numeral: ϛ) is an archaic letter of the Greek alphabet. It originally stood for the sound but it has remained in use principally as a Greek numeral for 6. Whereas it was originally called ''waw' ...
(called ''Episemon'' in the treatise), the numeral sign for "6". This sign is interpreted as a special symbol of Christ. At a later point in the text, this idea is further connected to the interpretation of all three extra-alphabetic numeral signs of Greek ("Episemon" for 6, Koppa for 90, and Sampi for 900) as symbols of the
Holy Trinity The Christian doctrine of the Trinity (, from 'threefold') is the central dogma concerning the nature of God in most Christian churches, which defines one God existing in three coequal, coeternal, consubstantial divine persons: God the F ...
, i.e. Christ, the Holy Ghost and God the Father respectively.Bandt, p.41. The final chapters of the treatise engage in speculation about more general topics, including the history of mankind, whose key events are related symbolically to the sequence of vowels and consonants in the alphabet, a discussion of
Christology In Christianity, Christology (from the Ancient Greek, Greek grc, Χριστός, Khristós, label=none and grc, wiktionary:-λογία, -λογία, wiktionary:-logia, -logia, label=none), translated literally from Greek as "the study of Chr ...
dealing with issues related to the
Council of Chalcedon The Council of Chalcedon (; la, Concilium Chalcedonense), ''Synodos tēs Chalkēdonos'' was the fourth ecumenical council of the Christian Church. It was convoked by the Roman emperor Marcian. The council convened in the city of Chalcedon, Bith ...
, and reflections upon the name of ''
Adam Adam; el, Ἀδάμ, Adám; la, Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, ''adam'' is also used in the Bible as a pronoun, individually as "a human" and in a collective sense as " ...
''.


See also

* Isopsephy


References


External links


English translation by Anthony Alcock

Volume 19 of ''Le Museon'' containing the first of the original Hebbelynck articles.

A related entry at The Matheson Trust Library
{{Authority control Christian mysticism Byzantine literature 6th-century books