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Chapter 6 The Symbols of Your Bible
One of the principles of the Basic Linguistic Model begins with the words: "A word is one or more symbols . . ." The symbols are the letters of the words. The letters are collectively called an alphabet, and they are the building blocks of a written language. Below are the symbols of our language.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z •
• • • • • The Ancient Symbols of the Tanakh The original ancient words of the Tanakh (Jewish Hebrew Bible called the Old Testament by Christians) were written with symbols shown below. These are the Hebrew letters. Are you familiar with them?
The Ancient Symbols of the New Testament
Greek letters are the symbols that were used to record the messages found in the oldest manuscripts of the Christian New Testament and the Greek translation of the Tanakh called the Septuagint. • • • Getting From One Language to AnotherTRANS- Just like secret codes, Hebrew and Greek words are of no value unless they can be understood. But, before a word can become meaningful to an English reader unfamiliar with the Greek and Hebrew languages of the Bible, the foreign letters must be converted to something an English reader can understand. There are only two ways to do this:
"Trans-" means "to bring across," and "-literation" means "the representation of sound or words by letters." Therefore, "transliteration" means "to bring across the representation of sound or words from one language by the letters of another language." In other words, the symbols of one language are reproduced in another language by using the symbols of that language which have the equivalent sound. The word "translation" contains "trans-" again - "to bring across." But the second part is "-late" that means to "carry" or "bear." The thing being "carried" from one language to another is "the meaning." Therefore, a translation brings the meaning of a word from from one language to another, while a transliteration brings the equivalent sounds or letters of a word from one language to another. • • • Something Better Than a Translation In the USA, millions of people read a book they call their Bible. Some have become experts about the words of their Bible. They have memorized countless verses and can quote them in a flash. But most of these readers, even the experts, in many cases have never actually seen a Bible. They have only studied a translation of the Bible. Every English Bible is a translation that was made from ancient Greek or Hebrew manuscripts. A TRANSLATION IS NOT THE BIBLE! Now it's time for you to get a super boost in your ability to study your Bible. I created a special tool to help you work with the Hebrew and Greek symbols without any special training - THE TRANSLITERATOR. This handy tool will allow you to penetrate the walls of the ancient symbols that have separated Bible readers from the words of the book they love the most. THE TRANSLITERATOR helps you do two things. First, you will be able to "transliterate" the words of the Bible. Second, it will help you find the full range of definitions for those words by allowing you to work with Greek and Hebrew Analytical Lexicons. • • •
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