In modern languages, words are generally understood to be spellings of sounds that have taken on particularized meanings through the process of usage. The relationship between sounds and meanings of words is, otherwise, unclear to most who use them, and definitions are determined by interplay between usage and context, shifting in unpredictable ways in answer to changing times and the whimsical evolution of vernaculars. Sometimes the original meanings survive with close resemblance to their etymological roots, and sometimes they don't. There are cases in which a word comes to mean exactly the opposite of what it was first understood to mean, as in the twentiety-century interlude when "bad" meant "good." This dynamic of the spoken word is as true of the language known as modern Hebrew, when adapted to the needs of secular communication, as it is of English or any other spoken language.

The ancients, however, had a much richer and more organic sense of language. To the wise men to whom the first alefbet was entrusted, its letters comprised a mystical language, acknowledged to be the gift of HaShem; and its word forms were seen not as spellings of sounds, but as hieroglyphic depictions of the interacting operations of the principles reflected in the handiwork of Creation, itself. Creation principles were understood to be symbolized by the alefbet's individual letters; and the logical interplay of these Creation principles comprised the words of scripture. It is for this reason that the Paleo-Hebrew alefbet used at Mount Sinai is known as Ketav Levonah, "the Letters of Light." The original letters carved in the Sinai Tablet were first egraved in the very fabric of the Heavens and the Earth: written upon the heavens within of us and made visible by means of the world, without.

The modern Hebrew alefbet dates from the time of Ezra. Until discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls, only the Samaritans studied the original script. There was little incentive to analyze the ancient script until discovery of the biblical scroll written in Sinaitic Hebrew. We know the Essenes held the ancent script in high esteem because scrolls written in the block script of Ezra rendered The Name YHWH in the Letters of Light. These facts have renewed scholarly interest in Ancient Hebrew in many circles.

HaShem does all things well. Modern Hebrew is the script upon which the Oral Tradition is hung: the stories we know and love were codified by Ezra and cemented, much later, by the vowel contributions of the Masoretes. The Oral Tradition is foundational to Jewish, Christian, and Muslim understandings of holy texts, the world over. New understandings of those texts transliterated back into Original Hebrew must therefore build upon what has been preserved by the fathers and received by the sons: namely, the Oral Tradition. In demonstration of the direct and intentional link between the Hebrew of Ezra and that of Moshe, I recommend Rabbi Ginsburgh's presentation at The Inner-Dimension website.

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