Hidden Hebrew
‘The properties of the English tongue agreeth a thousand times
more with the Hebrew than with the Latin or the Greek…’
William Tyndall
more with the Hebrew than with the Latin or the Greek…’
William Tyndall
Some years ago I self-published my book Hidden Hebrew, about the Hebrew antecedents to all alphabetic text, to rapturous indifference from publishers, the general reading public and the linguistics community alike, but a book which nevertheless demonstrated that all the alphabetic languages of Europe are dialects of the same abjadic Hebrew as that, for example, of the Dead Sea Scrolls, of 3,000 - 3,500 years ago, in a language that was probaly already 5000 years old at that time, yet which remains structurally identical to the English with which we are familiar today. In short, anyone who can read modern Hebrew can read a Dead Sea Scroll, but does the same parity obtainetween Hebrew and English. In Hidden Hebrew we think it does. I first learned Hebrew while living in Israel in the late 60’s and while it was fashionable at that time among a small group of English Hebrew enthusiasts to note alphabetic words with a Hebrew source, it was only with the later advent of the home computer that it became possible to investigate alphabetic text for its Hebrew antecedents.
Briefly, a Hebrew linguistic root, in Israel today, consists of three consonants only, as in ancient times. There are no vowels in modern, or ancient, abjadic Hebrew text (except in the case of that artificially vowellised form of Hebrew known as Masoretic, or historic, Hebrew, from mediaeval times, which is another story). Today an Israeli newspaper, magazine, road sign or publication of any kind gets by without written vowels. In Hidden Hebrew we found that we can take an abjadic Hebrew root, convert it to alphabetic text, and add almost any alphabetic vowels that we like, and we will nearly always arrive at a recognisable alphabetic word, in English, or any European language, and one with a meaning that corresponds broadly, or precisely, with the meaning of that original Hebrew linguistic root now embedded within it.
We therefore ask if there are other, more general, indicators in alphabetic text which might suggest a Hebrew source. Will modern alphabetic text work without vowels, as in Hebrew? We believe so. Classical abjadic Hebrew has no spaces, or diastemae, between the words, as in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Will modern alphabetic text work without diastemae? In our experience, yes, with no problems at all. In addition does Hebrew explain those allegedly irrational, silent, consonantal, supposedly uniquely English irregularities such as the h in John, the gh in sight, the conversion of a p to an f by addition of an h, as in photo, and those pairs of consonants where the one, irrationally, duplicates the sound of the other, in the case of c and k, q and k, c and s, and v and w. Answer: Yes, perfectly, in every case, and in a manner which does not appear in Latin or Greek.
Hidden Hebrew, based on these and other indicators, concludes that ‘modern languages’ are, essentially, dialects of the Hebrew of antiquity, and that we are all, from the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, from the boy Wizard Harry Potter to The Hollywood Wizard of Oz, and from Adolf Hitler and the entire Nazi party, to the Head of The Roman Catholic Church, Il Papa himself, speakers of Hebrew, and that we always were.
However it was only with the advent of home computing that I was first able to test this theory in a structured manner, using the three consonant abjadic Hebrew root as a search term in modern alphabetic text. I realised now that my previous analogue publication had barely scratched the service, and so withdrew it. The new, electronic, digital search results penetrated to the very heart of the alphabetic text, and were overwhelmingly impressive, to say the least. Tyndall, the translator of ‘The Bible’ into English, from Hebrew, Latin and Greek, was right, and perhaps to a far greater extent than even he could have imagined.
Although we have many roots to choose from, including, for example, SDR (associated with oRDer, SDR gives us conSiDeR, SiDeReal, orDeR, STaR, and STiR among many thousand of others, and -LV, where the blank is any vowel, and which is associated with raising up, including LeVer, LeVerage, LeVel, alLeViate, LauGHter, LeVitate, LiVid, LeVy, LoVe, LiFe, aLiVe, LiFfey, LouVre, LeaVe, uLPHa Fell, in Cumbria and aLPHabet (BeT is the second character in the Hebrew, abjadic ‘alphabet’) we have chosen for this exercise the abjadic Hebrew root DRK. DRK returns some 15,000 results in English alphabetic text, where the derivation must exhibit the abjadic Hebrew source characters, along with an associated alphabetic sense.
A typical ancient, alphabetic, English, translation of DRK is ‘The Way of Righteousness’, or, today, the secular, road, way or street. At this point we introduce a second interference factor in the transition from the abjadic to the alphabetic, namely Grimm’s Law, named afer one of the brothers of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, which permits an abjadic Hebrew D to reappear as an alphabetic English T, and, likewise, C and K as G and Q. DRK therefore occurs with significant frequency in the once contemporaneous names of Followers of The Way of Righteousness, or pilgrims, and gives us for example, DeReK, DRaKe, paDRaiG, freDeRicK, roDeRicK, broDeRicK, killikDaRoGlu, roDRiGo, ceDRiC, manDRaKe, shelDRaKe, henDRicKs, DRaCo, DRaX, TRaCy, TheReSa, TaRQuin, sTaRKey, DiRK and DRaCula, all being followers of The Way of Righteousness (as was DRaCula before his fall from grace, when, according to legend, he sacrificed his soul to the devil in exchange for eternal life, in order to protect Christians from encroaching Islam, in the Balkans, in perpetuity).
In point of fact the Hebrew source undergoes a number of transformations on its journey from the abjadic to the alphabetic, tansformations which include the reversal of text from right leading abjadic Hebrew to left leading alphabetic Latin and Greek, Grimm’s Law, and also metathesis, which we will come to, but the Hebrew root, now reversed, also gives us the additional pilgrims GoRDon, GaReTh, heGaRTy, foGaRTy, GeRriTy, GaRriTy, GReTa, GaRTner, GeRD, CaRDew, KuRT, riChaRD, GeRTie, GoRT and CaRaDoc, along with place names for these newly enlightened pilgrims (in the ChRisTian era) to travel to, from and between, including, CRoaTia, CReTe, CoRTina, CaRThage, CaRTagena, CoRDoba, CaRDiff, CeReDigion, CReDiton, GReTna, novGoRoD, volgoGRaD, belGoRoD, krasnoHoRaD, myrHoRoD, sharHoRoD, GRoDno and GReaT Britain, and, reversed, TaRaGona, TuRKey, DuReS (previously DyRraChium) and okhTyRKha, being a brief selection of place names located on The Way of Righteousness from Jerusalem to the outer reaches of Europe, and specifically, the outer reaches of the Roman Empire…..
In addition countless common nouns and verbs are also structured on DRK, including DiReCt, DiReCtion, DiReCtor, DiRiGible, DRaG, DRuG, DRaGon, DRoGue, DReG(s), TReK, TRaCe, TRaChea, conTRaCt, reTRaCt, insTRuCt, consTRuCt, disTRaCt, TRucK, TRuG, TRacK, TRicK, TRuCe, TReaCle, TRaGedy, ToRaH and TRiGonometry, and, reversed, CaRT, CouRT, CuRT, CuRaTe, ChoRData, ChoRD, CoRD, conCoRD, disCoRD, reCoRD, miseriCoRD, sansKRiT, ChaRT, CRiTic, CReeD, sCReeD, CReDit, CRaDle, CReaTure, CReaTe, CRaTe, deCoRaTe, CeRTain, CuRTain, GuaRDian, GouRD, GRaDe, GReeD, GRaDient, GRaDuate, GRaTe, GRoTto, GRaTitude, GRiT, GReaT, GReeT, GiRTh and GRoaT, all of which are associated with travel, following, distance and motion in some form or other, and all of which are merely brief abjadic episodes in the unfolding history of alphabetic text.
Periodically the alphabetic text drops the first, middle or last consonant of the abjadic Hebrew source text, thus giving us two consonant linguistic derivations, including, in the case of DRK, DooR, DeeR, DeaR, DaRe, aDoRe, DouR, enDuRe, oRK, aRK, iRK, RiCe, RaKe, RiCK, DiG, Dog, DecK, DucK, DuG, uRGe, oRKney and, reversed, RoaD, ReeD, ReaD, RiDe, RoDeo, RuDder, RaiD, RiD, RoD, ReD, RooD, oRDain, oRDinary, oRDinance, aRDent, aRT and aRiD, along with oGRe, GeaR, GoRe, GaRish, GaRe (French train station), GyRo, GaR, CuRe, CaRe, CoRe, CaR, sCaR, sCoRe, sCaRe, sCRee, TaR, TeaR, TaRe, eiTheR, oTheR and eTheR. Might we include the word oR? Elsewhere the Hebrew root is subjected to the linguistic process known as metathesis, where the three critical consonants reappear in seemingly random order, yet still retain the same historic Hebrew associations with travel, pilgrimage, journey and motion, e.g. eRDoGan, eRTeGun, RaDuCanu, d’aRTaGnan, aRTiCulate, ReTiCulated, erRaTiC, RaTChet, RaDiCal, aCToR, taRGeT, TiGeR, DaGgeR, DiGgeR, DoGgeR (suggesting a former RouTe from Europe to Britain in the Dogger Bank), and TeaCheR, not forgetting GooD, GoD, GaD, GeT, GaTe, GoaT, CoD, CoT, GuT, RaT, RoT, RuT, RaG, GouT, TuG, TaG, TaR, ToR, aTtacK, TeaCh, TeChnique, TeChnology and aTtaCh, all associated with motion and direction either from the abjadic Hebrew right, or from the alphabetic English left, and all associated with the senses embedded in the original Hebrew linguistic source and its associated derivations.
DRK is merely one among some 600 abjadic Hebrew roots, all of which emerge in alphabetic text in huge numbers, but while extensive lists of examples will make the technical case for the Hebrew origins of English, and every alphabetic language, it is the individual examples of names of places and people which leave the strongest impression. One that comes to mind is that of the name of the Scottish village of DrumnaDRocKett. Drumnadrockett translates with absolute precision, from classical abjadic Hebrew, into modern alphabetic English, as The Way To The South, as you might expect of a former ferry port on the north shore of Loch Lomond. It cannot be coincidence. Just outside the harbour wall lies the island on which sits the ruins of Castle urQuaRT (KRT/KRD), legendary home of the Loch Ness Monster, which now exhibits the reversed DRK Hebrew root in Scots dialect, but presumably a former pilgrim or hermit destination, for Followers of The Way of Righteousness, on the way to and from Jerusalem.
How did abjadic Hebrew come to be so widely dispersed across alphabetic Europe? I believe that Hebrew has radiated from Jerusalem in periodic waves, through trade and war, since the beginning, but if we turn to more recent Jewish (and European) history an entirely plausible explanation begins to emerge. In the year 70 the Romans invaded the 2nd State of Israel in a campaign minutely detailed by the Jewish writer known in Latin as Josephus, in his book The Jewish War, where the Romans beseiged Jerusalem and abducted the residents, with the Hebrew language, back to Rome, as slaves. Josephus himself, a former temple priest, was also abducted, but later became elevated in Roman society, as many slaves did, it becoming common practice in Roman Europe both to value Jewish slaves above all others, because of their literacy, and to complain that these same slaves had somehow become the masters of their former owners and sometimes within a generation. This rapid rise in Roman society was partly assisted by the Roman practice of releasing their enslaved servants after twenty or thirty years of service, as full Roman citizens, but only after providing them with a full education in literacy and numeracy, book keeping, administration and trigonometry, so that they could measure land, set up businesses, and become independent. Jewish slaves were noted because they didn’t need this apprenticeship, often being more knowledgeable than their masters.
After the destruction of the Temple, and the abduction, the Romans banished the remaining Jewish residents of Israel to all four points of the compass (although many remained in hiding in Northern Israel, in Galilee, and around the towns of Sfat, Tiberias and Yavne, the home of modern rabbinic Judaism) and the language was thus dispersed throughout the Roman Empire by this newly abducted class of literate and numerate priests, scribes, lawyers, accountants, astrologers and administrators, who now made themselves indispensible, as they had done after the Babylonian abduction, but now serving the new Roman Empire as they had previously served the older 2nd state of Israel, until its dissolution, leaving the language now fully embedded, if it wasn’t already, in alphabetic text across Europe, from Lisbon to Moscow, and beyond.
In 1066, for example, the invading Normans brought with them an exclusive ‘middle class’ of educated colonial administrators consisting solely of Jews, (as was the practice throughout France at the time) who then settled in Britain and remained in place, mediating as land agents between the new French aristocracy and the old British peasantry, including and up until the York pogroms of 1190, when the entire Jewish community committed suicide, according to the Macabbean model, at Clifford’s Tower, in Tower St, rather than endure forced conversion under Richard 1. Surviving Jews remained in hiding for the next five hundred years, largely by pretending to be Christians, until the financially embarrassed Oliver Cromwell accorded full civil rights to Jews in exchange for funds to pay his Roundheads, in an arrangement negotiated by a particular Jewish gentleman, Menasseh Ben Israel, from whom this writer is descended.
However William Tyndall must surely be regarded as the greatest Englishman of all time, on account of his translations of the abjadic Hebrew text into alphabetic English text, and also, equally importantly, for his publication of that same text in copies of ‘The Bible’ at a price intended to attract lower income readers, and thereby provide the gift of (Hebrew) literacy to the entire anglophone world, much to the outrage of the bishops, who had withheld literacy from the British, indeed European, people for a thousand years and who intended, as ever, that nothing should change. In effect Tyndall achieved universal literacy for the anglophone world, but in 1536 he was strangled, burned alive, then hung drawn and quartered, for ‘disobedience’, by the magistrates in the Lowlands village of Vilvoorde (Hebrew translation: truly flat), in modern Belgium, on the orders of Henry Tudor, who must have then relented, for it is said that he later used Tyndall’s text when justifying his break with Rome.
Tyndall’s particular claim to fame is that he established universal, alphabetic literacy and numeracy in England, and thereby enabled English men and women to participate in a renewed conversation about faith, doubt, belief, life after death, and before, and the nature of reality, in English, instead of in Greek and Latin, which was the only text otherwise available to a largely unlettered British public, and which no one outside the Church could understand. Tyndall, perhaps inadvertently, created the many dissident followers of the Christian faith, from Methodists to Mormons and from Evangelicals to 7th Day Adventists. He also stimulated a new interest in that idolatrous, heretical, indeed daemonic, early investigatory practise known as science, and with it a new scientific age, in English, one which had previously been suppressed by the Church, and one which was therefor largely the province of those Jews who lived marginalised lives outside the reach of the heavenly fathers, and who remained unaccountable to them, including, for example, Galileo and Columbus.
Galileo, who ‘proved’ the earth was round to the Christian Pope, had been renamed Galileo by his grandfather, whose real name was Buenojuti, or Good Jew, in mediaeval Italian, but every Jew knew the earth was round and had always known. Columbus did not prove, or discover, the fact that the earth was round, as many have claimed. He already knew, but could not declare it publicly, for fear of revealing himself to the Inquisition to be a Jew in hiding, but one who later had the last word, literally, when he wrote his will in Hebrew. Tyndall indirectly created The Pilgrim Fathers, who, in their determination to find a land where they could practise their faith undisturbed by a heretical church, as they now saw it, went on to found The United States of America, and The Land of The Free (from the Church) which, without Tyndall’s English translations of the Hebrew holy scriptures, could never have happened.
It is particularly satisfying to this writer to be able to report that while the bishops withheld the Greek and the Latin origins of alphabetic text from the English people, for a thousand years, they also withheld the Hebrew ones, as well, until now.
Briefly, a Hebrew linguistic root, in Israel today, consists of three consonants only, as in ancient times. There are no vowels in modern, or ancient, abjadic Hebrew text (except in the case of that artificially vowellised form of Hebrew known as Masoretic, or historic, Hebrew, from mediaeval times, which is another story). Today an Israeli newspaper, magazine, road sign or publication of any kind gets by without written vowels. In Hidden Hebrew we found that we can take an abjadic Hebrew root, convert it to alphabetic text, and add almost any alphabetic vowels that we like, and we will nearly always arrive at a recognisable alphabetic word, in English, or any European language, and one with a meaning that corresponds broadly, or precisely, with the meaning of that original Hebrew linguistic root now embedded within it.
We therefore ask if there are other, more general, indicators in alphabetic text which might suggest a Hebrew source. Will modern alphabetic text work without vowels, as in Hebrew? We believe so. Classical abjadic Hebrew has no spaces, or diastemae, between the words, as in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Will modern alphabetic text work without diastemae? In our experience, yes, with no problems at all. In addition does Hebrew explain those allegedly irrational, silent, consonantal, supposedly uniquely English irregularities such as the h in John, the gh in sight, the conversion of a p to an f by addition of an h, as in photo, and those pairs of consonants where the one, irrationally, duplicates the sound of the other, in the case of c and k, q and k, c and s, and v and w. Answer: Yes, perfectly, in every case, and in a manner which does not appear in Latin or Greek.
Hidden Hebrew, based on these and other indicators, concludes that ‘modern languages’ are, essentially, dialects of the Hebrew of antiquity, and that we are all, from the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, from the boy Wizard Harry Potter to The Hollywood Wizard of Oz, and from Adolf Hitler and the entire Nazi party, to the Head of The Roman Catholic Church, Il Papa himself, speakers of Hebrew, and that we always were.
However it was only with the advent of home computing that I was first able to test this theory in a structured manner, using the three consonant abjadic Hebrew root as a search term in modern alphabetic text. I realised now that my previous analogue publication had barely scratched the service, and so withdrew it. The new, electronic, digital search results penetrated to the very heart of the alphabetic text, and were overwhelmingly impressive, to say the least. Tyndall, the translator of ‘The Bible’ into English, from Hebrew, Latin and Greek, was right, and perhaps to a far greater extent than even he could have imagined.
Although we have many roots to choose from, including, for example, SDR (associated with oRDer, SDR gives us conSiDeR, SiDeReal, orDeR, STaR, and STiR among many thousand of others, and -LV, where the blank is any vowel, and which is associated with raising up, including LeVer, LeVerage, LeVel, alLeViate, LauGHter, LeVitate, LiVid, LeVy, LoVe, LiFe, aLiVe, LiFfey, LouVre, LeaVe, uLPHa Fell, in Cumbria and aLPHabet (BeT is the second character in the Hebrew, abjadic ‘alphabet’) we have chosen for this exercise the abjadic Hebrew root DRK. DRK returns some 15,000 results in English alphabetic text, where the derivation must exhibit the abjadic Hebrew source characters, along with an associated alphabetic sense.
A typical ancient, alphabetic, English, translation of DRK is ‘The Way of Righteousness’, or, today, the secular, road, way or street. At this point we introduce a second interference factor in the transition from the abjadic to the alphabetic, namely Grimm’s Law, named afer one of the brothers of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, which permits an abjadic Hebrew D to reappear as an alphabetic English T, and, likewise, C and K as G and Q. DRK therefore occurs with significant frequency in the once contemporaneous names of Followers of The Way of Righteousness, or pilgrims, and gives us for example, DeReK, DRaKe, paDRaiG, freDeRicK, roDeRicK, broDeRicK, killikDaRoGlu, roDRiGo, ceDRiC, manDRaKe, shelDRaKe, henDRicKs, DRaCo, DRaX, TRaCy, TheReSa, TaRQuin, sTaRKey, DiRK and DRaCula, all being followers of The Way of Righteousness (as was DRaCula before his fall from grace, when, according to legend, he sacrificed his soul to the devil in exchange for eternal life, in order to protect Christians from encroaching Islam, in the Balkans, in perpetuity).
In point of fact the Hebrew source undergoes a number of transformations on its journey from the abjadic to the alphabetic, tansformations which include the reversal of text from right leading abjadic Hebrew to left leading alphabetic Latin and Greek, Grimm’s Law, and also metathesis, which we will come to, but the Hebrew root, now reversed, also gives us the additional pilgrims GoRDon, GaReTh, heGaRTy, foGaRTy, GeRriTy, GaRriTy, GReTa, GaRTner, GeRD, CaRDew, KuRT, riChaRD, GeRTie, GoRT and CaRaDoc, along with place names for these newly enlightened pilgrims (in the ChRisTian era) to travel to, from and between, including, CRoaTia, CReTe, CoRTina, CaRThage, CaRTagena, CoRDoba, CaRDiff, CeReDigion, CReDiton, GReTna, novGoRoD, volgoGRaD, belGoRoD, krasnoHoRaD, myrHoRoD, sharHoRoD, GRoDno and GReaT Britain, and, reversed, TaRaGona, TuRKey, DuReS (previously DyRraChium) and okhTyRKha, being a brief selection of place names located on The Way of Righteousness from Jerusalem to the outer reaches of Europe, and specifically, the outer reaches of the Roman Empire…..
In addition countless common nouns and verbs are also structured on DRK, including DiReCt, DiReCtion, DiReCtor, DiRiGible, DRaG, DRuG, DRaGon, DRoGue, DReG(s), TReK, TRaCe, TRaChea, conTRaCt, reTRaCt, insTRuCt, consTRuCt, disTRaCt, TRucK, TRuG, TRacK, TRicK, TRuCe, TReaCle, TRaGedy, ToRaH and TRiGonometry, and, reversed, CaRT, CouRT, CuRT, CuRaTe, ChoRData, ChoRD, CoRD, conCoRD, disCoRD, reCoRD, miseriCoRD, sansKRiT, ChaRT, CRiTic, CReeD, sCReeD, CReDit, CRaDle, CReaTure, CReaTe, CRaTe, deCoRaTe, CeRTain, CuRTain, GuaRDian, GouRD, GRaDe, GReeD, GRaDient, GRaDuate, GRaTe, GRoTto, GRaTitude, GRiT, GReaT, GReeT, GiRTh and GRoaT, all of which are associated with travel, following, distance and motion in some form or other, and all of which are merely brief abjadic episodes in the unfolding history of alphabetic text.
Periodically the alphabetic text drops the first, middle or last consonant of the abjadic Hebrew source text, thus giving us two consonant linguistic derivations, including, in the case of DRK, DooR, DeeR, DeaR, DaRe, aDoRe, DouR, enDuRe, oRK, aRK, iRK, RiCe, RaKe, RiCK, DiG, Dog, DecK, DucK, DuG, uRGe, oRKney and, reversed, RoaD, ReeD, ReaD, RiDe, RoDeo, RuDder, RaiD, RiD, RoD, ReD, RooD, oRDain, oRDinary, oRDinance, aRDent, aRT and aRiD, along with oGRe, GeaR, GoRe, GaRish, GaRe (French train station), GyRo, GaR, CuRe, CaRe, CoRe, CaR, sCaR, sCoRe, sCaRe, sCRee, TaR, TeaR, TaRe, eiTheR, oTheR and eTheR. Might we include the word oR? Elsewhere the Hebrew root is subjected to the linguistic process known as metathesis, where the three critical consonants reappear in seemingly random order, yet still retain the same historic Hebrew associations with travel, pilgrimage, journey and motion, e.g. eRDoGan, eRTeGun, RaDuCanu, d’aRTaGnan, aRTiCulate, ReTiCulated, erRaTiC, RaTChet, RaDiCal, aCToR, taRGeT, TiGeR, DaGgeR, DiGgeR, DoGgeR (suggesting a former RouTe from Europe to Britain in the Dogger Bank), and TeaCheR, not forgetting GooD, GoD, GaD, GeT, GaTe, GoaT, CoD, CoT, GuT, RaT, RoT, RuT, RaG, GouT, TuG, TaG, TaR, ToR, aTtacK, TeaCh, TeChnique, TeChnology and aTtaCh, all associated with motion and direction either from the abjadic Hebrew right, or from the alphabetic English left, and all associated with the senses embedded in the original Hebrew linguistic source and its associated derivations.
DRK is merely one among some 600 abjadic Hebrew roots, all of which emerge in alphabetic text in huge numbers, but while extensive lists of examples will make the technical case for the Hebrew origins of English, and every alphabetic language, it is the individual examples of names of places and people which leave the strongest impression. One that comes to mind is that of the name of the Scottish village of DrumnaDRocKett. Drumnadrockett translates with absolute precision, from classical abjadic Hebrew, into modern alphabetic English, as The Way To The South, as you might expect of a former ferry port on the north shore of Loch Lomond. It cannot be coincidence. Just outside the harbour wall lies the island on which sits the ruins of Castle urQuaRT (KRT/KRD), legendary home of the Loch Ness Monster, which now exhibits the reversed DRK Hebrew root in Scots dialect, but presumably a former pilgrim or hermit destination, for Followers of The Way of Righteousness, on the way to and from Jerusalem.
How did abjadic Hebrew come to be so widely dispersed across alphabetic Europe? I believe that Hebrew has radiated from Jerusalem in periodic waves, through trade and war, since the beginning, but if we turn to more recent Jewish (and European) history an entirely plausible explanation begins to emerge. In the year 70 the Romans invaded the 2nd State of Israel in a campaign minutely detailed by the Jewish writer known in Latin as Josephus, in his book The Jewish War, where the Romans beseiged Jerusalem and abducted the residents, with the Hebrew language, back to Rome, as slaves. Josephus himself, a former temple priest, was also abducted, but later became elevated in Roman society, as many slaves did, it becoming common practice in Roman Europe both to value Jewish slaves above all others, because of their literacy, and to complain that these same slaves had somehow become the masters of their former owners and sometimes within a generation. This rapid rise in Roman society was partly assisted by the Roman practice of releasing their enslaved servants after twenty or thirty years of service, as full Roman citizens, but only after providing them with a full education in literacy and numeracy, book keeping, administration and trigonometry, so that they could measure land, set up businesses, and become independent. Jewish slaves were noted because they didn’t need this apprenticeship, often being more knowledgeable than their masters.
After the destruction of the Temple, and the abduction, the Romans banished the remaining Jewish residents of Israel to all four points of the compass (although many remained in hiding in Northern Israel, in Galilee, and around the towns of Sfat, Tiberias and Yavne, the home of modern rabbinic Judaism) and the language was thus dispersed throughout the Roman Empire by this newly abducted class of literate and numerate priests, scribes, lawyers, accountants, astrologers and administrators, who now made themselves indispensible, as they had done after the Babylonian abduction, but now serving the new Roman Empire as they had previously served the older 2nd state of Israel, until its dissolution, leaving the language now fully embedded, if it wasn’t already, in alphabetic text across Europe, from Lisbon to Moscow, and beyond.
In 1066, for example, the invading Normans brought with them an exclusive ‘middle class’ of educated colonial administrators consisting solely of Jews, (as was the practice throughout France at the time) who then settled in Britain and remained in place, mediating as land agents between the new French aristocracy and the old British peasantry, including and up until the York pogroms of 1190, when the entire Jewish community committed suicide, according to the Macabbean model, at Clifford’s Tower, in Tower St, rather than endure forced conversion under Richard 1. Surviving Jews remained in hiding for the next five hundred years, largely by pretending to be Christians, until the financially embarrassed Oliver Cromwell accorded full civil rights to Jews in exchange for funds to pay his Roundheads, in an arrangement negotiated by a particular Jewish gentleman, Menasseh Ben Israel, from whom this writer is descended.
However William Tyndall must surely be regarded as the greatest Englishman of all time, on account of his translations of the abjadic Hebrew text into alphabetic English text, and also, equally importantly, for his publication of that same text in copies of ‘The Bible’ at a price intended to attract lower income readers, and thereby provide the gift of (Hebrew) literacy to the entire anglophone world, much to the outrage of the bishops, who had withheld literacy from the British, indeed European, people for a thousand years and who intended, as ever, that nothing should change. In effect Tyndall achieved universal literacy for the anglophone world, but in 1536 he was strangled, burned alive, then hung drawn and quartered, for ‘disobedience’, by the magistrates in the Lowlands village of Vilvoorde (Hebrew translation: truly flat), in modern Belgium, on the orders of Henry Tudor, who must have then relented, for it is said that he later used Tyndall’s text when justifying his break with Rome.
Tyndall’s particular claim to fame is that he established universal, alphabetic literacy and numeracy in England, and thereby enabled English men and women to participate in a renewed conversation about faith, doubt, belief, life after death, and before, and the nature of reality, in English, instead of in Greek and Latin, which was the only text otherwise available to a largely unlettered British public, and which no one outside the Church could understand. Tyndall, perhaps inadvertently, created the many dissident followers of the Christian faith, from Methodists to Mormons and from Evangelicals to 7th Day Adventists. He also stimulated a new interest in that idolatrous, heretical, indeed daemonic, early investigatory practise known as science, and with it a new scientific age, in English, one which had previously been suppressed by the Church, and one which was therefor largely the province of those Jews who lived marginalised lives outside the reach of the heavenly fathers, and who remained unaccountable to them, including, for example, Galileo and Columbus.
Galileo, who ‘proved’ the earth was round to the Christian Pope, had been renamed Galileo by his grandfather, whose real name was Buenojuti, or Good Jew, in mediaeval Italian, but every Jew knew the earth was round and had always known. Columbus did not prove, or discover, the fact that the earth was round, as many have claimed. He already knew, but could not declare it publicly, for fear of revealing himself to the Inquisition to be a Jew in hiding, but one who later had the last word, literally, when he wrote his will in Hebrew. Tyndall indirectly created The Pilgrim Fathers, who, in their determination to find a land where they could practise their faith undisturbed by a heretical church, as they now saw it, went on to found The United States of America, and The Land of The Free (from the Church) which, without Tyndall’s English translations of the Hebrew holy scriptures, could never have happened.
It is particularly satisfying to this writer to be able to report that while the bishops withheld the Greek and the Latin origins of alphabetic text from the English people, for a thousand years, they also withheld the Hebrew ones, as well, until now.