Daily Archives: May 28, 2015

Alpha and Omega Part 4 of Series

History of the Alphabet

Some history of the alphabet will help to demonstrate its significance as a symbol of Christ. The alphabet did not originate as the phonetic system we have today which roughly represents speech sounds. It had a long history before it reached the phonetic stage of development. As the handwriting of God upon the heavens, it was universally significant to all mankind. Being able to read the signs of the heavens, to know the global positioning system, to know the seasons, was a matter of life or death as well as a spiritual experience. Having already acquired this basic significance, it was ideally suited to go into the whole world when it developed into a phonetic system.

Alphabet as Immutable Order

The primal idea of the alphabet was that of an immutable order, an order witnessed to by the order of the time-indicating signs of the heavens. Possibly the first use of the graphic symbols of the alphabet was as numerals for counting and naming this ordered series of the progression of time-indicators for time-reckoning, that is, the calendar.

As symbols of order, it consequently became a mnemonic device for memory units of all kinds.[9] In time the mnemonic use of these signs for oral literary and historical units developed into semasiographic writing,[10] which, at some point, produced the idea of correlating the signs with speech sounds. At this point the alphabet became phonetic as we know it today.[11]

The major steps in the history of the development of the alphabet as it progressed through a continual differentiation of usage, meaning, and signs is somewhat parallel to the ever-increasing Light of Christ.

[9] A mnemonic device is a system used to recall the proper order of items in a sequence; i.e. any group of items to be remembered could be arranged according to this fixed numero/alphabetic order and so be more easily recalled, for example, “1, 2, 3,” or “a, b, c.”

[10] Semasiographic writing is defined by Gelb as “… a stage of writing in which meaning– not words or sounds– are suggested by signs,” Ignace J. Gelb, A Study of Writing: The Foundations of Grammatology, Second Edition, (Chicago, Ill., University of Chicago Press, 1962), 15.

[11] The Behaviourist School says that language is the only medium of human communication and all human intercommunication outside of language is nothing but a secondary substitute for language, that thinking and ideas are ‘silent talk.’
Gelb says that the Behaviourist School is wrong in some instances, that there is not a complete identity of speech and writing, that in the earliest writing, the images expressed meaning without a “linguistic garment.” Only after the development of a phonetic system was writing practically identified with speech and lost its independent character (ibid.).