The Aleph-Tav in the first sentence of the Torah
Teaching and Understanding the Paleo-Hebrew
Document 2 of 11
The first sentence of the Torah contains a word that every translation tradition left out. Not because it was obscure. Not because it was difficult. Because the translators treated it as a grammatical particle with no translatable meaning. A technical function. Nothing to see. Move along.
They were wrong. And what they left out is the most precise declaration in the entire first sentence.
The First Sentence
בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ
Bereshit bara Elohim et hashamayim ve’et ha’aretz
In beginning created Elohim [Aleph-Tav] the heavens and [Aleph-Tav] the earth
Every English translation renders this, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Six words in English. Seven words in Hebrew. The seventh word, et, appears twice. Once before the heavens. Once before the earth. And it appears in neither the English nor in any other major translation. It was left out. Both times. By every translator. In every tradition.
The word et is the direct object marker in Hebrew. Technically it signals that the word following it is the direct object of the verb. The grammarians called it untranslatable, a grammatical function only, carrying no independent meaning, invisible in translation. Every translation tradition agreed. The word was left out.
The translation tradition unanimously agreed, et has no meaning worth translating. Every English Bible, every major translation, left it out. What the Paleo-Hebrew pictures show is that they left out the name of the one through whom the heavens and the earth were created.
What the Pictures Show
In the Paleo-Hebrew script et is two letters. Aleph. Tav. The first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Together. In the first sentence. Between the act of creation and the thing created.
א Aleph — Ox Head — Strength, The First
The first. The strong one. The beginning of the structural alphabet. The one who is before all things.
ת Tav — Cross Mark — Sign, The Last, The Covenant Mark
The last. The sign. The mark on the doorpost that distinguished those inside the covenant. The end that is also the completion.
The first letter of the alphabet and the last letter. The beginning and the end. The one who holds both. Present in the first sentence. Between Elohim creating and the heavens and the earth being created. The Aleph-Tav, present at the creation, in the act of creation, holding the position between the creator and the created.
Yeshua declared himself in Revelation 1:8, I am the Alpha and the Omega. The first and the last. The beginning and the end. Alpha and Omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, the Greek equivalent of the Aleph and the Tav of the Hebrew alphabet. Yeshua was not introducing a new declaration about himself. He was identifying himself with the declaration that had been in the first sentence of the Torah since Moshe first drew it in the wilderness.
I am the Aleph-Tav. The word the translators left out. The word present twice in the first sentence, once before the heavens and once before the earth. Holding both. The first and the last holding the heavens and the earth in the act of their creation.
Yeshua said I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Aleph and the Tav. He was identifying himself with the two letters the translators had been leaving out of the first sentence of the Torah since the first translation was made. The declaration was already there. In the first sentence. In the word they left out.
The Stone the Builders Rejected
The pattern runs through the entire covenant testimony. The stone the builders rejected became the rosh pinnah, the head cornerstone. Psalm 118:22. The rejected element becoming the foundation of what the builders were trying to build without it.
The Aleph-Tav was rejected by every translation tradition. Unanimously. Consistently. In every language. For two thousand years of translation history. The translators looked at the two letters and said, grammatical function only, nothing to translate, leave it out.
And what they left out is the declaration of the one through whom all things were made. Yochanan 1:3, all things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made. The Aleph-Tav. Present in the first sentence. In the act of making all things. Named in the making. Left out of every translation of the making.
The builders left out the cornerstone. But the cornerstone did not leave the first sentence. The Aleph and the Tav sit in the first sentence of the Torah in every Hebrew manuscript that has ever existed. The translators walked around them. The pictures remained. The declaration remained. In beginning created Elohim, Aleph-Tav, the heavens and the earth. Always. In the text. In the pictures. Waiting to be read as what they always were.
The translators left out the Aleph-Tav from every translation for two thousand years. The Aleph-Tav remained in the first sentence of every Hebrew manuscript for two thousand years. The stone the builders rejected stayed exactly where it was placed. The cornerstone cannot be removed by being walked around.
Before the Heavens and the Earth
The position of the Aleph-Tav in the sentence is not incidental. In beginning created Elohim, then the Aleph-Tav, then the heavens. Then ve’et, and the Aleph-Tav again, then the earth.
The Aleph-Tav stands between the creator and the creation. Not as a grammatical filler. As the one through whom the creation was made. The position the Aleph-Tav holds in the sentence is the position Yochanan declares in the prologue, all things were made through him. The through whom. Between Elohim creating and the heavens and the earth being created. The Aleph-Tav holds that position in the Hebrew. The translators left that position empty in the translation. And the first sentence in translation has had an invisible gap in it ever since, the place where the one through whom all things were made stood in the Hebrew and was walked around in every translation.
Paul in Colossians 1:16-17, for by him all things were created in heaven and on earth. And he is before all things and in him all things hold together. The Aleph-Tav. Before the heavens and the earth. In the act of their creation. Holding both, the heavens and the earth — together. The first and the last. The beginning and the end. Named in the first sentence of the Torah in the word the translation tradition called untranslatable.
It was not untranslatable. It was the most precise declaration in the sentence. The one through whom all things were made, named in the act of making them. In two letters. The first letter and the last letter. The pictures anyone who could see a drawing could read. Left out by the builders. Present in the text. Always.
In beginning created Elohim, Aleph-Tav, the heavens and the earth. The first and the last. Between the creator and the creation. In the word the translators left out. Always in the text. Always in the pictures. Always declaring who was there.
א ת
Aleph — Tav
The first and the last.
In beginning.
Between the creator and the creation.
In the word they left out.
I am the Aleph and the Tav.
Revelation 1:8
The Gospel Revolution • Mike Williams Ministries
William Ethan Massengill • Michael Lilborn Williams • Daniel Thomas Rouse
Published by Audrey Williams