…of Walking Through Samaria
Teaching and Understanding the Paleo-Hebrew
Document 3 of 11
There are serious scholars, careful theologians, and genuine students of the Hebrew text who approach the Paleo-Hebrew differently than this body of work does. Their caution is real. Their concerns are legitimate. They have thought carefully about the relationship between the pictographic letter forms and the meaning of Hebrew words and they have raised questions worth hearing.
This document is not written to dismiss those voices. It is written to hear them clearly and then state plainly where this body of work parts ways with them, not because their scholarship is wrong but because the parameters we have established lead us to a different road. A road that goes through Samaria rather than around it.
We want their opinion heard. We want ours heard. And we want the reader to know exactly where we are standing and why, so that what follows in this series can be received with full awareness of the road we are on.
This is not a dismissal of other voices. It is a statement of parameters. The caution of others is noted and respected. These are the three things we have established that shape how we read the Paleo-Hebrew, and why we walk through rather than around.
The Voices We Have Heard
Scholars who work in ancient Semitic languages and Hebrew epigraphy have raised legitimate concerns about reading Paleo-Hebrew letters as pictographic declarations of theological meaning. Their primary concern is this, the pictographic origins of the letters are ancient and the connection between the picture and the meaning of the letter in later Hebrew usage is not always direct or provable. Words in Hebrew are not simply strings of pictures that add up to a sentence. Hebrew is a root-based language with grammatical structure that does not reduce to pictographic addition.
This concern is honest and it is worth naming. We have heard it. It shapes the discipline of this series, we read the pictures carefully, we state what the pictures show, we do not overstate the connection between the individual letter pictures and the full grammatical meaning of the word. The pictures are the foundation of the letters. The letters form words. The words have grammatical meaning. We hold all three levels with care.
Others have noted that the Paleo-Hebrew pictographic tradition has been used by various teachers to produce readings that serve their theological frameworks, finding in the pictures whatever they were already looking for. That concern is also legitimate. The discipline this series holds is the same discipline the entire body of work has held from its beginning. We do not go to the pictures to find what we already believe. We go to the pictures and ask what they show. And if what they show contradicts what we thought we believed we say so.
We have heard the caution. We proceed anyway. Not recklessly. With the three parameters that follow.
The Three Parameters
One: The Name Was Removed
YHWH was removed from the covenant text six thousand eight hundred and twenty-eight times and replaced with Adonai by the Sopherim, the scribal tradition following the post-exilic institutional reforms. This is documented. The Talmud acknowledges it. The critical apparatus of the Hebrew Bible notes it. Deuteronomy 4:2 says do not add to what I command you and do not take away from it. The removal of the name is a violation of that instruction. Any voice that engages with the Paleo-Hebrew without acknowledging this removal is engaging with a text that has already been significantly altered by the same tradition whose alterations we are examining. We read with the name restored. YHWH, not Adonai, not Lord, not God in the places where the name stood. The name.
Two: The Script Was Changed
The Paleo-Hebrew script, the pictographic script Moshe wrote in, was replaced by the Aramaic square script in the post-exilic period. The Talmud itself acknowledges this in tractate Sanhedrin 21b, the Torah was given in the Ivri script and given again in the days of Ezra in the Assyrian script. Ezra changed the script. Not YHWH through a prophet. Ezra through a post-exilic institutional decision authorized by Persian imperial decree. The pictographic declarations of the original script, the hand, the nail, the house, the head, the cross mark, were covered by abstract strokes that no longer showed the pictures. We read from the pictures. The form Moshe used. The form the physical inscriptions of the period confirm was the writing system of the covenant community.
Three: The Numerical System Was Added
The gematria tradition, the assignment of numerical values to the Hebrew letters and the interpretive system built on those numerical correspondences, was developed by the same scribal tradition that introduced the Aramaic square script. It is not present in the Paleo-Hebrew text as Moshe wrote it. It filled the space the pictures vacated. The same instruction that prohibits taking away prohibits adding. The numerical system is an addition that redirected attention from the direct pictographic declarations to a code requiring authorized interpretation. We do not follow the numbers. We follow the pictures. 888 is not a covenant declaration. The Vav in the name YHWH is.
These three parameters are not arbitrary. They are derived from the text itself, from the instruction not to add or take away, from the documented history of what was added and taken away, and from the hermeneutic Yeshua gave in Luke 24:44. These are they that speak of me. The Torah. The Prophets. The Psalms. The testimony that speaks of him in the form it was given. Not the testimony as modified by the institutional tradition that covered what the testimony was saying.
Why We Walk Through Samaria
The religious community walked around Samaria. They had reasons. Real reasons, ethnic tension, religious rivalry, the dispute over the correct worship site, the post-exilic institutional rejection of the Samaritan community. Those reasons were operative in their minds. We hear them. We understand them.
But YHWH had a reason for the outcome of their reasoning. The walk around Samaria preserved the community that had kept the Paleo-Hebrew pictures from the institutional covering. The community the builders rejected from the building project was the community that kept the text in the form Moshe wrote it, without the Aramaic square script, without the gematria system, without the fence laws, without the authorized interpretation that placed the migdal etz between the people and the direct declaration of the pictures.
The scribal tradition walked around the Paleo-Hebrew pictures for the same reason the religious community walked around Samaria, they had institutional reasons, doctrinal reasons, scholarly reasons, reasons they could defend from within their own framework. We hear those reasons. And we walk through anyway.
Because the Aleph-Tav is in the first sentence and the translators left it out. Because the name YHWH declares the hand and the nail in four pictures that anyone who can see a drawing can read. Because the first word of the Torah declares the building project and the head of all things and the hand and the cross mark in six pictures before the first sentence is complete. Because the pictures were always there. Because they speak directly. Because they speak of him. Because the Torah is not about him, it is him. YHWH.
And because Yeshua walked through Samaria to the well where the woman who kept the pictures was waiting. He did not walk around. He walked through. The body document walking into the community that had kept the document in the form it was written in. And said I am. To her. Before almost anyone else in the gospel accounts.
We follow him through. Not around. Through the Paleo-Hebrew. Through the first word. Through the first sentence. Through the Aleph-Tav the translators left out. Through the name the scribal tradition removed. Through the pictures the numerical system covered. Through Samaria. To the well. To the declaration that has always been there waiting to be read as what it is.
Yeshua walked through Samaria. Not around it. The body document walking into the community that had kept the document in the form it was written in. We follow him through. The pictures are at the well. The I am has already declared itself. We are reading what was always there.
We have heard the caution. We hold the three parameters. We walk through Samaria. The pictures are speaking. The Torah is not about him. It is him. YHWH.
Parameter One: The name was removed. We read with the name restored.
Parameter Two: The script was changed. We read from the pictures.
Parameter Three: The numbers were added. We follow the pictures not the numbers.
We have heard the caution.
We are not throwing caution to the wind.
We are walking through Samaria.
The pictures are at the well.
They have always been there.
The I am has already declared itself.
We are reading what was always there.
The Gospel Revolution • Mike Williams Ministries
William Ethan Massengill • Michael Lilborn Williams • Daniel Thomas Rouse
Published by Audrey Williams