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July 2022 - 9 September 2022 *Hebrew alphabet
ʾAleph is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and is followed by bet. As a consonant, it represents a glottal stop, also known as a glottal plosive. Throughout history it has been to varying degrees pronounced or left silent, and can at times function as a mater lectionis.
In Modern Israeli Hebrew, it is sometimes used as a numeral for 1. This usage is also found in the paratext of modern printed Hebrew Bibles, though not in the biblical text proper. With a diaresis above it, it stands for one thousand.
In Modern Israeli Hebrew, it is generally silent like ʿayin, although in classical Hebrew ʾaleph and ʿayin were clearly distinct in pronunciation. For the pronunciation of ʾaleph in Tiberian Hebrew, see Geoffrey Khan, The Tiberian Pronunciation, in the appropriate chapter.
Some of the material above is paraphrased from Brown, Francis; Driver, S. R.; and Briggs, Charles A. (1907). A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament with an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic, Based on the Lexicon of William Gesenius, as Translated by Edward Robinson, Late Professor in the Union Theological Seminary, New York.
As with other pages migrated from biblicalambiguities.net, this page may contain material paraphrased or even outright copied without direct attribution from the KJV, RV, ASV, JPS (1917), WEB, NHEB, Kittel's BH, the pre-1923 volumes of the ICC series, or the commentaries on Genesis of Dillmann, Skinner, and Driver. More details on this policy can be found here: biblicalambiguities-general-disclaimer and biblicalambiguities-translation-disclaimer.
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